Fishfinder Freezing?

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Divemaster
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2016/02/13 16:36:02 (permalink)

Fishfinder Freezing?

Last year (May) we got a new fish finder for our boat for trolling purposes on Lake Erie (Lowrance HDS 5 gen 2) to replace an old, glitchy 12 year old model that we used for mixed bag drift fishing. We always keep our boat in a large, private, unheated storage unit during the Winter that normally is only a few degrees warmer than the outside temperature is. This is what we were doing this year as well, until we took it out to have our local boat guy start working on adding a few new things for this upcoming season. He only has two heated garages to work with at his place and he's pretty busy so at the moment our boat is outside in a walled off back area of his place. Until now, I didn't even think of it, but I just realized the other day that our fish finder has been in the boat the entire time still plugged in on its mount! Not only has it been going back and forth between a heated garage and the frigid temps of the outside, but this week and especially today and tomorrow the wind chill is down to -10° and I'm concerned that we're going to have to replace an expensive fish finder that's less than one year old if it's acting glitchy in the spring or it doesn't work at all. We're probably going to go get it out of the boat today or tomorrow and slowly warm it up in our basement but that won't do anything if the damage is already done

Does anyone else leave their fish finder on their boat year round in the cold and if not do you guys think it will be okay?
post edited by Divemaster - 2016/02/13 16:37:24
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    Divemaster
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    Re: Fishfinder Freezing? 2016/02/13 18:42:32 (permalink)
    Well, we went and got it out of the boat a while ago. Luckily, the foot of snow on top of the cover kept the inside a tiny bit warmer and I'd say where the fish finder was at was around 10-15°. It's now in our garage which right now is sitting at ~40° so I'm hoping there wasn't any kind of damage done to it. The lowrance website says the operating temperature is 5-130° so I'm just hoping that the boat wasn't below 5° inside of it at any point last night.
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    outasync
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    Re: Fishfinder Freezing? 2016/02/13 19:10:31 (permalink)
    As long as it was powered down you should be fine. The operating temperature is for when it's on and in use. Remember they ship those things in the back of trucks that are not heated.
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    Divemaster
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    Re: Fishfinder Freezing? 2016/02/13 20:21:11 (permalink)
    outasync
    As long as it was powered down you should be fine. The operating temperature is for when it's on and in use. Remember they ship those things in the back of trucks that are not heated.


    Good to hear, it was plugged in to the sonar and power cords but obviously not turned on and the batteries have been switched off since September.
    #4
    BeenThereDoneThat.
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    Re: Fishfinder Freezing? 2016/02/13 21:18:36 (permalink)
    Right on about being shipped in cold trucks Outasync [Good stuff, Big trucks bring it] and the stuff sits in and on non-heated docks in between, to boot!
     
    Wind chill being -10 wouldn't affect the the finder,  inanimate objects will not cool below the actual air temperature.
     
    The only problem I know of was the quality of the screen being poor do to extreme temperatures, on earlier models, while they were operating.
     
     

    Give a man a fish and you will feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you will feed him for a life time. ~Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie (1837–1919)~
     
     
     
      Old fisherman never die; we just smell that way. 
     
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    Divemaster
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    Re: Fishfinder Freezing? 2016/02/13 21:24:34 (permalink)
    BeenThereDoneThat.
    Right on about being shipped in cold trucks Outasync [Good stuff, Big trucks bring it] and the stuff sits in and on non-heated docks in between, to boot! Wind chill being -10 wouldn't affect the the finder,  inanimate objects will not cool below the actual air temperature. The only problem I know of was the quality of the screen being poor do to extreme temperatures, on earlier models, while they were operating.  


    Great, with any luck it'll be fine when I plug it in with the spring. I was more concerned about inaccurate readings on the finder such as SOG speed, water depth, and number of fish. The problem we had with our old 12 year old model was that it would show hundreds of fish on the screen when we were moving spots, but I think that was probably more the transducer LOL.
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    BeenThereDoneThat.
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    Re: Fishfinder Freezing? 2016/02/13 21:52:53 (permalink)
    I hear ya about seeing all the little fishy pictures and wondering just what the heck was swimming under the boat.
     
