Great Lakes Bass Fishing Forum

Got a buddy that wants to put a Lowrance, or whatever on a snowmobile so he can follow a GPS bread crumb trail back to shore or out to his spot on Saginaw Bay etc. He is wondering if you can leave the units outside in the cold on the snowmobile. Will the liquid crystal displays take the cold????? Waterfoul this may be a good one for you. He's looking to buy.

Does he not have gps on his phone somehow?

They work pretty well until you get really cold... like 10 degrees or less.  After that they can be spotty.

My step dad uses a garmin mounted on his quad. He has never mentioned anything about having trouble in the cold.

Last weekend they went 11 miles out!!!!! :o

Quote from: Redbone on February 19, 2014, 11:26:40 AM
My step dad uses a garmin mounted on his quad. He has never mentioned anything about having trouble in the cold.

Last weekend they went 11 miles out!!!!! :o

I had a Garmin in my snowmobile some years ago.  Riding in the U.P. it worked well until about 10 degrees.... below 0 degrees it didn't work at all.  But, this was back probably 10-12 years ago.  Screens are a bit better now but still can suffer outages in very cold temps.  The unit is still working at those temps, it's just not showing up on the screen.   At times I would stop and stick it in my inside coat pocket and it would show up in a few minutes.

My dad uses his iFinder h20 to ice fish on Lake of the Woods and has ridden out on Buffalo Bay in negative temps with it without problem.   He keeps the backlight on high to add a little warmth to the screen.  That backlighting is pre-LED, though so the light heats up.  He has it on a mount, plugged in to a cigarette lighter charger, behind the windscreen.   The battery life is very short in cold temps so keeping it plugged in is a must.  The internal charger also adds warmth.   If you can find an "old-school" model without LED backlighting, that would probably work just as well to keep the screen warm and working.

I know both Garmin and Lowrance offered heated mounts at one time too. 

Really though... if it's not really really cold you shouldn't have much of a problem.