SG9665GC Blurry / Out Of Focus After 4 Years

[Zpedalkin]

Just want to say that the customer service of Street Guardian is pretty impressive. It's already self-evident on this forum through how active @jokiin is in providing support and responding to queries. He has worked with me to resolve the blurriness issue to my complete satisfaction - full marks there and highly recommend this as a brand for anyone to do business with.

 

[Film Guy]

SG9665GC Blurry / Out Of Focus After 4 Years? Only?? Try 8 years!
I found that Carmen, my SG9665GC V1 purchased back in September 2015, had gone blurry a few months ago and resigned myself to finally replacing her.
Started researching and thought the VIOFO A119 Mini was a contender. One thing led to another, I saw the A119 has seen focus issues and so I checked back in here, only to find this thread.
Seeing as Carmen owed me nothing I pulled her apart to see if I could fix the focus. Amazing what you find out about build quality when you pull these apart, and you see pull down/fix videos on the A119 to compare.
Pull down was easy enough, what was not so easy was removing the glue from the lenses locking ring & thread. Whoever assembled it was likely sacked for using too much glue but after some heated pick work followed by a shifting spanner and a serious set of pliers (yep, that's what was required in the end!!) the lens could be unscrewed.
I didn't separate any of the cables/connectors so to refocus I simply plugged her into a power bank & twisted the lens until the image was perfect.
Pulled the card and checked image quality on the laptop and it's good as new.
Went to the shops, purchased some lovely nail polish (and apparently my manhood is still intact, can't quite believe those earlier comments, man up and be tough like an Aussie people), sealed locking ring & lens and put it all back together.
I do still want to replace Carmen (shhh, don't tell her) and having wi-fi or bluetooth connectivity would be nice.
Will be buying two of whatever replaces her, maybe the SGGCX2PRO? (Front cams) as I want a rear facing camera also but not slave to the front cam.
Carmen will live out the rest of her looooong life in my daughters car I suspect.
Nice job with the products Rick / Jokiin, and thanks to all the others who contributed on this thread and the forum in general.
Cheers, Phil.

 

[Film Guy]

Oh, and a couple of pics showing the lens housing post "plier correction" and the V1 model info...

 

[DT MI]

...Carmen will live out the rest of her looooong life in my daughters car I suspect....

Hopefully that will be much longer than you expect. Your experience matches mine. I purchased 2 v1's right after they were announced back in March 2015 and both are still in daily use after 8 years 2 months (and counting). We both got more than good value.

 

[kamkar]

If you have just a little DIY skill, fixing the focus in a dashcam are not that big of a deal.
I also had to do it with my GC model as it was one of the very first ones, with a less fortunate lens in use, but after i fixed that, well the old camera are still in use in my friends car.