Raymarine ST60's with ST50 Senders & Thoughts

[Rick D]

When my ST50 wind went out and I found it prohibitive to replace the sending unit, I elected to go with a new set of ST60's rather than putting in a NEMA 2000 backbone for Furuno or other instruments. Raymarine said it was no problem. Well, I'll just report that was sorta true. However, the units don't sync up so well and you have to do some manual set up calibration. Recently, I lost the depth. It had been futzy for a while. So, I rechecked the connections and crimped on new ones for the depth sensor. Then I took the new depth sender that came with the package and found the unit worked fine, so it is not the head. The output of the ST60 is greater than the ST50, so that may have caused the problem with the old sending unit.

The bottom line is next haul out, I will have the yard pull the ST50 speed and depth sensors out and replace them with the ST60's. I hope they are the same diameter, or at least bigger to avoid filler issues. At minimum, it will be a PITA. You just know they are in there with 5200.

So, from my experience, I would not let the idea of just replacing the heads govern my choice. I would tend to go with a NEMA 2000 unit as I had originally considered. It will be just as big a pain to pull the new transducer wires as it would have been a new backbone, so nothing was saved. I also am not knocked out with the heft of the ST60 construction compared to the ST50's. They may be just as long-lived, but i have my doubts. If I were to do it again, I might favor Furuno.

 

[Snotter]

When my ST50 wind went out and I found it prohibitive to replace the sending unit, I elected to go with a new set of ST60's rather than putting in a NEMA 2000 backbone for Furuno or other instruments. Raymarine said it was no problem. Well, I'll just report that was sorta true. However, the units don't sync up so well and you have to do some manual set up calibration. Recently, I lost the depth. It had been futzy for a while. So, I rechecked the connections and crimped on new ones for the depth sensor. Then I took the new depth sender that came with the package and found the unit worked fine, so it is not the head. The output of the ST60 is greater than the ST50, so that may have caused the problem with the old sending unit.

The bottom line is next haul out, I will have the yard pull the ST50 speed and depth sensors out and replace them with the ST60's. I hope they are the same diameter, or at least bigger to avoid filler issues. At minimum, it will be a PITA. You just know they are in there with 5200.

So, from my experience, I would not let the idea of just replacing the heads govern my choice. I would tend to go with a NEMA 2000 unit as I had originally considered. It will be just as big a pain to pull the new transducer wires as it would have been a new backbone, so nothing was saved. I also am not knocked out with the heft of the ST60 construction compared to the ST50's. They may be just as long-lived, but i have my doubts. If I were to do it again, I might favor Furuno.

Do yourself a favor--before haul-out get some 5200 release agent, a carpet knife and a syringe for removing the transducer. It will make the job of removing the transducer easier.

 

[Rick D]

Thanks. Was thinking of that too. There are few yards which allow DYI or I'd just do it all myself. In fact, I don't know of any local which allow DYI anymore and the layday charges are way high. I'm going to haul in Mexico next time, so the labor hit won't be quite as bad ($50 an hour less), altho the total cost may be about the same figuring lodging, food & fuel. I'm going to take the release agent along and Lifecalk too.

 

[Rick D]

More ST50 to ST60 Conversion Issues

To follow up on my original post, I have now lost signal from the speed transducer too. No signal at all. Nuts, I have a couple of races coming up that not having a direct reading knotmeter will be a real PITA!

 

[Pat T]

ST50 to ST60

Rick , I made this change over with my wind speed, depth & boat speed but went with the new ST60 instrument read out too. Not sure if you did this? I am now operating with all new ST60 equipment accept for the depth transducer. I have posted about this before a couple years back. You hopefully do not have to have the yard put your boat speed transduced in. It should be able to be removed from inside the boat. You should have a plug also supplied when new. I did replace mine in the water - only can get a little wet while doing this - not bad. And I did splice mine in and used the old cables. I seem to remember Ray Marine telling me I could not splice the depth transducer and that I would have to run the cable provided. I was lucky in that my depth transducer was ok and it was compatable with the new ST60 read out. The good thing was that I kept all of my old cables that I had with the ST50 set-up. Most of the work was involved with cutting bigger holes in the nav pod for the ST60 instruments.

 

[Rick D]

Re: ST50 to ST60

Pat, thanks for the feedback. I suspect I will gave to have both transducers replaced since the ST60+ speed transducer looks like it would not fit into the ST50 through hull. Besides, if I have to pull the cable for the depth anyway, I may as well do the depth at the same time.

 

[mcaswell]

Rick,

Interesting. I replaced my ST50 head units (wind, depth, and speed) with ST60's, and have not encountered problems with the old depth transducer playing nicely with the ST60 display.

I did put the new wind transducer up (using the existing cable / mount base) because the old one was bad (which is what prompted the upgrade to begin with). I also replaced the speed transducer so that I could get the water temp display, but this was easy... pulled the transducer out and put the dummy plug in while I cut the cable and spliced in the new transducer (using ample sealing techniques, since it might occasionally be exposed to water).

But I continued using the same depth transducer, and it's been working fine for a year. I do remember having to do something slightly different with the wiring to get it to work with the ST60 (found the solution on this forum, I believe)... something to do with the screen wire.

--Michael

 

[DougM]

Speed and depth transducers are AIRMAR brand. My boat originally came with an ST40 speed and depth combi unit. I replaced it with ST60s. The transducers in the ST60 box were identical to those already in the boat I just plugged in the new instruments, and they work fine. I took the original ST40 and daisy chained it into the system (seatalk) and installed it as a slave unit at the nav station...

 

[Rick D]

Yea, I'm familiar with the brand of transducers. Unfortunately, things changed between the ST50 and ST60+. Anyhow, I already have the new transducers, so I may as well put them in unless I decide to dump the whole thing and go with a NEMA 2000 package. I did get a year of good performance out of the ST50 transducer/ST60+ heads, so it may be just coincidence the transducers dumped when they did. I just didn't consider that they would wear out in my lifetime. I think this swap may work well for most people; it was false hassle-economy on my part.

 

[Rick D]

Well, I went to the boat and took the St60+ transducer with me. I was still getting zero signal from the ST50 transducer. I hooked up the ST60+ transducer, rebooted the instruments and it was fine. I spun the impeller and it registered. Then I hooked back up the ST50 and checked the connections. Zero. So, I can't imagine how this would happen except for a failed feed wire. Unfortunately, a heck of a coincidence that both the depth and speed which were hooked to the ST50 tanked with a month of each other! The wind is the ST60+ transducer.