Lowrance Elite 4x dsi HELP!

Hey fellas just recently purchased the elite 4x dsi unit for my jon boat. According to the pictures on the manual. It recommended the transducer being atleast a foot away from motor and it also stated portside would be a good location. Well I got all those things covered plus making sure transducer is parallel with the ground. I took it out for test run today and everything was working fine idling out of the no wake zone, but as soon as I jumped up on plane the shallow water alarm started going off and I was out in 30 - 40 ft of water so I know this was a false reading. Even when I came back down to idle it took it awhile before it started reading again. So my question is what have I done wrong? This is my first depth finder install. Do I need to lower or raise transducer using the brackets, or adjust the angle of transducer using the ratchet device and boat. Any information or tips to steer me in the right direction would greatly be appreciated. Have a good one.

It's very possible you may be getting air bubbles off the hull caused by rivets or strakes...

It's also possible that the boat on plane is lifting the xducer completely out of the water...

Inspect the underside of the hull in line with the xducer and see if there is some factor of your hull that could be disrupting the smooth flow of water...if this is the case...lowering the xducer may help...or moving the xducer over may help...

Some have used mounting boards as a way to not to have to drill as many holes in the transom...

I've even heard of some using the Teflon cutting boards and cutting them down as a mounting board...

I've also seen where the xducer can be temporarily mounted to a board and C-clamped to the transom to experiment with placement before permanently mounting the xducer..

Which ever route you take...the xducer must have clean bubble free water running over the bottom face in order to get constant readings...sonar will not travel thru air....and bubbles count as air...

Rickie

Thanks Rickie for the info. I think I will try lowering it first. I have notice I have a stake about 4 inches to right and rivets about 8 inches forward so that maybe the problemo

My 5 DSI does same thing. I just lowered it. Need to do a test run to see if it worked or not. Mine will hold bottom until about 20mph and then loses it.

that is normal on skimmer mount transducer to loose the bottom signal starting around 10 + mph. the reason why you are bring the transducer out of the water column and making water air pockets and water turbulence.

Normal? I thought I just didn't have the transducer mounted / adjusted properly. Another question. How critical is it that Transducer is absolutely level with the bottom of boat. If it is slightly skewed , which is better. Slanted forward, or slanted backward. I'm only talking about a very minor tilt. Sorry to hijack here, but I think this will help others trying to get their transducers mounted proplerly. It seems to make a significant performance difference.

Loosing the signal at 10+ MPH is news to me. Mine reads to my top end of a blistering 22MPH and I have been on boats where they read up to 40 MPH. Any faster and I am too busy holding on to look at the DF.
The U-Tube video by Lowrance on the Elite 7 shows a boat on full plane running a good 40 if not more and the signal is solid on the screen, Of course that is a commercial for their product, but honestly, running in the 30 to 40 MPH range in 20 to 60 ft of water I've never lost the signal.
The transducer needs to be slightly below the plane of your boat to prevent it lifting off the water, which would cause a loss of signal

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Originally Posted by Runnin

Normal? I thought I just didn't have the transducer mounted / adjusted properly. Another question. How critical is it that Transducer is absolutely level with the bottom of boat. If it is slightly skewed , which is better. Slanted forward, or slanted backward. I'm only talking about a very minor tilt. Sorry to hijack here, but I think this will help others trying to get their transducers mounted proplerly. It seems to make a significant performance difference.

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The back end tilted down just a little. I think Jason has got his mounts mixed up. My LCX27 with a skimmer would hold bottom at over 60 mph.

I lowered mine about 3/4 inch from where it was originally mounted. Now hold bottom to 35 mph