Well, almost.

As I type this I am listening to my healthy, newly-repaired baby.

Lickety-Split auctions on eBay have delivered - literally: this morning, a small package appeared 4 days after ordering (including a weekend and a postal strike!) containing a new battery and a set of small screwdrivers. Not all of these were needed: only the tiny crosshead.

I rehearsed putting it back together again (quite simple according to JIm Thompson's (KarmaLimbo) instruction sheet) and inside an hour of careful work, removed the old battery, installed the new one, and re-assembled. Great stuff: worked first time, nothing broken.

A couple of points to add as a caution during re-assembly:

- when you remove the old battery, make sure you don't inadvertantly short the + and - leads together while you are working. I also clipped the ends off the leads to stop this after I de-soldered them from the charger PCB. Put it away safely.

- there are four self-tapping screws inside the unit: one of them is longer than the others. Don't forget to use two short screws to hold the main board into the casing, then use one long and one short going through the front case into the back case. These were both dabbed with black paint on my unit: the long one goes through THREE mouldings in the hole under the rotary control wheel. Be careful here, it's tricky.

- the new battery I got was already half charged up - so the same safety rules apply when soldering it onto the charger board.

- it was a little tricky to get the top case moulding to sit properly in place: be careful here as it would take little effort to break it.

- I re-used the yellow kapton sticky tape on the new battery to secure the thermistor sensor on the side of the battery, in the same position.

So there you go! Back in business, and not as difficult as I had thought it would be. Just needs a little care and patience. I can recommend LicketySplit auctions for their fast delivery and thoughtful inclusion of the screwdrivers: I'll follow this up soon with my impressions of battery life and charge times.

Happy bunny

PS The old battery had swollen from 6.5mm thick to a rather gross 9.2mm in one cell and 8.95 in the other. Not good!