Lowrance 522

[Scott K]

OK, I know I should just throw the thing away already, but when it works, it does a decent job, and I cant afford the graph I want to replace it with. The issue I am having again is another bad transducer. In 2 years, I have bought 2 new ducers for it. So it has had 3 bad in 2 years. Is there a reason why it keeps killing my transducers? What kind of warranty do the ducers have? I bought them from Gander Mountain. I dont want to keep throwing $100 at is every 8 months, just so it works. Should I just give up, and use it as a car ramp?

[401TE]

This seems like a question more appropriate for Lowrance customer service. Good luck getting through to them. Might be easier to send the transducer in with the receipt. Pretty sure they have a 1 year warranty and you shouldn't have paid a dime for any of your new ones if they went within a year of buying them.

[CAMAN]

What kind of voltage are you getting when the motor is running full power? It could be a bad voltage regulator on the motor if its getting too high.

Also do you ever run the graph out of the water? You could be overheating it.

Also make sure you have the most current update for it, there may be a known issue that has be fixed in the program.

[Scott K]

Quote:

Lowrance customer service

Ha Ha, good one! Lowrance's customer service is non existent. I originally played that game last year. What a waste of my time. I got down to, send it in, and send them like $350 and they will take a look at it, no thanks!

It does have the latest update, I am not running it out of the water, and the voltage is good. Yes, this is a very common concern with the 522, but Lowrance refuses to stand up and help anyone out about it. Anyhow, I am long past my frustration with Lowrances lack of customer support, I just want to know if anyone has figured out a way around not replacing the ducer every year yet, and an opinion on whether I should just give up on it, and throw it away, and get a bird?

[FM_Mike]

Quote:

an opinion on whether I should just give up on it, and throw it away, and get a bird?

Based on your issues and experience with Lowrance I would throw it in the trash and get yourself a bird. I am sure you will be much happier.

I have not had any of the issue you have spoke of with Lowrance customer service. I also have had no issues getting a hold of Lowrance customer service, 5 min.on hold was the longest and have talked to them twice this year. Had one issue on a Legacy unit such as yours and was given an option to upgrade to a new unit and did. Love it and no issues what so ever.

I think it would be much less frustrating for you based on your continued issues to save yourself some frustration and throw that Lowrance away and get yourself a bird.

I will continue to enjoy my Lowrance, But again that is just my opinion based on the information you provide

Mike

[Wanderer]

If you need a trash can to throw it away in, you can use mine.

I haven't had any issues with my 522 but I bought mine when they first came out. It seems like people have had issues with the later runs of the product. Other than checking to see if the unit is putting out the right amount of power to the 'ducer, I don't know what to say.

I have a 'ducer and power cord on my boat and I have the ice pack. The head gets swapped from my boat to my sled, then back again. I like running the ice pack in the winter for the big screen gps.

Do you have a quality fishing electronics shop in your area? I usually go to Action's in Anoka. Jack is an ace for boat rigging and electronics.

[Ed Carlson]

OK, I know I should just throw the thing away already, but when it works, it does a decent job, and I cant afford the graph I want to replace it with. The issue I am having again is another bad transducer. In 2 years, I have bought 2 new ducers for it. So it has had 3 bad in 2 years. Is there a reason why it keeps killing my transducers? What kind of warranty do the ducers have? I bought them from Gander Mountain. I dont want to keep throwing $100 at is every 8 months, just so it works. Should I just give up, and use it as a car ramp?

Why do you beleive it is a bad transducer?

What specifically are the issues and symptoms that lend you to think it is bad?

If your certain it is bad, and it is under 1 year old, you need to open a warranty ticket issue with Lowrance for replacement.

[Scott K]

OK, I am not certain, but it is doing the exact same things it was doing before. While driving at any speed, if the depth changes by more then 5 feet, it will just flash 2.1 feet and not pick the bottom back up until I stop, and sit in the same depth for a few minutes. When I get in water less then 5 feet, the depth will flash 2.1 feet. I can hear the clicking of the transducer get louder, then quiet, then louder again. This is not intermittent, if the above circumstances happen, in which is a part of any regular trip on the river, it will happen every time. From the time I leave the boat landing, if I can read the depth more then 1 minute of a 15 minute ride, I would be surprised. I have in the past had the exact same issue, and made it go away for a half year to a year, by replacing the transducer. So I am just assuming, that it would fix it again.

Maybe Lowrances customer service has improved in the last year and a half, but when I tried calling them, I think I spent 10 hours on the phone, sitting on hold, leaving messages, to not get any calls back, before I finally got ahold of someone. To have them tell me to send them $350 and the unit, and they will look at it, or give me a rebuilt one, at a discount.

