Vex FL-18 Help

I have an FL-18 thats about 7-8 years old. Lately when hole hopping my screen goes black with only showing the top red line. When this occurs i can rotate my screen back (to face more towards the sky) and it would kick back in. I assumed that it was the weight of the transducer pulling tension on the connection in the back. This past weekend it was working just fine and then i moved holes, the screen went black (except for the red dash at the very top) and i cant get it working again. So opinions are needed. All my connections are tight, clean and no visible breaks in the cable any where. Did the tension on the cable finally separate the wires inside the coating???

If the water was deeper than you were looking you might see that. Did you try to dial up the depth a notch? Might be a bad transducer. If you know someone who has an 18, you might try swapping transducers and see if that clears it. My vex 18 is going strong on 10 years of service.

I have this happen all the time and it seem because the depth is deeper – switch to 2x or 3x and the autozoom should kick back in – I have also been able to fix it with turning the gain all the way up and then back down.

When out of the water turn the unit on and see if the transducer is making a ticking noise. If not you have a bad transducer. I had this happen last year on mine.

x2 On checking the transducer i also had one do this last year.

Ajs

You may just want to unscrew the transducer from the back of the unit and screw it back in. That worked for my buddy’s this weekend. Try it first.

Try a buddies transducer if possible. If you hole hop alot they tend to break. the wires are very small and become disconected at the puck. they cost 80 bucks or so. But that sounds like it is the issue.

Thanks for the replies guys, checking the ticking really pieced things together for me. I had tried all the ‘tricks’ for getting it to kick back in with no luck and didnt have any one to swap transducers with. I had been wrapping my cord around the unit itself when packing it up and knew there was some downward tension pulling on my cable. I took the silver piece apart and cut the coating open to find that the soder had broke loose on my non-coated wire. I sodered it back together, re-pieced the silver connector together, wrapped it all up tight with some electrical tape and works like new. Figured if it was broke then cutting it open wasnt going to ruin any thing. Ended up saving 80 bucks. Thanks again, hopefully this may help some one out someday….

nice work!

Quote:

---

Thanks for the replies guys, checking the ticking really pieced things together for me. I had tried all the ‘tricks’ for getting it to kick back in with no luck and didnt have any one to swap transducers with. I had been wrapping my cord around the unit itself when packing it up and knew there was some downward tension pulling on my cable. I took the silver piece apart and cut the coating open to find that the soder had broke loose on my non-coated wire. I sodered it back together, re-pieced the silver connector together, wrapped it all up tight with some electrical tape and works like new. Figured if it was broke then cutting it open wasnt going to ruin any thing. Ended up saving 80 bucks. Thanks again, hopefully this may help some one out someday….

---

You sound like you are pretty skilled. Nice work! Glad it’s back up and running!