North Australian FISH FINDER TM forums

Was motoring in the harbour Sunday when my HDS5 blacked out for no reason. No biggie probably a fuse. Checked it out at home but was getting 12v. She was dead, not even a flicker to try to power up. Fortunately its only a year and a half into the 2 year waranty and BIAS have sent it off. Also glad it happened now and not on day one at night miles from nowhere. Seeing this hapen Im thinking the 5 year extended warranty would be worth it. Happy to have bought local rather than online too.
Any one else had a terminal failure of their HDS or is this unusual?

Hey mate, yep had the excact same unit do it twice on me. 1st time it was in warranty and was quickly replaced as water was actually in the unit the second time was not a couple of months ago and same issue, water inside and unfortunaly.for me no warranty. New one now has an extended warranty on it.

Lucky it has never happened to me, but my theory was buy2..............
Instead of a big HDS 10 Ibought an 8 and a 7 ( 8+7 = 15)
The redundency factor though if you are out miles in the middle of the night you ALWAYS HAVE A BACK UP.

Just my plan anyway

Hope it works out OK for you.

Cheers

I thought they were waterproof and ingress was part of the guarantee?
Ive got 2 for the same reason. When you start them up, the warning that they shouldn't be used as the sole navigational item.

nomad wrote:I thought they were waterproof and ingress was part of the guarantee?
Ive got 2 for the same reason. When you start them up, the warning that they shouldn't be used as the sole navigational item.

So did I.... Apparently though if you mount them flush in your console it is alot better for the unit where as if you stand mount them when you come up in chop and the boat smashes through it the stand mount tends to make the unit cover bow as it is copping a hammering to and water can get in? Just what i was told. Makes sense though.

Already on my second HDS 12 touch, thru warranty, the screen cracked on the left hand corner, the unit is mounted on top of the centre console...even though its mounted where it hangs in its bracket, might have to look at flush mounting...I have a little garmin plotter mounted with the ram bracket... still going hard..,I know smaller unit, but the ram bracket looks quite solid in supporting the plotter ??

I used to have mine mounted in the bracket on top of the console but i didnt like the water spraying over it (and the fact that i have to remove all of the cables each time i get home (plus i havent got the room to store stuff).
So i had a console made up and flush mounted them. That caused the chartplotter to be really slow in reading the sats.
So i got an external antenna. Fitted it yesterday so i hope it was worth it.

That's the word..... BRACKET.... I couldn't think of it to save.my life this morning, Best thing to do if bracket mounting is not screw the screws in to tight as that is what causes the stress on the unit when mounted that way is another thing good old Mike from In and Out told me. Nomad, your external should improve your plotting speed dramatically.

Mine died while bashing a few waves but nothing too bad. Its on brackets but the windscreen protects it well from water. I do have a gps reciever from the lowrance LMS525DF (that came with the boat) which also died ( different malfunction though ) so I could mount it a bit better. So I haven't had a lot of luck with lowrance. I do have a garmin fishfinder 250 and a gps72 both Black and White and basic but never failed me in close to 10 years . May have to keep them in the boat. I like the technology of lowrance but I'm suspect on build quality and reliability. Whereas everything garmin I've seen has been good quality and reliable.

My mates HDS7 did the same thing - black screen and no power. Was just out of warranty to. Had no issues what so ever with my Humminbird and my boat is as wet as it gets!

I'm wondering if the same happens to the Simrad units??

Got a replacement HDS5 from BIAS yesterday. 7 days from filling out the warranty paperwork to a new one arriving. No hassle no blame ..... I thought that was pretty good given they send it south.

The RAM mounts are great, I have mine HDS10 mounted on two of the large size, no bouncing, no jarring, it's like a big rubber resilient mount.........

CharFin wrote:Got a replacement HDS5 from BIAS yesterday. 7 days from filling out the warranty paperwork to a new one arriving. No hassle no blame ..... I thought that was pretty good given they send it south.

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