[delcecchi]

You could try their facebook page

[ottertailguy]

Does it have the latest software update? And most of the problems are bad installation of the transducer. Try adjusting transducer up/down and tilting it. Also have you cleaned the tranducer because they do get dirty. Lowrance has a problem with their transducers if you use them a whole lot in the summer. A fishing pro told me once he would go threw 2 a season. He now uses Hummingbirds. I have a 522 and had shallow water issues but after I updated it the thing has worked perfect. Good luck.

[Transporter]

It is not the unit causing the problem, it is the junk transducers supplied by Lowrance. If you are willing give it another go, look into buying an Airmar transducer, they make a far superior transducer that has the Lowrance connector. No software updates are going to help, I've been through this already. If you have had it with the unit, go for Furuno or Raymarine, use them until you are too old to fish and pass them on to your grandkids as they will still be working fine. Humminbird issues seem to be on the rise here too, another manufacturer that I shy away from.

[Scott K]

Does it have the latest software update? And most of the problems are bad installation of the transducer. Try adjusting transducer up/down and tilting it. Also have you cleaned the tranducer because they do get dirty. Lowrance has a problem with their transducers if you use them a whole lot in the summer. A fishing pro told me once he would go threw 2 a season. He now uses Hummingbirds. I have a 522 and had shallow water issues but after I updated it the thing has worked perfect. Good luck.

Yes it does have the latest update. And Yes, I do use it quite often during the summer. Since I do fish almost every night, and it usually is on the entire night. I would say on average, 150 hours a month, for 4 months of the summer.

Now that after market ducer is what I was hoping to hear about. I was hoping there was a better option, then for me to just continue to buy Lowrances ducers that cant last a year.

[Ed Carlson]

Since the readings appear to be more stable when your at rest and not reading at all in motion....I have to also suspect the location or orientation of the transducer may have something to do with this?

To help to diagnose where the issues are try this once. Many units will use the same power lead and ducer as the 522....so if a buddy has a Lowrance unit on his boat try your unit on his rig and see if the thing behaves or not....just for a piece of mind before replacing the ducer again. You will rule out hull interference and narrow down if it is the head unit or the ducer this way. If it does the same thing on his boat, I am inclined to say it is not the ducer but an internal short in the signal emitter inside the 522.

I have seen this issue on several 500 series unit, so that is why I suspect the unit itself and not the ducer. The intermediate emitting of the signal lends me to think this may be the issue here and possibly not the ducer at all.

[Scott K]

Ed, the reading works great while moving, as long as there isnt a big depth change, about 5 feet or more.

OK, this I just noticed last night. I didnt notice it before, or on any of the times it wasnt working previously. The shallow alarm would beep, and the depth would flash 2.1, like always. But last night I noticed, the graph, doesnt loose bottom, just the digital depth in numbers. The actual graph will show the drop off, and you can match the depth to the numbers on the side of the graph. But the digital reading drops out, and the shallow alarm beeps, like it has done all the times before. Now it may have done this before, but I just never noticed. Any one heard of that?

[delcecchi]

Ed, the reading works great while moving, as long as there isnt a big depth change, about 5 feet or more.

OK, this I just noticed last night. I didnt notice it before, or on any of the times it wasnt working previously. The shallow alarm would beep, and the depth would flash 2.1, like always. But last night I noticed, the graph, doesnt loose bottom, just the digital depth in numbers. The actual graph will show the drop off, and you can match the depth to the numbers on the side of the graph. But the digital reading drops out, and the shallow alarm beeps, like it has done all the times before. Now it may have done this before, but I just never noticed. Any one heard of that?

Yeah, my 334 does the same thing. I think that the bad transducer causes a bogus echo that looks like it is coming from near the surface. When I hit hard bottom again it will often relock. Come off a rock reef into mud, it loses it again.

[Ed Carlson]

Take the unit off auto sensitivity and auto depth...then try adjusting the sensitivity up on the 200khz once. Also set the chart speed to max.

Watch to see if that effects the digital reading accuracy on soft bottoms. This was a past known issue with the software and it should have been fixed in the last update offered.

I am not 100% sure but I think the digital reading is drawn from the 200Khz on the 500 and 300 series...check and see once if that effects it's performance any. Whatever it is, 50 Khz or the 200 Khz...jack up the sensitivity and see if it works better then. Worth a shot...see what it does.

[delcecchi]

Take the unit off auto sensitivity and auto depth...then try adjusting the sensitivity up on the 200khz once. Also set the chart speed to max.

