best way to mount & wire sonar on front of PT175

[greg hall]

wnating to mount a fish finder up on bow on my PT175 just want to have a clean & neat instalation,any ideas or tips going to either buy a eagle 320 on lowrance to mount w/trolling motor mounted transducer,any tips?

 

[Bryan Fary]

easiest way is to mount it on the carpet on either side. easily screws into the floor after drilling pilot holes. as for the wiring, take the cover off your trim switches that opens up the access area. there should be a set of wires with connectors on the ends that aren't being used. tracker leaves those up there for this purpose. one is a ground and the other is a hot. use a test light to determine which is which. if the sonar doesn't have wire connectors you can add them for a clean connection to the boat wires or you can solder them together. if you splice into the trim wires or any other wires, you will get interference. you may have to dig for the spare two wires but they will be there. as for the transducer, just simply use wire wraps to run the wire of the tm shaft. make sure you leave enough slack to allow full tm travel.



good luck,

bryan

 

[Marke Cicero]

Greg,



Check the "Grab Bag" over on the left. Mofish did a great job illustrating and documenting his install. It was a big help when I installed mine.



Marke

 

[Mark Hofman]

Thanks, Marke!



Greg, be aware that my Grab Bag is on 3 different pages. Click NEXT or BACK on each page to cycle between the three sections. From my hit counter statistics, it looks likes some folks don't get past the first page. And even fewer go all the way to the end.

 

[Terry Heydt]

A few other tips: Watch that hole behind the trim switch panel - edges are SHARP! I taped mine around the bottom edges when I did mine, but left the top uncovered. Got my arm stuck, lost my kneeling balance, rolled to the side....it was messy (Resolve takes blood out of carpet very well). I mounted my Bow Lowrance via RAM mount, and mounted the RAM to the angled piece that contains the trim switches; to the right in the carpetted portion. Placed a piece of 1/4" aluminum behind the mount for extra strength. Keeps as much floor space open as possible.

 

[TrepMan]

I'll second Terry's comment "edges are SHARP", also check out my info on the Eagle bow mount in the Grab Bag. Between Mine and Mo's you'll be all set.



Trep

 

[Larry Harp]

Bill, I don't mean to tell you how to do things BUT, running your finder off the TM battery is #1 on do not do list. You will get too much interferance causing static and false readings on your screen. Most experts will tell you to run a dedicated circut all the way back to the main battery. I didn't do that, I found an unused wire coming off the fuse panel and ending at the bow. That seems to work fine for me. You might want to rethink you connections and maybe tap off the trim switch or something.



Harpo

 

[Bill Ackermann]

Thanks Harpo,



I have heard that and plan to run it that way, just couldn't find where the other end of the unused pig tail ends up and got in a hurry so I could use it this weekend, now I ended up working overtime all weekend anyway...darn!



Bill

 

[TOMMY RICH]

I waited til' last for my 1 cent...I run mine on a seperate line down the side and back to the battery DIRECTLY! I'm with Sooner on interference.....I think I get a lot truer reading on my Eagle. I've always done it that way...I just made sure I used black wire down the side of the topdeck..you don't notice it..I don't.

TEE

 

[Terry Heydt]

Bill, The unused pigtails should run to the fuse block, and (at least on the PT185) are fused to a 4 amp fuse. Check to see that all the used locations in your fuse box have fuses, and that all the fuses are good.