My factory reconditioned, bought new MK Ultrex had a second, catastrophic failure about 3 weeks ago, at about 300 hours of operation. I found about it on the water at the beginning of my fishing day and had to go home. The steering went all the way to one side and would not be budged. Turns out that the foot pedal sensor was bad.
The first failure was the brushes losing contact with the commutator in the motor at about 150 hours. The brushes were too wide to slide in their holders, I had to remove them and run them up and down a mill bastard file on the work bench to get them to not stick. Lack of quality control in manufacturing...With the motor running again, self repaired at home I though It was going to be all good. Then when I found out that when it panda the bed (for the second time in the first 300 hours...) in order to work on it, the MK factory tech has to had the trolling motor delivered to him dismounted from the boat. AAAAAAUGH! So local boat shop labor is 120 bucks an hour, so screw that, I took it off myself. Major, major PITA...then it was the nearly two week wait for parts, and by the time i was able to start remounting it the best three weeks of Koke fishing season was gone. PFFFFT!
I was and am still displeased that this bow mount troller failed twice in the first 300 hours, and more so that no MK repair network service tech could work on it while mounted on the boat. That fact alone caused several hours of extra effort to get it off and remounted, or suffer huge expenses from shop labor, the removal and replacement would have been very expensive, waaaaay more than the cost of repairing the motor itself. I will NEVER EVER BUY A MINN KOTA PRODUCT AGAIN, EVER! Now I'm just waiting to see what else goes wrong with it. Trust in the product is gone...my get 2 helix 10 chart plotter went bad on the Mega Imaging channel, that part of it stopped working in the first two years I had it. At least the 360 transducer setup has been reliable. For what it cost to add on, it had better be. Some of my fishing guide friends had their Bird G2 finders crap out as well.
When looking at the Garmin product line in comparison to MK/Bird's offerings, it's not even close. 'bye 'bye Birdshit!
Matter of fact, I got really really pissed and did some major retail therapy in the fish finder department right after dropping the motor off to the tech. Earlier, I had upgraded to a Helix 8 G3N from my G2N helix 10, the newer finder was more versatile with mega side imaging as well as down and the screen was sharper. Went to flea bay and had enough time to order and have delivered a Garmin UHD 93 chart plotter, with hi def gt54 transducer, then added the panoptix livescope kit ($$$!!!) and a couple days later found an earlier panoptix ps22 transducer for about half off. I was having problems with the power supply to my finders, due to corrosion in the crimp fittings causing a huge voltage and current drop. So I pulled out the main power supply to the electronics, and put in a new one, this time instead of running from the boat fuse box with 14 gauge, I ran 10 gauge from one of the troll batteries all the way to the bow panel. All the crimp fittings normally used, convenient to strip wire and assemble in seconds were ditched in favor of carefully flowing solder joints, minutes instead of seconds to do right.
The hummingbird 360, g3n chart plotter/finder and troll motor ducers were retained. I mounted the panoptix livescope and perspective mount on the Bird 360/ultrex shaft right above the 360's ducer. I'm not worried about the garmin unit causing interference with the 360, if so, will just turn off the 360. The Garmin electronics make MK's offerings look stone age in comparison.
This morning I woke up early to lightning and rain, so going to have to splash the new setup tomorrow...
The first failure was the brushes losing contact with the commutator in the motor at about 150 hours. The brushes were too wide to slide in their holders, I had to remove them and run them up and down a mill bastard file on the work bench to get them to not stick. Lack of quality control in manufacturing...With the motor running again, self repaired at home I though It was going to be all good. Then when I found out that when it panda the bed (for the second time in the first 300 hours...) in order to work on it, the MK factory tech has to had the trolling motor delivered to him dismounted from the boat. AAAAAAUGH! So local boat shop labor is 120 bucks an hour, so screw that, I took it off myself. Major, major PITA...then it was the nearly two week wait for parts, and by the time i was able to start remounting it the best three weeks of Koke fishing season was gone. PFFFFT!
I was and am still displeased that this bow mount troller failed twice in the first 300 hours, and more so that no MK repair network service tech could work on it while mounted on the boat. That fact alone caused several hours of extra effort to get it off and remounted, or suffer huge expenses from shop labor, the removal and replacement would have been very expensive, waaaaay more than the cost of repairing the motor itself. I will NEVER EVER BUY A MINN KOTA PRODUCT AGAIN, EVER! Now I'm just waiting to see what else goes wrong with it. Trust in the product is gone...my get 2 helix 10 chart plotter went bad on the Mega Imaging channel, that part of it stopped working in the first two years I had it. At least the 360 transducer setup has been reliable. For what it cost to add on, it had better be. Some of my fishing guide friends had their Bird G2 finders crap out as well.
When looking at the Garmin product line in comparison to MK/Bird's offerings, it's not even close. 'bye 'bye Birdshit!
Matter of fact, I got really really pissed and did some major retail therapy in the fish finder department right after dropping the motor off to the tech. Earlier, I had upgraded to a Helix 8 G3N from my G2N helix 10, the newer finder was more versatile with mega side imaging as well as down and the screen was sharper. Went to flea bay and had enough time to order and have delivered a Garmin UHD 93 chart plotter, with hi def gt54 transducer, then added the panoptix livescope kit ($$$!!!) and a couple days later found an earlier panoptix ps22 transducer for about half off. I was having problems with the power supply to my finders, due to corrosion in the crimp fittings causing a huge voltage and current drop. So I pulled out the main power supply to the electronics, and put in a new one, this time instead of running from the boat fuse box with 14 gauge, I ran 10 gauge from one of the troll batteries all the way to the bow panel. All the crimp fittings normally used, convenient to strip wire and assemble in seconds were ditched in favor of carefully flowing solder joints, minutes instead of seconds to do right.
The hummingbird 360, g3n chart plotter/finder and troll motor ducers were retained. I mounted the panoptix livescope and perspective mount on the Bird 360/ultrex shaft right above the 360's ducer. I'm not worried about the garmin unit causing interference with the 360, if so, will just turn off the 360. The Garmin electronics make MK's offerings look stone age in comparison.
This morning I woke up early to lightning and rain, so going to have to splash the new setup tomorrow...
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