Watch to see if that effects the digital reading accuracy on soft bottoms. This was a past known issue with the software and it should have been fixed in the last update offered.

I am not 100% sure but I think the digital reading is drawn from the 200Khz on the 500 and 300 series...check and see once if that effects it's performance any. Whatever it is, 50 Khz or the 200 Khz...jack up the sensitivity and see if it works better then. Worth a shot...see what it does.

Got it on manual depth since when it thinks it is 2 feet deep it goes to the shallowest range and you can't see anything. I think I already have it on highest chart speed. Tried messing with sensitivity, but cranking that doesn't seem to help and just messes up the display.

I think mine is only 200kHz.

I will report how a new or at least unused transducer works. Last software update was a long time ago, and I installed it.

If I had to take a guess, I would surmise that Lowrance had subcontracted the design to someone cheap, perhaps India, and didn't perform their own adequate testing on the hardware. The saga has all the fingerprints of an incompetent design team. I have seen it several times when I was working in the electronics industry, especially when under cost pressure.

[JWB475]

I had the exact same thing happen to my X102C, twice (2008 and 2009), in both instances it turned out to be a bad transducer...

Lucky for me the X102C developed the stuck power button issue in 2010 (very common to this unit), so now it is a paperweight and I have a Humminbird in its place.

Lowrance refused to deal with any of my problems, however for $399 dollars I could have sent in my X102C and if their technicians determined it was really broken, then they would send me a refurbished X502C, which is worth about $250 dollars. If their technician determined it was not broken, they would send me a bill for $69 for the service...

Hopefully I have better luck with the new Humminbird...if I do, I will never buy a Lowrance product again.

[Gordie]

4WE mine is doing the same thing and Ijust put a new transducer on last year. I really belive that Lowrance does not had the quality it once use to.

My depth finder is a older one and has worked flawlessly until I put the new transducer on it thats when it started acting up.

Iam going to try one more transducer and when that fails I will by a bird only because it will take that long for me to save for it

[mpester]

I had a different unit that had a similar problem. I tried a soft reset on the unit and that seemed to fix my problem. I read somewhere - probably on here - to try a hard reset if the soft one did not fix the problem. The soft one seemed to cure my problem. If you get so far as to try the hard reset, your data will be erased so you need to save it onto a card if you do not want to have it gone forever. I sold the unit and put in a Humminbird a couple of months ago and I can not remember how to do either a soft or hard reset so I guess I am not much help but it is a place to start. Someone with a better mind than me will tell you how to do the two types of resets.

[jmg]

4WE. Just wondering if you ever were able to fix the 522 problems? I was fishing with my brother yesterday, who happens to have a 522 with about the same problems you described. After listening to him perfect his 4 letter word language skills while "talking" to the machine, I asked him if he ever tried a soft or hard reset? He initially thought I was referring to something from Weinergate, but then told me he had no idea what I was talking about. We are both computer "challenged" so I told him I would enlist the help and wisdom of the HSO bloggers and come up with easy to follow help. Are you-or anyone else-up to the challenge? I feel sorry for him, since $500.00, for some of us, is a substantial amount to fork over for a recreational product and when it is a piece of junk and the mfr. doesn't stand behind it, it hurts. Any help would be appreciated, since the shallow water alarm and all the indiscriminate depth displays are really annoying. Unit probably has less than 100 hrs. on it and has been bad since the warranty expired.

Thanks!

[ozzie]

Have him take the unit to a place such as cabelas or reeds sporting goods and ask them to update the unit and to have a look at the unit. If the update doesn't solve the problems then it is probably time for a new transducer. The update should be free........

[delcecchi]

The manual, or the lowrance web site, tells how to do the resets.

Since I don't fish in thunderstorms, I dug out the manual. It isn't in there that I could see. Scratch that one.

It was on Lowrance web site,

LMS 522C iGPS Reset (soft) (hard)

1. Turn unit OFF 1. Turn unit OFF

2. Press and hold the PAGES key 2. Press and hold the

ZIN&ZOUT Keys at the same time

3. Press and hold the PWR key 3. Press and hold the PWR key

4. Release both buttons

when the USA map appears 4. Release all buttons

when the USA map appears

Hard reset nukes all your trails, waypoints etc

(sorry about bad formatting)

[delcecchi]

Yes, the transducer could be the problem as well. Just put another new one on my 334 and it made a world of difference. Wonder how long this one will last.

[Scott K]

I fixed it by replacing the transducer again. I agree with everyone else though, get the unit updated to the latest update first. But for me, the only fix has been to replace the ducer about every 10 months. This time I kept the receipt, and know where I put it