Bottom Paint on Depth Xducer

[BobH]

Boat came with a Hummingbird fish finder. It never worked in shallow water but anything over about 20' it seemed to be fine. Now it doesn't work at all and all I can think of that has changed, is we had a bottom job done. Would painting the xducer affect it's operation?

Bob

 

[rochepoint]

Every transducer we have had on all our boats says not to paint the transducer face with normal bottom paint,

 

[Conrad]

Every transducer we have had on all our boats says not to paint the transducer face with normal bottom paint,

That is my understanding as well, although I wonder how significant the signal deterioration is, as many of these same transducers can also be mounted to shoot through the hull, which presumably has bottom paint.

Unless there is some kind of reaction between the paint and transducer?

 

[rochepoint]

From the Airmar website:

"Use water based anti-fouling paint only. Never use ketone-based paint, since ketones can attack many plastics possibly damaging the transducer."

So it sounds like the paint coating has little effect but the harsh solvents in some paints could destroy the transducer.

 

[Ski in NC]

I used transducer paint for a few haulouts. Then got lazy and painted over it with regular bottom paint. That was about five years ago and thing works fine. It's an Airmar angle unit.

One yard kept a can of transducer paint for folks to use.

Maybe used water based inflatable dink paint- if it can't hurt a dink, xducer should be fine too.

 

[BobH]

Next time I have the bottom cleaned I'll see if the diver can scrape off the paint.

Bob

 

[psneeld]

paint is not the problem unless there's an air bubble in it and not likely.

 

[Larry M]

I been using regular bottom paint (ablative and modified epoxy) on our transducers for 25+ years. I've never had any physical damage that I can see or signal loss.

 

[jleonard]

I use bottom paint on my Humminbird x ducer and it works fine. I thin it out and apply very lightly so it's really thin.