Garmin striker 4 sonar issue

[Unapokey09]

Hey guys,

 

     Hopefully someone can help me solve my depth finder problem. Ive got a striker 4 mounted on the bottom of my trolling motor with the mounting bracket and zip tie/strap. It reads temperature, time, and voltage just fine. It doesnt show the depth at all though. It scans and shows a quarter inch red line and a half inch red line periodically but thats it. Ive played with the gain, and frequency but havent gotten anywhere. Im fairly certain its mounted level (Ive even tilted it to see if that was the issue). My thought is it doesnt have a solid connection to my battery? The wire is sitting under the trolling motor U connections on the battery and screwed down with a nut to hold them on the battery terminal. Hopefully someone wiser than me knows the solution. 

 

Thanks, 

chris

[DanielG]

I've got his unit. If I read you right, I'd think that if the battery wasn't connected good the entire unit wouldn't work. Sometimes my sonar unit plug works itself loose on the back of the unit. I'd think it's something like that. Beyond that a bad sonar transponder (the thing on the trolling motor) but they're just a specialized antenna. I don't think they go bad much.

I'm interested in case this ever happens to mine. Let us know if you find a solution, and good luck

[tander]

If you are reading good voltage, I wouldn't think it would be a bad electrical connection. Like DanielG suggested, should like it could be a transducer connection or either a setting that has got off. I would call Garmin, they got good support.

[gnappi]

Agreed it's not an electrical connection.

 

Do you have a pic of where / how you have the transducer mounted?

 

I would test the transducer by removing it from the TM  and just holding it in the water when still or try mounting it on a slab of cutting board and clamp it to the transom.

 

If that doesn't work replace the transducer.

 

 

[Sprocket]

Do you have depth set manually for 9'?  Because that's all your scale shows.

 

SE Kansas grass grower

[Unapokey09]

First off, thanks for the replies. 

 

Daniel and Tander, I’ve read where these units have a difficult time with the transducer connecting to the unit so I’ve made sure to really snug it in there. Agreed on the battery part, I thought that maybe somehow it was getting enough juice to power some things but not power the sonar part. The chat window for Garmin had closed but I will definitely try to get in contact with them. 

 

Gnappi, I first had it mounted on the rear of the boat, then this issue began so someone said the boat was interfering with it so I attached it to the bottom of the trolling motor. This pic isn’t mine but it’s the same set up. (They don’t allow me to bring my boat to work or I’d post a pic of mine, lol) Could I test it in just a bucket of water instead of having to be at the river? This is the second transducer for this unit so I hope I don’t have to replace it. 

 

 Sprocket, I don’t. I have even gone through and manual changed depths deep to shallow, set it to auto and tried that but all same results. 

 

Thanks 

[RSmall]

Not sure that this has anything do do with the issue, but, it appears that the transducer in the photo is attached to the trolling motor using the transom mount hardware.  The photos are snips from the Garmin installation instructions.  

 

The reading of 12.1 volts which suggests power is fine as long as it's connected to a battery that's about 50 percent discharged.  If it's connected to a fully charged battery, then there may be an electrical issue.

 

I have two Striker 4 Plus CVs mounted on our pontoon boat including one on a trolling motor at the bow. I have had issues with depth readings twice - the first time, something had chewed on the cable but the screen showed a message that no transducer was connected.  a no transducer connected message.  On the other occasion, the transducer just got a little fouled up and the depth reading worked just fine after cleaning it off.

 

 

[Unapokey09]

This is more of an accurate picture. That message is what I got on the first transducer. 

 

It comes with the black zip tie and the little black curved bracket that it actually attaches to the transducers. A dirty transducer is what others online have had issues with but I’ve cleaned mine and no solution. The elbow grease I used may have been lackluster though haha. 

 

Thanks

[RSmall]

There's a Garmin troubleshooting video floating around somewhere.  I am assuming you've tried at least some of these steps.  They say to stop and check if depth readings are working after each step.  In order, their suggested steps are:

 

1. Make sure transducer is transmitting (yeah, you laugh but I accidentally turned mine off once)

2. Try a factory reset.

3. Manually set depth range.

4. Adjust frequency - 200 mhz works better in shallow water than 77.

5. Adjust gain - higher sensitivity for soft bottoms eg. mud, lower for hard bottoms eg. rocky.

 

If none of these work, call Garmin support at: 800-800-1020

 

[Unapokey09]

Hey guys, 

 

thanks again for for all the replies. I ended up chatting with Garmin and they said it sounded like a faulty transducer. They told me they could replace it (even though i bought it from amazon) under warranty. They asked me if I wanted them to ship one immediately for a $69.99 refundable deposit once they received my defective unit or they could wait until they received mine and then ship it out. Told them I’d just wait and they could send me one later. Got mine all packaged up, put in the mailbox to go out, before mine even left they had already started the process of sending me one. The day after mine was put into outgoing mail, the new one showed up at my house. They either had a miscommunication somewhere or, more likely what I think happened is they did a cost/benefit analysis and decided to go ahead and replace my unit even before receiving mine. 

 

So, they replaced my unit even though I didn’t buy it from them, and sent the replacement before even receiving mine. Good job, Garmin. Good customer service is worth many, many sales to me. 

 

[DanielG]

good to know!

[tander]

WTG Garmin!!!

[LonnieP]

Garmin has the best customer service in the business.