marcum vx1p question

[xjbob99]

I just bought a marcum vx1p and after reading all the luck people have been with them im beginning to think I got a bad one also or a charger at least. Its been working wonderful up until today. I had it on the ice and was working awesome for the first two hours. Then the display slowly lost everything except for the top of the ice. Shut the unit off and went to a flag. Got back to it and powered iy back on and it worked great for 3 mins then slowly lost display again. I shut it off and turned it on again and lost display after 1 min. Checked the battery with a volt meter and it went to 8 after I turned the flasher on. I plugged the charger in and it has a green light saying its charged. Does this sound like a low battery. Also when the screen goes blank the transducer stops clicking

[hardwater diehard]

Check all the connections ....some IS members have reported lose or faulty connections causing a slew of charging and performance issues ...

[hardwater diehard]

To charge your battery:
Your battery has a wiring harness attached to it that has “piggyback” terminals
on it, enabling you to keep the power cord from the unit attached to
the battery at all times, as well as having the wiring harness with receptacle
for your charger attached at all times. To charge, simply couple the end of
the charger with the end of the wiring harness. It is normal for a green light
to appear on the charger at this time. Once connected, plug the transformer
end of the charger into a 110 volt AC wall outlet. You will see a red LED light
appear on the charger at this time. When your battery is fully charged, this
red light will change to green. Depending on the condition of your battery, this
process can take up to 20 hours to complete. At this time, you can disconnect
the charger from the battery and wall outlet. However, no harm will come to
your battery if you leave it attached to the charger

[PRICE COUNTY STRIKE ZONE]

I would say it's your charger. Today my vx-1 started getting low on charge and the display started flashing and finally went blank except for the top of ice. My charger has never been right since new either. Mine will charge, but you could leave it on for a month and the red light would still be on. I've been using the charger from my vexilar.

[Carl.j.o]

Possibly a bad battery . hook it up to your charger and light stays green ..... Rite... Then power up your flasher and see if that light turns red. If it does I would bet you need a new battery. If it doesn't change I would bet its your charger.
Your flasher should run off your charger alone .
That being said I have a lx6 but I'm guessing the charging and battery systems are the same

[Kevin23]

That's a battery/charger issue. Battery is dead for sure, but the question that remains is if its a bad battery or a bad charger. Have to borrow/buy one of them to know for sure.

[xjbob99]

Thanks for the fast replies. Its definetly the charger. Looks like im buying a battery tender tomorrow and throwing this marcum in the trash

[Doubles Shooter]

Thanks for the fast replies. Its definetly the charger. Looks like im buying a battery tender tomorrow and throwing this marcum in the trash

I did the same thing. The Marcum Digital charger I had was junk. Didn't last two seasons and got no help from Marcum. Battery Tender Jr. works great.

[Kevin23]

I did the same thing. The Marcum Digital charger I had was junk. Didn't last two seasons and got no help from Marcum. Battery Tender Jr. works great.

Same here!!!

[brycro]

When I first got mine the charger stopped working during the first season I used it....Marcum replaced it free.  If memory serves me correctly I really didn't have it that long.  However, that fixed my battery issue.  Good luck!

[77tech]

OK looks like you probably already bought a batterytender you can't go wrong there the jr model is all you need.  Note if you want to use the polarized two pin plug on the marcum to recharge the battery you will have to reverse the connections for that cable at the battery.  The polarity at the plug is reversed between the marcum and batterytender.   Did you verify your marcum charger was bad.   There are three things that could cause your problem the battery itself being bad the charger being bad or the connection from that two pin plug to the battery being open.  Actually there is a fourth possibility that being you don't have it plugged into a hot outlet.  If you plug the charger into the battery before you plug it into an AC outlet the green light should come on.  If not you have a bad connection to your battery.  If you plug the charger into an AC outlet before you plug it into the battery and the green light comes on you at least know it is getting AC power and may be working but to be sure you need to measure the voltage at the plug it should be 14.x volts.  If you plug the charger into AC and the light turns green and then plug it to the battery and the light turns red it is "probably" charging the battery.  Again a voltmeter can verify this.  The above is the light behavior I just observed on my VX1p so for someone that doesn't have a voltmeter hopefully you can do some basic troubleshooting.