New Helix units and power.

This issue has been discussed in many forums but my experience hopefully will help someone out. My Helix 10 Mega would shut down when cranking big motor. The unit is on the starting battery and I do not have enough room to put another battery in my boat just for the unit as many have suggested, but for me and many others we have to connect to cranking battery. Many who have this problem have used wire that is too small and may be connecting to the boats fuse or switch panel which also has inferior wiring but this was not my case. I had 10 gauge copper running straight to battery with an inline fuse. It was driving me nuts. I had my battery tested before at my Advance Auto store and it tested good. My triple charger gave me no indication of bad battery. I was in the radar and missile field for almost 40 years and I still know my electronics. My experience was telling me there were a couple of things that could be wrong.......the solenoid on the motor could be going bad and was pulling way too much current when starting motor....my sonar unit was bad...although power problems with sonars are rarely the cause of the unit itself......or as my gut kept telling me my battery was bad. But how could that be.....I had it load tested several times and always showed good. So Saturday I took it down to Advance Auto and had it tested again. Once agin the test showed it was good and the print out they give you tells you the status of the CCA and according to their equipment I had a good battery. I was dreading thinking I was going to have to send my Helix back to HB to be repaired. I had already put the battery back in the boat but I told myself "This battery is bad". So once again I head to get it tested...but this time I went to Auto Zone......the battery tested bad. I then headed back to Advance Auto...the battery tested good....I then went to O'Reilly and it tested bad.....I then headed to a mom and pop service center here in town and the battery tested good. Well unless my unit was bad it had to be the battery. My battery was 2 years old with heavy use on it so I decide to get a new one. Put it in the boat and fished all day Sunday.......killed the KY bass and smallmouth. I used the sonar for a couple of hours before cranking up motor again.....all is fine. My problem is fixed. I went back to the locations that my battery had checked good at and told them that for whatever reason their particular piece of test equipment was lying to them in my case. Could be a number of things causing that. But the lesson here is if you are having a battery tested and you think it is bad have it tested at several places....all you are out is a little time. I am sure the battery had one or more cells bad, or going bad and while the motor always cranked easily these new units are very picky with power. So if all your wiring is good I would take a strong look at the battery. I was dealing with this issue for several weeks and it was driving me nuts...but when you get a battery load tested and it says good you keep looking for other problems.

Regards


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Glad you found the problem as something like this can drive you nuts. Sorry you had to buy a new battery. That was better than buying a new sonar only to find out it was a bad battery later.

They have some issues with some of these new Helix units. I talked with HB this morning. When I boot to system status and look at voltage it says 0.0 Volts....LOL. Well that has to be a software issue as your unit is working. Some units will also not display correct voltage if you have that display box on your screen. The voltage to unit is 13 volts yet the screen will say 11.9 volts. This is the unit hooked directly to battery with 10 gauge wire and an inline fuse. I am thinking this is also a software issue as does Humminbird. The tech I spoke with told me they are aware of these issues and are working on them with an update. I sure hope they don't find out that it is a hardware issue and I have to send unit back in.

Regards


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The kind of load testing you get at auto parts places is not the highest quality and is subject to a lot of variation, even with the same tester and operator. CCA testing is an iterative process, so measuring it accurately never happens outside of labs. Auto parts places use conductance testing, but that is as subject to as many uncontrolled variables as any other field test method. Carbon pile testing is probably the best. You can get such a tester at Harbor Freight for $80 before discounts.

Technically, a battery meets it's specs if it has a load equal to its CCA applied for 30 seconds and never drops below 7.2V. It can dump right down to 7.2V and stay there and it will still pass. You know your equipment will have problems there, but the battery is still "good".

Carbon pile testing consists of putting half the CCA load on the battery for 15 seconds and watching for the voltage to stay above 9.6V. Still might cause your electronics to have issues.

Add in the fact that the stores are using a piece of test equipment that is subject to damage and inaccuracy that is probably never tested and is operated by someone whose expertise is not electricity. Then multiply by the incentive to them for providing a failing test result. Now stir it all up with clamp on leads that may or may not make a good connection at the time and you end up almost as well off asking a Magic 8-Ball the condition of your battery.

