fT-857d Selector Knob Malfunction

[KB2CPW]

This is a known issue by Yaesu. I took mine apart and discovered the shaft comes has to be carefully reseated. The encoder shaft comes out when you get careless and and press too hard inward while rotating encoder. It's not hard to fix but it shouldn't be this delicate. Yaesu has a replacement shaft encode you can install.

Bob

  I concur,

  I've had 5 FT-857's and D models and they all did it in one form or another. The Encoder is sloppy and its a common issue. I've found that liberal use of the same knob on my TS-2000 will sometimes cause the same problem, chalk it up to low bid suppliers.. LOL

[KB1VCZ]

Well, I'm not going to worry too much about it, as it doesn't seem like a big deal.

You would think the engineering and componentry behind such a high use element of the radio would be better.

[AB3MO]

-   My used FT-857D (purchased in early '11, manufactured in 2006) starting showing the "flag" normally seen when the SELECT knob is pushed in allowing tuning by 1 MHz increments, but no tuning!
-   Works fine as a VHF mobile and HF backup. But would like the capability to go from 144 to 162.425MHz for NOAA WX
-   Does a field repair/fix exist for this problem? Could the average ham take the display apart and successfully repair this???
-   Want to check this out with others first before contacting Yaesu, Inc.
-   This may be why I bought a Kenwood TS-5090S rather than the corresponding Yaesu!

[KH6AQ]

I've owned two FT-857 transceivers and they did not have this problem. I'd send it back to Yaesu for repair.

[VE6PDB]

I have had my 857D since new and it has taken a lot of abuse while in  etc. Eventually, my selector knob became *very* loose, however it kept working, though I have noticed the skip thing from time to time, sometimes even going backwards!

I inspected the board and came to the conclusion it isn't very user-replaceable, but then I haven't done repairs of that kind in years.. umm... decades now.  However, if someone can point out the replacement part, I'd appreciate it, as when I was moving the radio from the house to Jeep tonight, the darn thing came out, shaft, knobs and all and I haven't even been able to locate the missing shaft and knobs (yet)... it's still dark out, but the snow may not help either. Thank goodness for the fancy microphone, which can do partial duty in the meantime.

The local shop said that attempting a repair may be close to as much as a new radio, but I don't need nor want a spare 857 "body" due to needing a replacement "head".

Modified Dec 29, 2011: I found a service manual online and while the board the encoder sits on is not a replacement part, there is a part number provided for the encoder in the parts list along with the OEM part.  The part specified is no longer in production or available from 3'rd party, however Yaesu is still making the radio, so there is likely an upgraded or equivalent part number. I've asked one vendor in email about that possibility.  I may have been wrong on my initial assessment, as I may not have disassembled the head far enough to truly see where the encoder was mounted.

Modified Jan 4, 2012: I disassembled the head last night and it looks like an easy repair if I can get the encoder. I haven't heard back from the parts supplier yet, so I dropped Yaesu / Vertex Standard a line themselves.

It seems the shaft is perforated from what I can see and that the hole in the head it goes through isn't tight enough to provide support, so if the shaft gets lateral pressure, it can easily snap off the small sections where the shaft is perforated, especially with the leverage provided by the length of shaft.

Modified Jan 12, 2012: Yaesu / Vertex Standard has the parts in stock, so I'm going to order a couple.  While I'm at it, I may try to "engineer" some way to fill the excess space in the faceplate around the shaft to stabilize it and reduce the chances of it having lateral loads applied to break the shaft. I obviously don't want to get it too tight so it is tough to turn either

[MM0HRL]

It's now a VERY long time on since this topic was current but since others might yet search it out I'll add a recent experience of mine.

My FT-857d was bought new in Scotland from Jaycee in Glenrothes, in Feb 2015. Around a couple of months later I began to notice when using the rotary "select" control to shift frequency (it's extremely handy to have it set to 1kc increments in SSB operation, so I'd used it quite a bit.) that it sometimes skipped over 2kc which I put down to poor use of the rotary adjuster by me since it seemed unlikely to me that a still-new unit would have developed a fault so soon.

Well - it got worse. So that there was a place on the rotation where it always skipped up to 4kc and one or two others where a 2kc jump happened.  I was also fairly sure that when rolling through the A-Q menus that a jump would happen.

I'll stress here that I had seen photos previously of a unit were the plastic shaft had sheared off flush with the control panel, so I knew it was potentially fragile in nature. I'm naturally the sort who babies his kit, perhaps excessively so, so I knew this problem evolving wasn't down to coarse usage habits.

Took it back to the shop after I decided it was a deteriorating fault and it was away for 5 weeks because of parts needing back-ordered - so the story was from Yaesu when I asked the dealer to check on progress for me.  Which to me seemed odd when the radio is still a big seller.  This made me wonder if there'd been a sudden flush of faulty radios which had drained their spares stock.

It's back in service now and not showing signs of a recurrence, but it's made me shy of using the rotary control too much in case it goes faulty again - especially once the warranty is out.  I've  feeling it will be offloaded some time soonish.

Since writing about the 857d I'll add that I have found mine to sound really good on SSB TX with using my old Astatic Teardrop mike - which is now around 30 years old. The stock Yaesu mike supplied is a hopeless thing which under-drives the SSB transmission badly.  Elsewhere the ALC issue has been discussed so I'll not reopen that one here - however, the radio sounds so very different with the Astatic mike that I felt it worthwhile to pass that on to anyone who happens to have one in a drawer.  I had a patch lead made up so I didn't have to re-plug the mike's cable, meaning I can still use it on other radios. And used an online SDR record facility to hear my transmissions exactly as received.

Getting off-topic here so I'll finish with that.