Monday 11 June 2012

Fitting transducers

Was first on my list to give the sealant plenty of time to cure.

The log proved very easy... The old one came out with a bit of brute force and some digging with a screwdriver... initially it looked like the hole was 3 or 4mm too small... a bit of a pain as thats not enough to be able to drill out, but after some cleaning I discovered a sleeve... 4 screws buried in the antifoul on the hull, which remarkably undid quite easily and the sleeve for the nee sender very nearly fitted... a few mins with some sandpaper and in it slid... soon Sikaflexed in and tightened up... perfect!

The sounder was another story.

The only practical place for the sounder was where the previous one was fitted, or very close by. However, the deadrise was knocking on for 60 degrees, and it soon became obvious that i'd need a transducer a foot long to be able to fit it upright through such an angle... I decided that this needed a bit of thinking, and so set off to Foxes chandlery for inspiration and maybe an in-hull transducer.

They didn't have one. Or at least not one at the right frequency... but all was not lost... The guy at Foxes suggested that I try the through hull set in a bed of sealant in-hull instead.

I figured that I had nothing to lose by trying.

However, with so much deadrise, there would be a huge dollop of sealant that would hard to retain, so in a burst of inspiration, I nipped to a DIY store and bought a short length of soil hose... duly chopped and filed, I glassed it to the hull... and once set, filled it with sealant and plonked the sender on top...

Bonuses are no extra hole in hull, leaving the old sender in place for now meaning no hole to fibreglass up, and all done in a couple of hours.

Will it work?... Maybe... But lost nothing... If it doesn't then i'll have to try alternatives.

But, seeing holes in the bottom of the hull was 'wrong'!

Pics to follow.

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