Ok... Bub... great question. My family bought a 1985 Hunter 34 in 2015. The original 80s instruments had been removed, and a Standard Horizon chartplotter had been added. This provided 'enough' nav but we always wanted an AP. Previous sailboat was a 2001 Sun Odyssey 37 that came with a full RayMarine package so we sorely missed "Ray", the name we affectionately applied to our AP. I spent awhile researching options, with a clear bias towards RayMarine. After much reading, plus previous experience, we decided on the EV200 and the i70 instrument pack. While the EV200 is certainly more expensive and more difficult to install, in my opinion and experience it provides superior reliability compared to the EV100. With that decision made, attention turned to purchase. We ended finding a great deal on Anchor Express which at the time came with a $600 rebate from RayMarine (in the form of a Visa Gift Card). Here is exactly what I ordered:
Order Items
Qty Code/SKU Product Name Price Total
1 T70158 Raymarine EV-200 Sail Linear Drive Evolution Autopilot - T70158 $2,699.99 $2,699.99
1 T70226 Raymarine i70s System Pack, Wind, Depth, Speed - T70226 $1,139.99 $1,139.99
Subtotal: $3,839.98
Shipping $10.99
Tax: $0.00
Grand Total $3,850.97
Now for the installation....many articles advise NOT using the existing rudder post quadrant to connect the EV200. There are many reasons for this, mainly because you want to keep the manual and AP steering systems as separate as possible, and the existing quadrant was not designed for the vector loads of the EV200. So now I needed a 2nd tiller arm. Brand new ones online are quite expensive, but I happened to find a used Edson tiller arm on ebay for $150. This tiller arm was exactly what I needed, its arm would clear the travel no problem, would fit above the existing quadrant, just one problem....The bore size was 2-3/4" whereas my rudder post was 2-1/2". No problem. I purchase and fitted a pair of copper collets which closed the gap between the post and the tiller arm. Best to remove the existing quadrant first before mounting the tiller arm. Take lots of pictures and - very important - mark the rudder stock with the exact location of the quadrant. There is a bolt that passs through the quadrant and rudder post.
There is barely enough room above the standard steering quadrant to fit the tiller arm I purchased, it's very heavy duty. You really have to measure carefully to ensure you can fit the tiller arm and it can move back and forth without rubbing. It's a tight space due to the aft potable water tank. Now to mounting the motor. You need a solid mounting point, so I selected the horizontal bulkhead (probably has a better name) to port of the potable water tank. Drilled 4 holes through and bolted the motor. I must have measure a million times to ensure the location was perfect, the push rod travels slightly forward/aft as it articulate in/out, so you have to ensure the travel is not encumbered in any way through the full end-to-end stroke. If I recall correctly, I had to remove a bit of the plywood that holds the potable water tank, nothing structural. Ok, at this point, I have the tiller arm mounted to the rudder post, the EV200 motor mounted securely and the push-rod connected. One very important point...you must use the angle iron travel restricter forward of the quadrant to ensure it limits the travel of the rudder back and forth. In other words, the travel of the EV200 must exceed the travel of the quadrant limited by the restricter. Otherwise the EV200 pushrod will be compressed or extended beyond its range. This is covered very prominently in the installation instructions.
The rest of the installation is straightforward. Find a location for the fluxgate thingy and the computer, runs the wires and connect everything. There are two options for the SeaTalk NG power. You can either power the SeaTalk NG bus separately from the computer, which allows you to use all the other instruments and displays without powering on the autopilot computer, but we elected to just power the SeaTalk NG bus through the AP computer. May change that later on....
The i70 instrument pack comes with a display, wind instrument, and triducer (temp, speed, and depth) and a converter box (ITC-5) to convert the analog signal to SeaTalkNG. This is all simple wire routing and connections, not too bad.
Now to the mast... (I know your question wasn't about instruments, but in case you go all in, this might be helpful...). We installed the triducer through-hull over the winter. Luckily, it wasn't too bad to remove the old crusty through-hull and mount the new one. The RayMarine through-hull comes with a flap in the cylinder the helps reduce water when you swap the blank with the triducer. It works, though it's kinda flimsy. For the wind vane, the mast come off. That's where we ran into some problems. The marine where we dock the H34 has a self-service crane (glorified telephone pole with boom, winch, and wire). The mast must be removed because the wind vane wires must pass through the deck under the mast step. We wanted to remove the mast anyway to inspect the mast/rigging, install LED deck lights, and a few other items to fix. While removing the mast, the boom broke and mast fell about 7' onto the bimini. All in all, it wasn't too bad, no one was hurt and no damage other than a bent bimini frame a few rips in the canvas. You are probably aware of compression post issues. PO had replace the post, however the 1" PVC pipe that runs as conduit through the deck to keep water out (?) did not quite line up with the channel in the compression post, so I had to eventually remove the entire post and carve a bit of deck material to provide slightly more room for the wire to run. We have yet to re-step the mast as we're waiting on the lift to be fixed, but the wires appear to route normally now, and we will run a chase line in case other wires need to go through. the kit includes a terminal block to connect the wind vane wires in the mast with those that come up the compression post and through the deck. those wires connect to the same ITC-5 connector box as the triducer.
We added an older WAAS GPS on Ebay (the newer ones are insanely expensive) that connects directly to the SeaTalk NG network. And after much research I purchased a ShipModul multiplexer
http://www.shipmodul.com/en/index.html. These devices are AWESOME. They combine, bi-directionally, NMEA0183 and NMEA2000 datagrams and broadcast via WiFi. A simple cable converter allows this device to be connected to the SeaTalk NG network, so I've connected all the RayMarine devices to the Standard Horizon VHF/AIS and the Standard Horizon Chartplotter. Very cool DIY tech...
Feel free to ask any questions, I'm happy to share my experience....I will upload a bunch of photos next