One night I noticed that the wheel on my Fuze wasn’t turning very well, and the next day it didn’t turn at all. I pushed hard and turned it in circles trying to loosen it up, and was eventually able to get it to move, jerkily. But each morning it would freeze up again, until I could not move it at all, even pushing hard. I used my MacGuyver knife to turn the wheel, and this got me through the day, though whenever it slipped it would either pause the song or skip tracks, and scratch it up. (I figured scratched and functional was better than beautiful and useless). Finally, I was frustrated enough to open it up and look behind the wheel. I followed the directions at <FreemattandGrace.Com>, and though I’m not recommending you do this , I thought I should post, somewhere, the things I noticed that they didn’t mention.
" Step 1: Pry open and pop the clips. Please note that the bottom two clips are held in with a little bit of rubbery glue. Don’t rip the face off too quick since there is a ribbon cable you need to disconnect."
Also note that the screen is held to the faceplate by some sticky membrane. My screen was splitting in two untill I used a paper clip to push the membrane off the faceplate, and then I had to push the screen (click) back into place.
" Step 2: Remove ribbon cable from face plate. Lift the face off and flip the brown ribbon release flap on the connection."
The ribbon is brown, the “release flap” is black. The ribbon comes out of the plastic housing and remains attached to the faceplate.
I stopped following their instructions here, because I wasn’t interested in completely disassembling my Fuze. Instead I slowly peeled the tape off the back of the faceplate and unscrewed the two tiny screws on the back of the wheel-part. There was a lot of dust on the back of the tape which I wiped up with a q-tip. The ring around the wheel popped off easily and I gently turned the wheel to see what was making it stick. I noticed that little pieces of a white sheet of plastic behind the wheel were catching on the clips that the wheel sits in. I trimmed them with the scissors of my MacGuyver knife.
Replacing everything was easy, except the brown ribbon. To get it back in place I put it in position and then pushed on the back of it with a paper clip.
/<----faceplate
/ <—put the ribbon in place
/________ <—back
Then:
-------------- <–faceplate
push—> ( <-----ribbon
-------------- <–back
After doing this, my Fuze still works and my wheel turns (though still not smoothly). It at least will last me till I buy a new one.
Message Edited by moonsdad on 11-18-2009 06:23 AM
