Feb. 6, 2021-Fixing the Lowrance

Screen Burn

Our Lowrance GPS plotter was losing it’s screen. LCD Burn.

The machine worked but numbers were barely visable. I found a used one on Ebay. It came with a 30 day guarantee. $139.00. Cheap. 

Today it arrived and in a few minutes I had it hooked up and running. It looked fine. But I wanted to keep all of our data, including waypoints from our circumnavigation. So I thought I would try to put the LCD from the newer one into our old unit. 

I took the old one apart, thinking I had done this once before and it was doable. 

It wasn’t. I broke the LCD connectors. Now I had only the newer one. 

But stubbornly I decided to try something else. There was a memory chip which was removable. I thought to try swapping these chips. Pretty easy, I thought, but maybe some risk. I wondered if I was being foolish, but I plowed ahead. Judy watched me dubiously. 

With the chip from the old one in the newer unit I turned it on. Nothing! Well, not nothing: It flashed once then went dead. 

OK, Maybe I have ruined two of these things in a short 15 minutes. Still trying, I disassembled it again and put its rightful chip back in. Turning it on, another flash and then dead! AGAIN! 

One more try, maybe I had the chip backwards, it could go two ways. Another disassembly and I turned the chip around. THIS TIME IT WORKED! Hurray! 

But not willing to let well enough alone, I dissembled it another time and tried the old chip again, this time I turned it around too. AGAIN IT WORKED! 

Well, the waypoints weren’t there but some of the settings were. 

I could do no more and was actually totally happy to have a working GPS with a good screen. I completed the installation and called it good. 

Click here for more photos of the project.

Fred & Judy, SV Wings, La Cruz Huanacaxtle, Mexico