     I just replaced my state of the art 1993 DX 200 with a Helix 7 SI and I've been watching and reading and studying the operation of this unit to the point where I see fishy pictures in my sleep.
     
    So far, be it using side imagining, down imagining or traditional sonar it all comes down to adjusting the sensitivity and proper installation of the transducer.  In addition fish, ID if available, should be adjusted accordingly and in most cases is recommended to be turned off so the operator sees arches instead of fishy pictures.
     
    By the way, the Helix is attached to my boat which is presently sitting in an unheated garage.
     
     
     
     
    Correction:  2003 DX 200 not 1993 as initially stated, stupid spell check!
    post edited by BeenThereDoneThat. - 2016/02/14 08:34:50

    Give a man a fish and you will feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you will feed him for a life time. ~Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie (1837–1919)~
     
     
     
      Old fisherman never die; we just smell that way. 
     
    #7
    Erie Mako
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    Re: Fishfinder Freezing? 2016/02/15 07:39:23 (permalink)
    We remove our sonars in the fall when we park the boat and keep them in the house for winter.
    Simply as an "ounce of prevention" kind of thing.
     
    I repair electronics for a living and have seen some odd things due to extreme cold storage.
    Two thing that concern me with sonars and cold are...
    I have seen display panels of the type used on sonars crack and "bleed" out the liquid crystal material.
    Marginal solder joints may actually become open/intermittent when the lead in the solder contracts at a different rate than the metal of the component leads.
     
    HTH 

    On the internet, EVERYONE is entitled to their opinion!
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    chauncy
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    Re: Fishfinder Freezing? 2016/02/15 08:21:39 (permalink)
    I store my boat in a heated garage but I always take my electronics in the house over the winter. I never leave them in the boat during the season either. Can get pretty hot under that cover and you have to baby lowrance units anyway. They even get hot during a long day of fishing.
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    Divemaster
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    Re: Fishfinder Freezing? 2016/02/15 15:59:31 (permalink)
    Well, there seems to be mixed thoughts here so I guess I'll just have to wait and see how it works in the spring. Maybe a test run of the boat at Moraine before Erie season starts wouldn't be such a bad idea, especially if Stripers and Muskies are feeding :D.

    Erie Mako, are those things that you commonly see or just the occasional case? The good thing is I checked the screen and there's no visible cracks on it. Either way, they seem like they'd be fairly easy to identify when actively using the finder and not like our old one where you couldn't tell if it was lying or if a school of white bass was following us around whenever starting the engine XD.

    Chauncey, well hopefully that's a good sign for us as we left our's in the boat all of last season without any damages happening to it, and it would get pretty hot under that cover at times during July and August. Although just to be safe, we probably will take the fish finder out of the boat this year even during the season, have to get at least 4 years out of it before we can make an excuse to buy a new one LOL.
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    Erie Mako
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    Re: Fishfinder Freezing? 2016/02/15 21:46:59 (permalink)
    In the past 5 years I've had to do 3 display repairs...one laptop left in a vehicle over a cold weekend...one digital thermal probe left in a tool box in the back of a pick-up for several days ...and one 2-way portable radio left in the trunk of a car for an undetermined length of time.
     
    As for cold solder joints...I see maybe one every couple of months between November to March, but that is out of the couple hundred electronic devices that I'm responsible for maintaining... 

    On the internet, EVERYONE is entitled to their opinion!
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    BeenThereDoneThat.
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    Re: Fishfinder Freezing? 2016/02/15 22:07:07 (permalink)
    As for "cold solder joints" that's most likely what they were.  But, the cracked screen thingy on LCD displays, I'm not familiar with the results of such a occurrence.   Will that cause a leak of some sort, what should a guy be looking for? 

    Give a man a fish and you will feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you will feed him for a life time. ~Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie (1837–1919)~
     
     
     
      Old fisherman never die; we just smell that way. 
     
    #12
    Erie Mako
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    Re: Fishfinder Freezing? 2016/02/16 07:38:48 (permalink)
    Examples of what you will see when an LCD display "bleeds" from the internal part of the display...the liquid leaks out of its cells...
     
    Laptop that was frozen - no visible damage to surface of the display...

     
    Display from thermal probe - again, no visible damage to the surface...

