ArcherFishing

RodBuster this is awesome information. I too got mine with the boat. I figured that is why the down was slower, I also suspect that down is more susceptible to not working due to the resistor somehow but thats just a guess. Up always seems to work luckily. My boss actually mentioned cold solder joints being a possible issue also. Tomorrow ill get to work on diagnosing it hopefully.

Man lrg355 it does seem like you know more than I do on this stuff. You are nailing everything that i was trying like putting a meter on the posts i did see its 12v without any load on it. A big improvement on the board would be relay harnesses and then at least i could change them out myself when they go bad. Ive learned that lesson on my outboard when your motor wont go up and you want to go home lol. I know im supposed to send them to cannon and pay to have them repaired...

I did see that other board for the older downriggers. I was searching really hard for an updated version of my board that may have fixed the issues im having but no luck. Im in the process of fixing my second downrigger and the motor appears to be fine. I am wondering if the drag on the motor over a long period of time might be burning up the boards. I think ill solder another relay on the old board and see if that fixes it but i almost think its something else on the board that is burning up. I can get it to go down if i click up and then down really fast. almost like its giving the other relay a boost or something. I wish i knew more about electronics so i could just re design a better board. I would much rather pay 60 bucks for an updated board than one that will have the same issues later down the road.

I have been following this topic for a year now and went thru all sorts of testing myself with my cannon mag 5 st downriggers that i got with my boat. the guy that owned my downriggers before even told me he had issues with them going down. I had the exact same issues with mine and assumed it was the relays. bought some relays off amazon and attempted to de solder the ones on the board and attach harnesses. turns out just like lrg355 found out, its really hard to remove the relays. so i got the dremel out and just destroyed the relay and solderd the harness to the backside of the board. after all of that it still didn't go down. then i just broke down and ordered a new board off fish 307 for 60 bucks. plugged it right in and it still only worked one direction. After eliminating the switch and the board the only thing left is the motor. I took the motor apart which was pretty easy to do and noticed that one of the magnets on the shroud came loose because they barely used any epoxy to attach them. i could even see a small amount of wear on the magnet. i used some epoxy and glued it right back into place. put it all back together and now it works. i didn't know this until i got it running but the down speed is slower than the up speed. there must be some resistance on the board to make it do this and the magnet rubbing just put it over the top and it wouldn't run. i could hook up the motor directly to a battery and it would work both directions which made me think it wasn't the motor. I really hope this helps someone else that is frustrated with these. Sure it could be something else but i got two with the exact same issue.