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Some of you know that I bought a used BassCat Pantera Classic (2008 model) a couple of years ago. Thought I would discuss the various changes I have made since I didnt find some of this discussed anywhere.1. Trailer brakes. Previous owner pretty much just let them go. When I bought the thing, the caliper dust boots were cracked/broken, the caliper pistons/cylinders were rusted/pitted, as was the master cylinder (how that happened, no clue). System was basically dry (no brake fluid to be found). Talked to Allan in parts, ordered two new calipers + new A60 actuator. Installed, bled, and things have worked just fine since. Once the air is completely gone, brakes work flawlessly.2. Trailer bunks. I knew these needed work when I bought the boat. Straightforward process to find some good PT 2×6 lumber, cut them to the lengths/widths/tapers as given by BCB, and ordered the carpet, again from Allan. Bunks and fender carpet still looks new. Still at risk of blistering (my boat had a few) but that seems to come with carpeted bunks… I always keep a box fan under the boat to at least help dry out the bunks when not on the water.3. Trailer lights. My 08 came with incandescent bulbs. Over time, I replaced ALL with LED lights. For the tail lights, I replaced with the combo backup/tail/stop light bulbs you can find on the internet (one end is clear, other end is red). I added a blue wire down both sides to power the reverse lights. There is a nicer version out, that is all white. In tail light mode, things glow red. With the blue wire energized, the entire bulb glows bright white. Only down side is the company says “do not submerge” so I elected to avoid them. The existing bulbs work just fine and allow me to back up my curving driveway at night with no assistance. Also nice to not deal with replacing bulbs when they develop a leak. I used to keep 2-3 of the trucklight type tail light bulbs handy as they leaked too much. And a leak equals a shattered internal bulb when water touches it. 2 years and no replaced bulbs leaves me happy.4. Wiring. previous owner did lots of wire splicing for unknown reasons (trailer wiring). I cleaned all of that up, new wiring, liquid plastic or heat shrink + liquid plastic to keep everything dry. No lighting glitches in a long time now.5. I have already reported on my seastar steering exploits. Suffice it to say I am now a big uFlex silver steer fan. Working flawlessly, zero mechanical slop of any kind. Had a new ranger next to me on Monday as we had pulled up from the ramp to wipe things down. He noticed the bright silver steering cylinder and asked about it. We compared notes and when we compared stiffness, he was grumbling. Not much more to add over previous thread.6. Re-ran depth finder power. Used a hefty waterproof extension cord, three wire. Combined three wires into one, and used two lengths of this cord to go from rear to front. Appears to be equivalent to something somewhat larger than 8 gauge. No longer notice any voltage drop. Also ran the power wires down starboard side to get away from TM power wires that run down port side. Am not seeing any noise whatsoever.7. Had a couple of perko latches that were broke when we bought the thing. After son broke a third one dropping the lid with the latch in the closed position, I called Allan again to ask for suggestions. He recommended the SouthCo latches as near perfect drop-in replacements. Only issue I had was the ice chess where the insulated sides are fairly close and the latch locking cam would hit the side before rotating to the right position to close the latch. A little grinding and it worked well. Everything in these is stainless, no cast aluminum, no small locking shaft, no plastic parts. Look good, work better, dont leak. 8. Recently decided to replace old electronics. Had a humminbird 998 SI at the console, 958 at the bow, and a 787 built in (mainly shoot-thru depth for running at speed). These were big units physically and use the clunky bubble switches for the controls. Really got tired of the poorly working pushbuttons and decided to change. Did not want to spend a small fortune, so I decided to go with Lawrence Elite TIs. 9″ front/back, and 5″ to replace the built-in without having to re-do everything. Like the Lowrance units in general. Similar as far as DI/SI/2d goes. Probably a little better designed interface that is easier to use. Only downside I have seen is that the bird lake master maps are better than Navionics. They have contour lines for almost all of Lay lake, where Navionics sort of covers the main parts of the river but not the side ledges. And it has odd things like a big brownish area in the middle of the river where there is nothing remotely resembling an island. Still studying that. But the touch screens are nice, and my 9″ Lowrance units are physically SMALLER than the 8″ humminbirds they replaced, thanks to the lack of most of the buttons. Imaging quality? Cant tell any difference. Humminbird did provide a few nice things that I dont get with Lawrence. For example, in side imaging or down imaging, they have a really nice looking brownish font. But then at the top left corner, they show the digital depth in a black font with a one pixel white border. Gets lost in the imaging data and the two font choices are normal and small. I would have labeled em small and smaller. The birds let you pick what is shown on the left hand side. IE temp, depth, speed, voltage, course, you-name it. But I am getting more used to the Lowrance units, so this is probably more of the motor-guide vs Minn-Kota which side is the right side for the momentary-on foot switch? Probably the one you use the most, and changing takes time.9. Early on added a mercmonitor which is a useful tool. Lets you see accurate RPM, water pressure, engine water temp, etc data. And tells you what caused an alarm to trigger so you dont have to guess. This was actually an easy change. Needed a CAN bus cable, an adapter cable to connect to the mercmonitor cable, and then the mercmonitor itself. When it arrived, I plugged everything together before installing, and POOF! it worked without any hassle. Hardest part was (always) getting cable from the console to the motor. Mercury uses obnoxiously large connectors that make this a bit of work. Been totally happy and the “favorites” is nice where you can have it rotate from RPM to water pressure to engine coolant temp at whatever speed you want (I am using default 2 seconds for each). It also comes with a NMEA output that can plug into a lowrance NMEA box to get all the engine data shown on the sonar units if you want. This is next on my list to try as the NMEA backbone for lowrance is not very expensive (maybe $60 or so at BassPro).10. Only other major replacements were (a) new batteries (3) + new charger (old pro mariner 2 bank was grossly overcharging, went to a 3 bank and got rid of the small second charger as well) and new tires on trailer. Tires looked new (the Mastercraft Avenger GT) tires but one started to show pretty serious tread separation and turned into an anything-but-round mess.2014 pro xs has been flawless, had about 200 hours when I bought it, now has 414 (mercmonitor will show this too) almost 2 years later. Boat has also been flawless. The touchpad acted up and a quick chat with Allan, and something around $100 bucks fixed that right up. We did clean up a lot of wiring clutter from previous owner. Bilge now looks reasonable as opposed to piles of wire running everywhere.Only other glitch was I had to replace the 50a breaker on the TM, as the MK maxxum pro 80 draws something like 56 amps at 100% power, which would trip the breaker after 5-10 minutes of running upstream in stiff current. Went to a 60 and all has been well…Now, we are fixing to head to the river this afternoon. Weather guessers were saying 90% chance of rain today when I looked yesterday. Now down to 20%. 🙂