Beolab 2 - leakage around connection panel

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j_a_s Posted: Wed, Jul 13 2016 9:10 AM

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Hi,

I recently got the Beolab 2 to give a little more punch to my set up with the classic Beosound 9000 and a pair of Beolab 8000. At lower volumes I love this combination! My issue is at higher volumes:

There seems to be some leakages around the connection panel at the back. The seal for the speaker itself and the slaves on the sides seems good, so I'm pretty sure it's only on the back. What this does is that it makes a noise similar to a badly ported sub. A loud flapping noise if you will. The back panel looks to maybe be a bit out of place, where the lower part is positioned a bit deeper than the top part (which is flush with the aluminium case).

Appart from this, everything seems fine with the sub. Unfortunately, for different reasons, I can't return the speaker.

To my questions:

1. Has anyone had the same problem?

2. Does anyone have any experience with disassembling the Beolab 2?

3. Would it be sufficient to seal this with superglue or similar from the outside?

If you didn't guess it, I'd like to go one of two ways. Either I'd like to take this appart and try to reposition the connections. If disassembly is really tricky I'd add som seal of some kind just to be sure, otherwise I'd like to try if repositioning is sufficient for the problem. The other way, if disassembly seems like rocket-sciense or if the risk of breaking something for real is to big, maybe I could try to seal it from the outside.

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9 LEE replied on Thu, Jul 14 2016 11:33 PM

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Hi,

I'm a novice when it comes to stripping things down, but I found the BeoLab 2 pretty straightforward..  You will almost certainly have a misaligned seal at the rear, which can be rectified if you take the sub apart and have a look. It'll be seal - and the sub will have been apart before and reassembled incorrectly, hence the 'flatulent' noise you hear!

The service manuals are here on BeoWorld, I'm sure - and the only tips I would have are to keep separate areas for all the screws and components!

Good Luck

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j_a_s replied on Mon, Jul 25 2016 10:17 AM

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SOLVED (I think)

Turns out it was worse than I thought. It wasn't just that the connection-panel / main board was mounted wrong, the back seal / gasket was missing entirely. Considering the worn screws and sloppy cable management, my guess is that the previous owner is some lazy guy / girl who opened this up for some reason, and didn't bother to put it back together properly. "Left over gasket when all is put back together - guess I'm selling". 

The good news is that I think I have fixed it. At least for the volumes I can play at in an apartment. I added some pictures of the process, unfortunately they are quite bad i realise now. The beolab 2 is incredibly well built and everything snaps together with just a couple of mm margin. I followed the repair guide I found when googling. Basically:

• leave the speaker unplugged for some time for the capacitors to loose its charge (I guessed, and hoped, that 24h would be enough)
• remove the 3 rings covering the slaves and bass mounts (I used a credit card to snap them of, solid build so more a question of not scratching anything than breakning anything)
• screwed off the two slaves (sides) - 4 torx screws each - and put them to the side
• laid the speaker on its "back", i.e. the connection panel
• removed the screws for the bass
• removed all contacts for the bass, documenting what goes where
• carefully lifted out the bass
• removed all contacts between the trafo and the main board (again, documenting where things should sit)
• removed the 4 torx screws holding the main board (speaker still on its back)
• a bit tricky: the main board can be removed without taking out the trafo, but it needs alot of wiggeling and trial and error.
• this is when i realised (compared to the explosion chart in the repair manual) that the gasket was completely missing.
• late night, so no stores open at this time and still wanting to finish I had to improvise. I would recommend buying this as a spare part if you can, or buying make-your-own-gasket and cut out your own that fits. The connection "tunnel" has pins to fit the gasket on. I used a rubber strip that is for sealing doors and windows. Not perfect, but it seems to work. Glued it on and cut to the correct length. Might have to change this in a couple of years, but seems to be air tight for the moment.
• Wiggle the board back in place
• fasten screws
• do some more proper cable management
• carefully put bass in place
• fasten screws
• connect rest of cables (again with proper cable management)
• now you can put the speaker on its foot again
• mount slaves
• put cover-rings in place
• try some of the fail-checks from the repair manual to make sure everything is ok. There isn't much you can do wrong, so if you've been thorough you should be ok. 
• connect - but be careful!

I hope the above can be of use for anyone trying to open the Beolab 2 for any reason (changing fuses or whatever).