bow mounted transducer

[Ben Trod]

What is the best way to go about mounting a transducer for my bow mounted depth finder? The one I have now I mounted on the motor, but I get interference when the propeller spins. I have heard the puck style works mounted on the motor. What do you guys suggest?

[Guest]

sounds like you have the motor and finder hooked up to the same battery?

[Ben Trod]

Interesting. I have a 24 volt motor. I don't imagine I could hook it up to the other battery. I am thinking I have to run it to the back of the boat?

[Guest]

Run the finder on its own battery.

[delmuts]

i am afraid i have to agree. i run mine off of my starting batt. and haven't had any problem. i have read articles about locators of certain frequencies do have an interference problem and that you need to add something to the sys. to stop it ( i can't think of what it is called) help me out guys!!!! del

[Surface Tension]

Some trolling motors give off noise. You can add a filter to the power cord but its best not to share the same battery as the trolling motor. I've got 2 Auto Pilots, one gives off interference and the other doesn't so its not brand or model specific as to which motors are the culprit.

[Ben Trod]

Thanks guys! That leads me to this question. What guage wire should I buy to run power from the back of the boat?

[Mark Christianson]

I have a puck transducer on the trolling motor, and I use my sealed lead acid battery that I use for ice fishing to run the unit in the boat.
I put the battery in my front storage bin, so its close to the graph.

[RK]

Hi Ben,
Yeah, you're going to need to run wires back to your start battery. With a lot of trolling motors, because of 'maximizer' type battery use optimization systems, servo motors and switches, you can get a lot of interference through the power cords. Some combinations of trolling motors/depth finders are worse than others, but generally speaking, you're way better off running wires back. Most riggers will tell you it's a must.

I've always run 10 ga. wire, and if you can, run the wires so that they aren't running next to other wires in the boat's wiring harness. Sometimes you can pick up interference from them as well. It's not possible in all boats though. When fishing the wires, be aware of places where it can rub against framing pieces, rough fiberglass or aluminum edges, etc., and reinforce those spots with wire channel tubing. Also, if you have to splice wires here and there, make sure the splices are sound, and seal them with liquid electrical tape and heat shrink tubing. Don't use butt splice connectors... Few things are more of a pain in the kazoo than a bad wire somewhere between stem and stern that makes your bow mount finder go kaput.

Sometimes, even after all that, you can still get interference directly from the trolling motor contacting the transdeucer. A simple starting fix is taking a piece of innertube rubber and putting it between the motor housing and the x-deucer. If that doesn't work, call the manufacturer of your depth finder and ask to talk to their techies about the problem. They usually have quite a bit of experience with this stuff, and will have some suggestions - might be wiring changes, adding resistors, or what have you. Depends on the particulars.

Whew - long answer...sorry about that. Good luck!

RK

[Ben Trod]

RK

Outstanding answer! Thank you from the bottom of my live well.