Garmin GPS won't track

[Heavy310]

I recently (about two months ago) purchased a shiny new Garmin 4208 marine GPS. I installed it myself and everything worked fine up until about three weeks ago when one day it took about 15+ minutes to finally fine a statelite and start tracking. Since that day it has not tracked at all....All I get is the little guestion mark on the boat indicating that it is searching for the statelite. Yesterday I went back to westmarine and they gave me a new head unit and it did the same thing. I'm thinking that the antenna cable may have gotten pinched where the cable comes through my arch into the side of the boat because it was a tight fit when I installed it and now when I access the cable through the arch I cannot pull the cable at all, it seems to be clamped where the wire enters the boat from the arch. OR is it some idiotic thing that I'm doing. I've read the manual back and forth and can't find anything that I'm doing wrong. Tomorrow I'm going down to the marina and loosen up the arch from the side of the boat which will allow me to pull the cable through the access point and I may find the wire is pinched, if it's not I'm in big trouble. Anyone with similar trouble with this unit or similar unit.

 

[skibum]

That's odd. I have a Navman 5500 in my boat, and it started having problems tracking about 2 weeks ago. I ended up in an area where I knew there was shallow water close by, and the stinking GPS wasn't tracking. I wonder if the satellites have been having issues?

When I got back to my marina I tried everything I could think of short of doing a "factory reset", which would have wiped out all of the routes and waypoints that I had in it. What seemed to end up working was that I powered the unit off and removed the map card. Then I let the unit start up and track my position. After it tracked, I shut it down and restarted it again. It started tracking in the normal amount of time. I shut it down again, and reinstalled the map card. The silly thing has been working fine ever since.

I saw a note in the manual that said if the unit starts up more than about 33 feet from where it last shut down, it might take a while to start tracking. My boat gets launched every time I take her out, and put on a rack when I get back. It's rare that the boat ever ends up within 33 feet of wherever the GPS last got shut down. It never seemed to cause any issues.

If you accidentally clamped part of the cable when you tighted the arch down, it very well could cause this problem. Do you think a small loop of antenna wire is pinched between the arch and the gunwale? If so, you might just need to loosen the arch bolts on both sides and see if you can wiggle the wire free. You might need to cut out a damaged section of wire and splice it if you did clamp down on it. Is it a coaxial cable? (like a cable TV wire, or a CB ant wire)

Mike

 

[Morpheus]

I noticed my Garmin took longer then normal to aquire the sats last weekend as well it eventually did but normally it locks on in a few seconds but this time it took several minutes. I have a 3205

 

[Hampton]

I noticed this on mine several times, but mostly when it had been off more than a week or so. Now, when I've been away from my boat for a whole week, I shut off both battery switches when I turn the AC shore power off (while I'm down there), then I turn the battery switches right back on, then go and disconnect shore power.

Since I started doing that, it starts right up every time (knock on wood).

So, cycle all power off at the source, then back on - see if that helps. Don't erase all of your data!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Heavy310]

Went down to the boat today and loosened the arch which allowed me to pull the antenna cable thru the Arch access. It was pinched but there is no broken wires. Called Garmin and told tech my story. He confered with another tech (senior tech supposedly) and they believe I have a bad antenna. I'm gonna try doing what Hampton said and if that doesn't work I'll head back to westmarine and get the antenna that came with the new head unit. If that works, I'm not looking forward to re-running the antenna cable but we do as we must.

 

[gerryb]

If you get a new antenna, connect it to the unit and leave the antenna on the dash to do a test. Do this before pulling out the old antenna and the wiring for it. If a new antenna doesn't do it, google "the hull truth" for good web site with lots of boat electronics exports on the board. Also, I always pull an extra wire when running electronics wiring through the boat - great help for the "next' time you have do go through the process. With the pull wire already there - then pull through the new wire and a replacement wire to leave there for next time.

 

[Heavy310]

Well Gang
I loosened up the arch which allowed me to pull the antenna cable back up thru the arch access panel. The cable had been pinched between the arch and the boat. I cut open the cable where it was pinched to see if there were any broken wires and could not fine any. I went back to westmarine and got the new antenna cable which had come with the new head unit and connected it exactly as the old one and that fixed the problem. Someone I work with said that those antennas sometime "short out". I don't know if that's true or not but changing the antenna fixed the problem. I gonna elongate the hole in the side of the boat a little to give the cable more room going through the side of the boat and make sure I don't pinch the cable again. Thanks everyone you guys are great!!