Thread: Humminbird troubleshooting

I bought a new to me boat today, and it came with two Helix 12 G2N units. They both worked fine during the test run, but when I put the boat back in the water an hour or so later the SI on the dash unit wouldn’t work, then it cut off. It had ran for about ran for about 10 minutes on the gps/depth finder display before cutting off, and all was fine. The unit would power up and then cut back off after that.

I was able to put it in diagnostic mode, and the unit was reading 0.0 volts, but the display was on so obviously that wasn’t right.

I dove into the birds nest of wires under the back deck while on the water and found an approximate 24 gauge two pair cable with the hot wire broken in half. I don’t know if it was broken before I started looking around or not. I stripped the two wires back with my pocket knife and twisted them together the best I could, but it didn’t make any difference. Obviously I need to address the cut wire, but does anybody else have any other ideas?

Does the unit have an internal battery? From what I understand the unit has had zero power to it (battery disconnect switch) for a couple of weeks.

There is another thing that has been mentioned here but cannot be over looked. At every connection point there is current flow drop potential. Every connection from source to whatever you are supplying power to should be better than or at least equal to the wire supplying said power. A weak connection is akin to turning on your garden hose then standing on it. There is going to be a flow drop. It is the same thing with say a drill in your shop. You plug it into a skimpy drop cord, that cord cannot supply enough flow to the drill. You run the drill long enough it will fail. Last thing I have on this is using a quality diabolic anti corrosion grease. Good luck