Transducer Installed on 242

[JTrottaNY]

Added a Garmin GT23 transducer to the 741xs unit that came with my boat.

Well it wasnt nearly as difficult as I had anticipated. Lots of room to work in this boat and 90% finished surfaces!

Used a stern saver to reduce the number of holes in the hull. Mounted the transducer on the rear of the bilge area, port side. Still a couple of inches clearance between the transducer and the thrust vector at full turn.

Ran the cable through the scanstrut fitting and around the rear of the bilge, pulled the starboard speaker to snake the wire around the carpeted board and into the cooler locker. Zip tied to the existing wire bundle all the way up to where they enter the helm/dash compartment. Pulled back the fabric and finished running wire up through the existing hole in the dash tray- not ideal but that's how the power cable was installed so why make another hole right?

Finished off the wires by wrapping them with some nylon sheathing. The included 20' transducer cable was way more than I needed, I still have about 5' coiled up and ziptied up under the "dash".

The unit recognizes the transducer and displays ambient temp. Will report back on sonar performance when I can get it on the water.

 

[JTrottaNY]

For reference, this placement gave great readings up to 45mph in 30-50 fow. At about 48mph the bottom line starts to breakup a little bit but I really don't think it matters at that point still gives me an idea of how much water I am running in- at speed it's way too late to adjust for any sudden changes (sand bar or rock pile) especially when they are reading off the back of your boat!

 

[mbtodd]

I'm pretty much running the same setup as you on. 2013 though with a Humming Bird Helix 7.
I'm placing the unit in the same spot but on a Ram mount so I can move it around with less impact on the helm.
nice setup.
question, what size scanstrut did you use. Looks like a medium but not 100%.

 

[JTrottaNY]

I'm pretty much running the same setup as you on. 2013 though with a Humming Bird Helix 7.
I'm placing the unit in the same spot but on a Ram mount so I can move it around with less impact on the helm.
nice setup.
question, what size scanstrut did you use. Looks like a medium but not 100%.

That is actually the mini! I did have to run a drill but through the plastic backing plate just to remove a few thousandths (or you could sand the edge of the plug), basically just removed the edges left from the plastic mold- this may or may not be necessary for a different transducer plug but either way literally took more time to find the right size drill bit than anything else. If you wanted to avoid that step all together the small size would work fine.