How to Toast a Transducer

[mosquito13]

Learned something the other day.  If you play with your sounder/gps mapper in the driveway , turn off the sonar or wrap the transducer in a wet towel.  Did not know they get hot . Buddy was monkeying around with his Helix entering data in the driveway. Went to use the boat in the water and sonar was not working . Back in the drive way saw transducer was all melted and bubbly . Called Minn Kota and they are sending him a new one for free, and tech gave up the wet towel hack. I read my manual front to back and nowhere do they mention the wet towel or to turn off transducer.

[Juan]

This has come up before. I still think it's 100% B.S. The only transducers that might get hot if run out of water for short periods of time are the powerful ones designed for very deep water that have to be submerged like the expensive AIMAR transducers and those are usually mounted either submerged under the hull or in anti freeze to keep them cool. I can understand why someone might have their gps / chartplotter screen on in their driveway while entering waypoints, etc, (I dp it all the time) but why would anyone need to have the sonar screen on in the first place? Maybe he was looking for fish hiding under the concrete?

[985crabs]

BS or not, running an xducer cable is such a PITA that I'm not going to take any chances.

[freezerfiller]

It is pretty easy to turn off the sonar while you input waypoints or whatever you do in the driveway.

[mosquito13]

Think what you want. I saw the transducer. 

[Juan]

I don't doubt he fried it, I just bet it was caused by another reason (shorted, installed wrong, modified, etc ) and don't believe he fried it because the sonar was on.