Is this something to be concerned about?

[CRankin]

OK. So I got the new Vision+ this week and was conducting a first preflight check on it and noticed a crack in the rear right of the lower fuselage along the inflection point in the plastic. This is obviously a defect in the product as it's new stock...

The question is what should I do? Is this something serous enough to impact flight operations or become an issue? Is there a way to repair this myself and save the shipping costs and additional wait time for a replacement? (Will model glue or some sort of plastic glue work to resolve this?)

What would you do? If I'm going to swap this out, hopefully B&H will be willing to work with me on some sort of cross shipping. I really don't want to wait yet another week to have something functional...

 

[kgarrison]

Probably not an issue but I wouldn't accept it in that condition.

 

[Madwak]

I would be connecting the phantom to the computer and checking the battery status to see if it is actually new stock and not somebody else's return that has been shipped out again?

 

[Phantom_Menace66]

OK. So I got the new Vision+ this week and was conducting a first preflight check on it and noticed a crack in the rear right of the lower fuselage along the inflection point in the plastic. This is obviously a defect in the product as it's new stock...

The question is what should I do? Is this something serous enough to impact flight operations or become an issue? Is there a way to repair this myself and save the shipping costs and additional wait time for a replacement? (Will model glue or some sort of plastic glue work to resolve this?)

What would you do? If I'm going to swap this out, hopefully B&H will be willing to work with me on some sort of cross shipping. I really don't want to wait yet another week to have something functional...

When you buy something brand new, it is not unreasonable to expect it to be undamaged. A crack is a crack. You wouldn't accept delivery of a new car with a dent in it would you?
I'd be sending/taking it back to the dealer before you fly it.

 

[D_Tshudy]

OK. So I got the new Vision+ this week and was conducting a first preflight check on it and noticed a crack in the rear right of the lower fuselage along the inflection point in the plastic. This is obviously a defect in the product as it's new stock...

The question is what should I do? Is this something serous enough to impact flight operations or become an issue? Is there a way to repair this myself and save the shipping costs and additional wait time for a replacement? (Will model glue or some sort of plastic glue work to resolve this?)

What would you do? If I'm going to swap this out, hopefully B&H will be willing to work with me on some sort of cross shipping. I really don't want to wait yet another week to have something functional...

When you buy something brand new, it is not unreasonable to expect it to be undamaged. A crack is a crack. You wouldn't accept delivery of a new car with a dent in it would you?
I'd be sending/taking it back to the dealer before you fly it.

What the heck!? That's disappointing. I have to agree with Menace.. You are understandably excited to go fly that thing, but what is something catastrophic happens. Then you're stuck with a mangled pile, trying to convince DJI that it was cracked on delivery. Maybe take a couple photos of the crack and ask DJI to send you a new shell. Also, there are shell's on eBay for highly inflated prices.

 

[Madwak]

Check the battery status with the assistant cos if it shows multiple charges then obviously its not new stock and if you send it back and they do the same check they won't believe that you havnt been flying it. We know from other posts on here that B&H have been getting a lot of returns and it is a possibility that they have accidentally shipped one out to you. :?:

 

[Birdman]

It may not be a crack. It may be normal. Mine has a seam on both sides of the underside around the rear battery cover. The seams go up to the top-bottom Phantom case seam. It looks like a crack because there's a bend in the seam toward the bottom. Check it out.

 

[Birdman]

Here's a photo.

 

[CRankin]

Thanks Birdman. Mine looks similar, but is more split apart at the seam. I took the cover off to verify as well. Take a look in the image that's attached along the lip that fits into the cover - you'll see a gap there that looks like a bit of a notch. That's the start of the separation; it runs about 2/3 of the way to where the landing skid is attached. The gap may not look large in this photo... I'll attach a picture of what the left side looks like for comparison too (the difference will be a little more clear then).

I agree with the advice given by others about flying this now. I sent B&H an email late last night, and plan to follow up with a phone call to them when they open tomorrow. I'm hoping that I can get them to cross-ship a new one to me (their web site showed they still had some in stock as of last night), as I'm going to need it next week for a couple things. I'd even be willing to pay to get it overnighted, if I'm not going to have to bear the cost of shipping this one back to them. (At this point I can do one or the other, but not both. It turns out that air conditioner repairs, car repairs, and homeowners association mandated home repairs hitting within one month of each other are causing me to watch expenses very closely for the next month or two.)

Here's the photo of the crack, with some clear separation. The plastic can be pushed together in the area where you see the notch "cut out". I don't know if this is normal on the P2V+ but am guessing that it's not since a) the left side isn't that way, and b) it wasn't that way on the P2V that I had.


Here's a photo of the left side - showing the seam that we're talking about. This side is still all one solid piece, and as you can see the plastic is "molded together" - looking much different from the right side.


I'm not sure how well the pictures demonstrate this - I've tried to do the best that I could with a cell phone camera. Since I just received this earlier this week and haven't flown it yet (heck, it hasn't even been turned on - the battery was charged, and that was it), hopefully I can work something out for a quick and speedy exchange with B&H.

 

[Geoelectro]

Doesn't look like a problem to me. I have three shells and they all have this seam. All look similar.

Geo

 

[CRankin]

Doesn't look like a problem to me. I have three shells and they all have this seam. All look similar.

Geo

Thanks Geo!

A quick question for you... Is the shell separated apart at the seam on yours, or it is one continuous piece of plastic with a seam indentation on it? (The left side of my Phantom is the latter, but the right side is the former.) If everyone has this type of physical crack along the right seam where the plastic actually separates, this might be more of a design decision than a defect.

When looking at the plastic along the left side and comparing to the right there's a definite difference. One does not have a crack (i.e. plastic actually torn apart at the seam) and the other does. The crack on my right side runs along the seam from the top to approximately 2/3 the way down to where the landing strut joins.

From what I've seen on other Phantoms (and from what it was like on my previous P2V), there should be no cracks along this seam on either the left or right side - it should be one continuous piece of plastic. Is this correct? I believe there's a probably some difficulty in showing this and that the picture is just not able to convey adequately. I'd offer to pull the plastic apart at the seam more and take additional photos to demonstrate what's happening, but don't want to run into problems with damaging the craft myself.

 

[Geoelectro]

These seams are where the lower shell attaches to the battery housing. These two parts are molded to fit together and there are screws inside that secure them together. The battery housing section fits inside the shell. This means there is a small overlap on the back of the seam. For example, if you push in on the battery housing it will move in but the shell doesn't move. If you push in on the shell next to the seam the battery housing moves with it because there is a small overlap that come from the battery housing piece.

Does this help?

Geo

 

[Birdman]

Looks like maybe that the piece on the right with the lip should be behind the piece on the left. Maybe all that's needed is to snap the piece back in place. Definitely not cracked though.

 

[CRankin]

Geo, Birdman -

I'd really like to thank you a lot for your help here! You were right.

I removed the screw on the right side, and spent about 5 minutes playing around with trying to get the two pieces to fit a little better at the seam before putting the screw back in. As a result, I was able to eliminate most of the gap that I saw. It's not 100% gone as I would have liked for a "perfect fit" but there really isn't any way of knowing that I'd ever get that on any of these quads. (After all this is a mass-produced item from China.)

As a result of your advice, I've saved about a week or so of delays with getting this up and running, as well as shipping costs back and forth to B&H. I'm glad we have a community like this to help folks like me ask questions and learn from others. Once again, I really appreciate your time with helping me out.

Have a great weekend! I know I'm going to try to get out today and tomorrow for testing to ensure all is working well with GPS and flight systems before installing my Flytrex.

 

[Geoelectro]

That is awesome!

Geo