I did an HDS-7 at the bow myself a few weeks ago, and luckily the gimble fit the old hole pattern and the wires werent to difficult to run (once I figured out the trick). For the 9 in the console Im getting the stuff I could actually screw up done at my local Bass Cat dealer, they said they can do the whole thing in 2-3 hours appx $95 an hour. Im trying to do a few little things to try and get that down to 1-2 hours. I removed the old unit, started running the old transducer cable out with a cord tied to it to pull the new transducer cord through, which brings me to question one. I got the cable all the way to end when the connectors got stuck on the bottom of the jackplate, there is only a very small clearance where the wires are run through, can I loosen the bottom 2 jackplate bolts alot and the top 2 a little bit so I can pivot the jackplate to get the cables out, or am I stuck and just let the dealer do it. Second question: the old console unit got its 12V in from 2 gaint wires (guessing 10 guage?), I didnt see anything else spliced off them, should I just use this as power to new unit and to the NMEA 2000 backbone (which is currently running off an 8 AA pack on the floorboard to run spotlight scan)? Or should I run the NMEA 0186 or whatever the number it is cable to back where the batteries are let the dealer hook them up there, either way, Ill let the dealer install the wiring, just whether to run the cable back or not?
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