So, I've had an original wireless Vantage Pro mounted halfway up an antenna tower since 2004. It's worked pretty reliably during that time, but admittedly for the last 8 years or so it has been completely ignored. The rain collector stopped working, then the wind gauge stopped being reliable, but I never got around to taking it down or working on it. Then I moved, and it's been sitting in my basement in a pile of dirty pieces for about a year.
This summer I took it upon myself to clean it up. First, it's astounding what UV/weather will do to plastic. The black plastic rain cone is fine, but anything white has gone severely yellow (or splotchy dark grey - odd), and whatever plastic they used for the round shields and electronics box on the bottom has gone very crumbly around the edges, such that it just flakes off like powder. It just disintegrates.
As for cleaning, the rain collector interior was literally jam full of a paper wasp nest (they came in one of the 2 cable holes - they didn't have those little rubber grommets for them back in 2004). Other stuff had a ton of grunge but came pretty clean. I then spray painted everything white and black, and it looks great.
As for components:
The transmitter board seems fine. The "supercap" appears to be okay (not leaking). The solar cell is very milky.
The temperature/humidity module is clean, and running it inside next to the console I'm getting identical readings between the two.
The rain gauge is NOT working. It just shows on the console that it's constantly being tripped, so the rainfall reading just keeps going up and up. I assume it's shorted/failed. It's the original black plastic double-spoon design (not even the silver ones) so I don't think it's worth trying to repair.
The anemometer is generally not working correctly. Wind direction is fine, and it will give me a minimal wind speed reading when I turn the cups, but I don't think the reading is as high as it should be, and there's a very loud noise/vibration when spinning the cups that makes me think the bearings have failed. It's the old "straight" design (not hourglass) so I don't know how serviceable it is compared to the new one and its handy cartridge.
I think the least I can do to get this working again is replace the tipping spoon, and the anemometer, both of which appear to still be compatible with the original VP.
But it looks like I could actually replace a lot more if I wanted to. Like, I could get a whole new black plastic mounting base. I could get the new AeroCone. I could replace the crumbling solar shield. I'm quite certain I could even transplant my VP transmitter into the new VP2 electronics box that mounts on the base where the solar cell mounts on mine. And, I'm pretty sure I could use the new solar cell front lid, too.
Is anyone crazy enough to have done anything like that? Made a hybrid VP/VP2? It's still a lot cheaper to replace all those parts and keep using my old transmitter board, temperature module and console than it is to upgrade to a brand new VP2.