Mounting Depth finder on bow

[Bryan Haynes]

Hello all I'm new here. Joined up the other day. I have a 1995 Tracker Pro Team 17 and I'm wanting to mount another depth finder on the bow with the transducer on the trolling motor. My question is, can I just tap into a hot wire up front like in my bow lights or trolling motor or do I need to run the power cable back to the fuse panel under my dash?

 

[Barry Dufour]

Welcome aboard Bryan. On my Nitro 750S I tapped onto the hot wire for the trolling motor and added an in-line fuse. This works well for me. Since you have to manually turn on the depth finder there is little chance of sucking your battery dry. I would always remove the depth finder when I stored the boat.

Barry

 

[Mark Jaworski]

Hi Bryan,



I have an 06 PT175, there is an extra hot wire up there on mine. It may be on yours also.

Just put the fuse in line that comes with the finder like barry did.



mine is good to go.



Mark

 

[Jim in VA]

Hey Bryan:



For mine, I tapped into the hot wire powering the outboard tilt switch. Made a Y connector with the power on the main leg, the tilt/trim switch on one leg and the fishfinder on the other. For the ground I justed tapped into a low hanging lip under the tilt switch/trolling motor plug panel. Works great and since the tilt switch is drawing power only when activated, I don't get any interference on the fishfinder.



Good luck!

 

[TOMMY RICH]

I went adifferent route...I just run a seperate wire back because I didn't want any interference from the console unit .

 

[Bryan Haynes]

Wow, that didn't take long. Thanks for all of your responses. Very helpfull.

 

[TrepMan]

Bryan - I don't believe the 1995's had the extra wiring up front, my 2000 didn't. Check out the Grab Bag (under Resources-) under Electronics you'll see how I did mine, along with a great wiring diagram from another member, John Foster.



Trep

 

[Steve Rizza]

I did mine the same as Trep, and get no interference at all. Even with the filters off, and the sensitivity turned up to max.



It's simple enough to do. I'd try it first and see how well it works before I'd run a dedicated wire back to the battery.





Welcome to the boards.





Steve

 

[Bryan Haynes]

Well I started my project of mounting my depth finder on the bow this morning. Used the wiring diagram Trep told me about. Started out by hooking my hot wire to the trim switch but I found out that the trim runs off of my cranking battery. Moved it to the trolling motor hot wire and ground to the bow light ground. (that's what I was supposed to do in the first place according to the diagram). Got everything back together before the rain hit. Got all of my wires hidden under the bow and I looks real good. Thanks for the help.



Bryan

 

[Steve Rizza]

Bryan,

Often it is best to run the F.F. off the cranking battery. Running it off of the trolling battery sometimes causes interference from the trolling motor.

The interference can be eliminated by turning up the noise filter on your F.F., but then you will lose detail on what you are seeing.









Steve

 

[Larry Harp]

Bryan, I think if you check the instructions to your fish-finder you'll learn that the power should come off the cranking battery. I ran a dedicated line back to the battery for mine. Also, don't neglect to add an inline fuse.



Harpo