Flooded Lowrance Elite-5

Well I took my yak out on the ocean for the first time a few days ago.  It wasn't a bad entry off the beach, but wasn't the worst.  Plenty of water coming over the bow getting through the breakers.  Once out on the water, I opened the fish finder hatch on my trident 13 and turned on my elite-5 unit and it powered on ok but it told me I was only in 2ft of water when I was in 50.  Thinking there was something wrong with my transducer, I pulled it up and everything was ok.  The head unit then powered off, back on and off again while glitching out.  I put it away and fished for a bit then called it a day early.  Back on land, I disconnected the unit and shook it and I could hear water sloshing around inside.  Keep in mind the elite-5 is ipx7 rated for submersion up to 1 meter for 30 minutes, and a few decent splashes managed to put a good amount of water inside.   I just got off the phone with Lowrance's warranty support and they'll ship me a new Hook-5 unit for replacement once I ship them the faulty unit so I'm happy with that level of service, but it's left a bad first impression on their quality control for their products.  We'll see how the new unit fares when it gets here.   

Same happened to my brother Rich... 3-4 weeks ago... Fluke? Bad batch?

was the card rubber cover closed properly or get knocked loose I wonder??

Lowrance is a good company. I had a few faulty issues with the FF but they usually took care of the problem pretty fast.
The last HDI unit i had got messed up because the gasket came off and water got int the SD card slot. It's a tough sport that we put our electronics through tho.

Another hat in the ring for a Lowrance 5 fail...

No submersion, mine just had a weird startup after <10 outings and died.  Sent it in and they confirmed the death and sent me a new hook 5.

Can't say I have much confidence in it and am hoping it doesn't take a crap first day out of warranty leaving me with a 300$ paperweight...

It can happen.  Sometimes it's the fault of the electronics, sometimes it's the fault of the user.  We tend to "hear" about it more often on NCKA vs other brands because Lowrance has the greatest market share.  They are generally quite responsive to warranty claims.

Lowrance replaced my defective elite-5 after it simply died last at Albion. Replaced it w/ a Hook- 4 chrip so far all is good. Knock on wood- electronics can drive me crazy sometimes.

Few keys to long term success:
1). Keep up to date with the free software updates & follow the proper install instructions for doing the update
2). Dielectric grease the wire connections on the unit, splices & battery.
3). Proper wiring.  This actually should be #1 on the list.  I've found that a LOT of returned units are not dead & power right up when provided with proper power.
4).  Battery maintenance.  Goes hand & hand with the quality of wiring.  With older batteries, you can still have reasonable voltage but no amperage.  I see that happen a LOT also.
5). If you have valuable waypoints, back up often (like you'd do with valuable pc files).  When a unit fails or needs to go in, you will NOT get your waypoints back.

Questions, feel free to PM me.

I was worried about the SD slot being a point of entry for water. A bit of duct tape to keep it secure has kept me happy and my Elite 5x watertight.

Installing an Elite 4 HDI unit on my Trident 13. I called Lowrance Tech Support about a transducer issue.  He said that going "Thru Hull" would degrade the downscan performance by 40%.  Has anyone noticed this on theirs, and how bad is it? I don't see how I could put the transducer under the kayak and land on a beach.

I would be skeptical to say 40%  I did a shoot thru the hull on my last kayak with the DownScan.  I'm sure there was some loss but it would have been minimal.  I still hit depth in Monterey Bay that were within my fishing depths if 140' & under with no issues.  DownScan is best suited for shallower depths anyways.  The higher the frequency, the more signal loss I would assume caused by the hull material.  DS is 455 & 800 freq.

I believe there could be the higher loss rate on the Elite 3 DSI because it is a very low RMS wattage unit as compared to the 4/5/7 units.  I would not suggest a shoot thru on the Hook 3 unit.

Well they did their inspection of my flooded unit and have shipped out a new Hook 5 that will be here next week.  Hope this one works out better than the last one. 

Installing an Elite 4 HDI unit on my Trident 13. I called Lowrance Tech Support about a transducer issue.  He said that going "Thru Hull" would degrade the downscan performance by 40%.  Has anyone noticed this on theirs, and how bad is it? I don't see how I could put the transducer under the kayak and land on a beach.

Someone over on NWKA did a test of thru-hull v. arm-mounted with side-by-side photos of the screen displays.  To my eye, the loss on DS was maybe 20% at it's worst - in mid-depth water with lots of submerged trees - and maybe 10-15% in other conditions.  Your eye may be more discriminating...

Well Lowrance came through.  Received my new Hook 5 today.  I figured they were just going to send me the head unit, but I got a whole new retail box with everything, including another transducer.  Now lets hope this new unit can stand up to some splashing better than the old one.   

Well Lowrance came through.  Received my new Hook 5 today.  I figured they were just going to send me the head unit, but I got a whole new retail box with everything, including another transducer.  Now lets hope this new unit can stand up to some splashing better than the old one.   

I've never seen a Lowrance unit with water in it that didn't get in through a properly sealed SD card slot. Glad they took care of your issues, CS is usually pretty good. Make sure to use your Insight Genisis feature.