Lowrance Radar issues

[Wasted Dayz]

Hello. i am new to the forum and was looking at some input in an issue with my lowrance radar. i have a LRA-2400 brand new last fall that was warranted from my LRA-1800. the 1800 dome was defective and they sent me the 2400 last fall. has worked great until last weeks tourney when i needed it the most. the 1800 never worked from out of the box, now this 2400 has probably been only turned on 5 times, now issues again. They claim it is the cables, but now the 2400 is discontinued and they do not even make cables for it anymore and i still have 1 year left on my warantee. i was wondering if anyone else has any issues with lowrance radar, or if i'm the bad apple. i don't know of anyone else that runs them. should i look into dumping them and getting the RayMarine that i always wanted or should i hope this will get solved this time for the last time?

[HONDAM]

You should probably get rid of it and get a 4G if staying with Lowrance. Through the Lowrance Advantage program you should be able to upgrade at a relatively low cost. I know it costs $500 to upgrade from a 3G to a 4G, shouldn't be to much more for your LRA-2400, its just not on my price list to tell you for sure. I wouldn't waste the money on the 3G if your staying with Lowrance definitely the 4G. If you PM me the serial number of your radar i can tell you for sure what the upgrade would be.

Lowrance radars are not to popular especially before broadband so its hard to tell if just bad luck or sub-par manufacturing. Even with the newer broadband tech a strong HD unit would still be my first choice like the Garmin or Raymarine.

If you dont want to throw any more money at it and thinking about switching i would take a strong look that the Garmin GPSMAP 740 and 741(new version of the 740 with CHIRP sonar). Awesome units and they do sell them with as an 18inch radar bundle too to save some money.

[Wasted Dayz]

Hondam, Thank you for the reply. I will get you the serial no. soon so you can take a look at it. The only problem is, the $500 i would need to fork over to upgrade on a waranteed product. Shouldn't lowrance just send me the upgrade under the warantee? i have troulble spending another $500 on an already $1800 radar that i have used 5 times and had nothing but troubles with. i do have it paired up with an HDS-10 that i am happy with its performance. for me to totally scrap lowrance would be a rather large expense, and was hoping to avoid this is possible, but it still is on the back burner.

[HONDAM]

The reason to spend $500 is to get away from the discontinued equipment, im not positive on that price either may be more or less. They most likely will send you a refurb LRA-2400 under warranty and that would be free of charge. And they will send you an upgraded one for free BUT only when there are no more LRA-2400s to be had. They have a very specific program in place to handle situations like this on what they replace warrantied units with and how much they charge for upgrades. For them just to give you a 4G radar because of all your issues is going to be unlikely and would need special approval since it doesn't follow their standard warranty procedures.

I certainly understand 100% not wanting to put any more money in it. It basically comes down to how but faith your going to put in your Lowrance. IF you have absolutely confidence in them providing you with a quality radar and the first 2 were just flukes then stick with the LRA-2400, if you still have confidence in your Lowrance to be able navigate effectively but want a little insurance then spend the money to upgrade, although if your not sure if your Lowrance will last 1 day or 5 years then id get rid of the whole package because it is an important safety item for the type of water we navigate on here in the great lakes and with any safety item its only as good as its reliability, needs to work every time you ask it to or its no good.