     
     

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    BeenThereDoneThat.
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    Re: Fishfinder Freezing? 2016/02/16 08:39:29 (permalink)
    One would have to wonder, how the thousands of TVs, and display screens in RVs stored for months, in sub-zero temperatures ever survive?
     
    Interesting...............

    Give a man a fish and you will feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you will feed him for a life time. ~Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie (1837–1919)~
     
     
     
      Old fisherman never die; we just smell that way. 
     
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    Erie Mako
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    Re: Fishfinder Freezing? 2016/02/16 10:00:24 (permalink)
    Its not a perfect world...out of the millions of displays produced, there is bound to be a few weak ones out there...
    Some times all it takes is a drop or a bump or someone poking the screen with their finger a little too hard (like saying "look at this, look at this" while tapping the screen) to generate a stress point on it...
      

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    BeenThereDoneThat.
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    Re: Fishfinder Freezing? 2016/02/18 13:18:49 (permalink)
    Okay back to this subject and having located, in my owner's manual, a caution when storing "the head unit" in a car trunk in the sun as being a "no no" but couldn't find, anything on cold storage.  So out of, curiosity and fear, I fired off a communication (that's how the big boys say it) to Humminbird regarding the turning of my Sonar/Gps unit, into a Popsicle.
     
    Their response, which did not take long to receive; minus 20 degrees F. is the recommended limit.  
     
    Thank goodness, because my official unofficial TWC outdoor weather station says it hit minus 9 degrees F. for a low last night.
     
    SOOOOOOOO..................... Straight from the "Bird's" mouth.
     
    Do not store the "head unit" anywhere high temperatures may occur, such as a car trunk.
     
    Do not store the "head unit" where temperatures may fall below -20 degrees F. 
     
     
    I would be safe in assuming these two recommendations being a "industry standard".
     
     
    Thank-you and good day.
    post edited by BeenThereDoneThat. - 2016/02/18 13:21:04

    Give a man a fish and you will feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you will feed him for a life time. ~Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie (1837–1919)~
     
     
     
      Old fisherman never die; we just smell that way. 
     
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    Divemaster
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    Re: Fishfinder Freezing? 2016/02/18 14:51:22 (permalink)
    BeenThereDoneThat.
    Okay back to this subject and having located, in my owner's manual, a caution when storing "the head unit" in a car trunk in the sun as being a "no no" but couldn't find, anything on cold storage.  So out of, curiosity and fear, I fired off a communication (that's how the big boys say it) to Humminbird regarding the turning of my Sonar/Gps unit, into a Popsicle. Their response, which did not take long to receive; minus 20 degrees F. is the recommended limit.   Thank goodness, because my official unofficial TWC outdoor weather station says it hit minus 9 degrees F. for a low last night. SOOOOOOOO..................... Straight from the "Bird's" mouth. Do not store the "head unit" anywhere high temperatures may occur, such as a car trunk. Do not store the "head unit" where temperatures may fall below -20 degrees F.   I would be safe in assuming these two recommendations being a "industry standard".  Thank-you and good day.


    Thanks for the info, BTDT, hopefully it applies to all makes and models of fish finders. I might send an email to Lowrance just to be safe though.
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    PeterJohnson
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    Re: Fishfinder Freezing? 2016/03/04 07:58:50 (permalink)
    A friend of mine once left his fishfinder in the cold for about a few days and it was OK then...
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    W.William
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    Re: Fishfinder Freezing? 2017/10/24 02:18:12 (permalink)
    All physics were up associate degreed running well for over an hour on the cruise to the spot.  Once on web site and angling my fish finder froze up.  Best thanks to describe this may be like once your desktop simply stops responding.  No scrolling of information, the depth stayed constant, could not use many of the soft keys.
     
    I force up the fish finder knowledge on the opposite unit E120 and it too was frozen. this may be the case for anyplace from thirty secs to many minutes.  The system would then begin to perform commonly for regarding thirty secs, then freeze prime once more. 
     
    Other parts of the system appeared to be traditional (radar, GPS, coms with VHF).  Screen shot below was throughout one amongst the freeze ups.
     
    On the ride home (45min) the unit appeared to self-correct and by the time i used to be at the slip, no issues.
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