Installing a transducer

[sashaproctor]

I just bought a 1976 Catalina 27 that has absolutely no instruments on it. I'm looking at the Garmin GPSMAP 547xs 10Hz GPS/GLONASS Receiver with Transducer. Does anyone have a better suggestion first of all, and secondly the marina wants to charge me $100 an hour to install it and estimated a day and a half which would end up costing me over $1000 in labour. Has anyone installed one of these before? The boat has a hole from an older transducer that is no longer there so no drilling required. Am I crazy to try this my self? Can anyone point me in the direction of some kind of instructions on how to do this?

thanks.

 

[Picflight]

Very good instructions come with the unit on how to install. Not crazy to do it yourself if you are comfortable with tools.

 

[sashaproctor]

Very good instructions come with the unit on how to install. Not crazy to do it yourself if you are comfortable with tools.

Oh nice. I wasn't aware of that. That makes it a lot simpler. Thanks for the heads up.

 

[Capt jgw]

I would assume you're out of the water. I've heard of people installing them in the water, but that's just too scary to contemplate.
How about the size of the hole? They're not all the same. Making the hole larger is easy, smaller, not so much.
If the transducer does not have a paddle wheel, thermometer, or other device that needs to be in the water, you can glue it to the inside of the hull on most solid glass boats (no balsa or foam core). There should be several threads here on how to do that.

 

[The Garbone]

I installed my garmin 541s transducer in a pile of wax under the vberth and it works fine. Sticky but easy to clean up and non toxic, 2 toilet wax rings were $4 from the local hardware store. The entire setup was easier to install than a car stereo.

I have it mounted on the forward bulkhead of the cockpit and run the wire out the companionway when using it and keep it stowed below when not in use. I recently bought a flush mount kit and plan on a more permanent install but have yet to get around to it.

 

[Ward H]

What's nice about the Garmin line is you can buy the unit without the transducer and then buy the shoot thru the hull transducer puck or thru hull mounted transducer.
That 547XS is very nice but may be overkill for a sailboat. My research led me to believe the extra cost special features were on the fish finder side.
Take a look at the 54DV. Lower cost, easy to use and still has great chart plotter functions.
And yes, do the install yourself.

 

[sashaproctor]

What's nice about the Garmin line is you can buy the unit without the transducer and then buy the shoot thru the hull transducer puck or thru hull mounted transducer.
That 547XS is very nice but may be overkill for a sailboat. My research led me to believe the extra cost special features were on the fish finder side.
Take a look at the 54DV. Lower cost, easy to use and still has great chart plotter functions.
And yes, do the install yourself.

Nice! Thanks Ward. I was thinking the fish finder features were a bit unnecessary.