Lowrance LMS 522 trouble

[justplainbob]

Good morning. My Lowrance is giving me trouble again. When I zoom in on a lake, the zoom in only lasts a few seconds and then it zooms out.

Also, the depth intermittently flashes an erroneous depth, even when sitting still.

Anyone have any fixes for this. I just dread the thought of sitting on hold for 2 hours waiting for Lowrance customer service.

I am temtped to start looking at Hummers.

Thanks.

[JeffB]

Go buy a replacement transducer it will act like a new machine compared to what you are seeing now. Thats what I did for mine after being told on here about a transducer problem with them.

[CaptainMusky]

I have called Lowrance Customer Support 3 times over the summer and never once did I wait on hold for more than 5 minutes.

Having said that, I do not believe they will be able to help you much because I dont think they are repairing those models anymore and will push you towards a new one.

A transducer may help your depth problems, but the zooming issue has be perplexed. Is it zooming in the depthfinder mode or chart?

Try doing a reboot of the system. It usually is done by pushing two of the buttons at the same time and holding them. You can find out for sure on that model by your owners manual, if you do not have one they have them on lowrance's site for download.

[LundProAngler]

I have called Lowrance Customer Support 3 times over the summer and never once did I wait on hold for more than 5 minutes.

I have also gotten thru with a minimal wait.

Give it a try.

[harvey lee]

You will more than likely always have an issue with that unit. I had one and it worked fine and I replaced the transducer once. Worked fine after that and I also did a hard reset a few times to correct issues.

I sold it to a person I know as it was working fine when I sold it and then not much later, mkore issues. I wish I would not have sold it to him as he has had so many different issues with it.

For what it is worth, that unit is a bad one to say the least and ve few have ever gotten the issues fix for a long time even with Lowrances help if you could get some. Then for what they charge to fix the unit, I believe your best bet would be to purchase another new unit. I realize that new units are not cheap but if you look at the fact that more than likely you will continue to have issues with that unit, I believe you would be better off in the long run to buy a new one and save all the repair money you spend on a unit that probably give you more issues.

For the shallow water issues. try a hard or soft reset as that did help my unit out, at least for awhile as the guy I sold it oo, had issues after he got it from me. or a transducer but the reset would be worth tryoing as it will cost you nothing to try and may save you the expense of a new transducer.

You mentioned Humminbird and I purchased 2 new units with Side imaging. There have been a couple upgrade for my units which they sent to me and I put them in the unit. I really like the fact that they send you these upgrades to fix common issues with their units to fix the issues for free.

Not knocking Lowrances new units at all but I also had a GPS unit from Lowrance-a H20 and had tons of issues with that also. They did sell me the replacement parts but waiting on hold forever was nopt good CS to me.

[justplainbob]

Thanks for all the replies, guys.

I am currently on my 3rd transducer. I have tried both hard and soft resets to no avail. Looks like I might just have to bite the bullet and go shopping for a new unit. Now I just have to decide between Lowrance and Humminbird.

[delcecchi]

For what it is worth, Lowrance is literally not the same company. They got acquired and the new owners seem to be trying hard to make good products. I certainly haven't heard much bad about them recently, and given their rep from before, I would expect to if something was a problem. Got my fingers and legs crossed that my two older units keep working.

[gofishingtom]

go to blueheronmarine and look up lowrance simrad P66-BL tranducer made by airmar which is a transducer company that has been around for years the ducer runs 129 but is 10times better then what lowr. puts out for 80 bucks help me out alot and i havent had any issues since i changed over 2 years ago..

[Juan Grande]

I had the same problem with the flashing depth, even when it wasn't moving. Got a new transducer and it works like a champ. I have the 332c

[dudewheresmyboat]

If you haven't done the software update I would try that and the new ducer. Good Luck, I guess i got lucky with my unit, so far so good.

[justplainbob]

I called Lowrance at 9am our time this morning and got thru on the first ring! Sounds like things have changed.

They seemed to think that since my depth-reading problem was intermittent that it must be the 'ducer; if it were constant it would be in the unit itself.

I went ahead and orderd the Blue heron transducer. As for the "zoom" problem, I mistakenly had it set on "auto zoom".

A guy learns something new every day!

[CaptainMusky]

I called Lowrance at 9am our time this morning and got thru on the first ring! Sounds like things have changed.

They seemed to think that since my depth-reading problem was intermittent that it must be the 'ducer; if it were constant it would be in the unit itself.

I went ahead and orderd the Blue heron transducer. As for the "zoom" problem, I mistakenly had it set on "auto zoom".

A guy learns something new every day!

Great! I hope the new ducer works for ya. It is overwhelming how much you hear bad stories about Lowrance Customer Support, but it is MUCH better and I believe they received an award recently in fact.

[harvey lee]

Great to hear that Lowrance is better in regards to CS.

Too bad that do not give a guy a break on the price since their ducer were such junk.

[Capt. H (Ret.)]

I have owned the LMS 522C IGPS for 3-4 years and have not had any trouble with it. Is this the smae one you are all talking about.

[justplainbob]

Yes, same one.

[LundProAngler]

Too bad that do not give a guy a break on the price since their ducer were such junk.

I have had no problems with my transducer. Why are they being referenced as junk?

[harvey lee]

Good to hear that you have been one of the few lucky ones with a 522.

I guess if you would read all the post about the 522, then you may understand why I stated what I did. The majority have had issues from the posts I have read over the past few years.

I might guess that 90% of the posts in this forum have been negative.

[delcecchi]

My 522 has been pretty solid, using the US2 in the Terova. But the 3xx is on its third transducer. And they use the same transducer.

[LundProAngler]

I might guess that 90% of the posts in this forum have been negative.

One might guess that 99% of your posts are always informative and true.

One might guess that we are lucky to have such a intellegent contributer with 25000+ posts.

Thank you HL for setting me straight.

[Coreykost]

- Lms 522c shuts off and on intermittently 

- screen locks up

- sometimes sonar works, but map don't?

-has mind of its own!

- sometimes works for a second, - --

- sometimes we've used all day without problems?

- clean batt connection

- new ducer

what seems to fix this?

 

 

[gunner55]

On 10/26/2011 at 9:41 PM, gofishingtom said:

go to blueheronmarine and look up lowrance simrad P66-BL tranducer made by airmar which is a transducer company that has been around for years the ducer runs 129 but is 10times better then what lowr. puts out for 80 bucks help me out alot and i havent had any issues since i changed over 2 years ago..

We had a 05-06 520c & it had issues right out of the box so we did just as gofishingtom suggested above. Not the same unit but I know a lot of those  models with the blue 5 pin connectors in the back of them had similar problems. Ours worked fine after that & we just upgraded last season. I believe Lowrance is now owned by Simrad's parent company, Navico.

Edited May 11, 2020 by gunner55

[delcecchi]

On 5/9/2020 at 4:11 PM, Coreykost said:

- Lms 522c shuts off and on intermittently 

- screen locks up

- sometimes sonar works, but map don't?

-has mind of its own!

- sometimes works for a second, - --

- sometimes we've used all day without problems?

- clean batt connection

- new ducer

what seems to fix this?

 

 

I decided that those transducers had issues with being stored at freezing temperatures.   Could be my imagination or coincidence but once I started storing the transducers in the house in  the winter, no more problems.