One thing you didn't mention was the CCA ratings of your batteries and what outboard you are cranking. CCA directly corresponds with the voltage the battery maintains during cranking, so higher CCA will be less likely to cause issues with voltage sensitive devices.

I took a battery on my son's used car he bought to an auto parts store to get load tested. It passed with lots of cca. Set it aside for a few days to work on other things and went to put it back in. One of the terminals was wet which didn't sit well with me. Of course it wouldn't start the car on a full charge. Swapped batteries and started right up. I agree that tests are just a good guess and not the final say on a battery being good or bad.


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I have seen the same thing . Battery gets weak and kills elecronics when trying to start big motor . worse when other things like livewell pump running at same time .

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Originally Posted by CatFan

The kind of load testing you get at auto parts places is not the highest quality and is subject to a lot of variation, even with the same tester and operator. CCA testing is an iterative process, so measuring it accurately never happens outside of labs. Auto parts places use conductance testing, but that is as subject to as many uncontrolled variables as any other field test method. Carbon pile testing is probably the best. You can get such a tester at Harbor Freight for $80 before discounts.

Technically, a battery meets it's specs if it has a load equal to its CCA applied for 30 seconds and never drops below 7.2V. It can dump right down to 7.2V and stay there and it will still pass. You know your equipment will have problems there, but the battery is still "good".

Carbon pile testing consists of putting half the CCA load on the battery for 15 seconds and watching for the voltage to stay above 9.6V. Still might cause your electronics to have issues.

Add in the fact that the stores are using a piece of test equipment that is subject to damage and inaccuracy that is probably never tested and is operated by someone whose expertise is not electricity. Then multiply by the incentive to them for providing a failing test result. Now stir it all up with clamp on leads that may or may not make a good connection at the time and you end up almost as well off asking a Magic 8-Ball the condition of your battery.

One thing you didn't mention was the CCA ratings of your batteries and what outboard you are cranking. CCA directly corresponds with the voltage the battery maintains during cranking, so higher CCA will be less likely to cause issues with voltage sensitive devices.

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Good info John ...

Rickie

Alphahawk

My HB units have always read about a half volt to one volt lower than the actual voltage.

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Originally Posted by N2Crappie

Alphahawk

My HB units have always read about a half volt to one volt lower than the actual voltage.

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Mine shows lower than meter on charger after charging too .

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Originally Posted by N2Crappie

Alphahawk

My HB units have always read about a half volt to one volt lower than the actual voltage.

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Mine shows lower than meter on charger after charging too .

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Originally Posted by N2Crappie

Alphahawk

My HB units have always read about a half volt to one volt lower than the actual voltage.

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That is not avoidable. The current being drawn by the unit causes a voltage drop in the wires feeding it. The unit is seeing about a volt less than the battery is supplying because of this loss and that's what it displays.

A couple of things follow from this that may interest you. Since the voltage drop is caused by current and the resistance of the wire, if you reduce the current, you'll reduce the drop. You can demonstrate this by changing the backlight brightness on your unit and watching the voltage. With the backlight way down, the voltage reading on the unit will be closer to the actual voltage.

The other interesting thing is that this explains why larger wires are used for applications where you need high current. Your TM wiring may need to handle more than 50A. Heat aside, if you used 18AWG wire to run a 24V TM, you'd get about 10V to your TM. By stepping up to 6AWG, you'd get 24.42V out of the 25.3V your batteries provide. Stepping up to 2AWG would get you 24.97V.

Additionally, every connection in a wire makes the issue worse. Fuse holders, splices, connectors etc. all add loss. Shorter, heavier wires do a better job of providing power to equipment. The voltage that is "lost" in wiring and connections is actually wasted as heat.

They have a polarity protection diode to keep from being hooked up backwards & fried, and the rectifier drops your forward voltage about 8/10th volt.

When testing a battery a great tool is a hydrometer. Inexpensive but actually does a better job than most " battery testers " at many auto parts stores. It performs specific gravity test. Which is high falutin talk for how much acid is in the battery fluid. Any reading in the green zone indicates a good battery. Each cell must be measured as one "dead " cell will cause problems. Dead cells give a yellow or red zone reading. This test can be performed with battery still installed in boat. Just ensure that nothing is running off the battery.

Uncharged batteries will reflect " bad readings ". So best time to test with hydrometer is right after full charge cycle has been performed on battery in question.