My first experience with lowrance. Not so good.

[Rick Baker]

For clarification. I did reset the defaults in the menu. And did a soft reset during start up as well. Yes the manual did state that through hull installation was fine, but I was told lowrance didn't address that for the hdi manual.

The transducer burned up. It wasn't making the clicking sound it was when it was new.

The one I have now is more simple, smaller transducer, mounted in the scupper, and if it dosnt last, I'll cut my ties with the Mexican lowrance units.

[Haris122]

I had similar problems with my humminbird piranhamax 143, so I'm not sure your problem is company specifc. I installed the transducer with marine goop inside the hull of the kayak, and it worked fine for the first 4-5 trips. Next trip it started off reading fine, and then a minute into it, it just stopped reading, as if it was in less than 3 feet of water the entire time (this unit isn't capable of reading reliably in less than 3 feet). At first I thought it just may be in shallow water, but pretty soon I grew suspicious that anywhere I went it was supposedly that shallow, so I checked with my paddle and found the water to be easily deep enough that the unit should read it fine. I thought at first maybe the battery was drained, and there wasn't enough juice for it to function properly, so I charged it up. Didn't make a difference. Then I went to a different lake where I knew it worked before, just to check that there wasn't some weird "Predator" effect from the bottom mud/composition at that specific lake. I didn't think it would be, since it read fine that first minute there before, but I checked regardless. As expected that wasn't it, as it didn't read at the lake it previously had, either. So I scraped the marine goop out of the hull, and cut out the transducer from it, and thought of testing it by dunking it in water, as I figured by now, it had gone bad. Before I even got to do that, the transducer started reading again, through the hull, just as it was, resting inside the hull. I took it to the same place I initially had problems at and tried it there, and it worked fine, albeit after a brief minute where it didn't read anything. I think primarily it must have been some unknown effect between the position in the hull, the marine goop and possibly how it cures over time, and the transducer itself. So far I took it out twice since, and both times it seems to have a minute of lag time, before it starts reading in water deep enough. It seems to help when I just dunk it in water to start reading, and then move the transducer around and try different spots inside the hull until it starts giving a consistent reading from a certain spot.

[Rick Baker]

After reading that and my experience.....I'll never put the transducer in the hull again.

[Haris122]

I still have mine technically in the hull. But what I don't plan on doing anymore is securing it to any one spot in there, so I can't easily move it. But I do imagine it be a safer bet just to have it in the water. Especially if you can read water temperature with it too.