huttcraft
Member
This summer I installed a Hawkeye D11S depth sounder on my '05 Sportster SCIC. It was quite an odyssey so I though a post here may help the next guy.
Originally I bought Hawkeye's in-dash product, the D10DX, planning to find a place somewhere on the boat for the 2" gauge. I also picked-up one of Hawkeye's surface mount adapters just in case I couldn't find a good spot. The difficulty with this particular SeaDoo model, however, is the absence of any dash space for additional gauges.
I also originally bought the transom-mounted transducer. I figured it would be less prone to failure since its signal would not need to pass through the hull, and it would also give me water temperature.
When the kit arrived, however, it became clear the transom-mount was going to be tricky. There are almost no straight or flat surfaces on this boat and the transom is no exception. While I could get the angle right relative to the bottom of the hull without too much trouble, the problem was the transom angle from above, relative to the boat's midline. Unlike most boats the transom is not perpendicular to the hull's centreline when you look at it from above. I would need a large home-made shim to make the transducer pass through the water straight.
I contacted Hawkeye. Using their live chat feature I got excellent customer service, but the bad news that they did not recommend a transom-mounted transducer for jet boats. I was told that as a general rule they do not perform as well as through-hull. After some thought I decided to exchange the works for the in-hull transducer and the surface-mounted D11S gauge, which I thought would give me more mounting versatility. Hawkeye was great to deal with and I only paid shipping for the exchange.
I attach pictures of my final install.
I dealt with the difficult dash by mounting the gauge in the centre, visible through the steering wheel, on the unevenly shaped grey plastic fairing. I made rubber shims from an old innertube to account for the mounting surface's curve. The camera angle in the second picture makes it look crooked but it's in fact straight.
This unit has a large separate module behind the dash I secured with zipties. While I find the dash frustrating I will say that this boat has great access from above to the wiring behind it. I installed the depth alarm through the fibreglass under the console, beside the ignition alarm.
I took power and ground from the stereo. Here I removed the hot and ground pins from the stereo's adapter, soldered short leads directly to each pin, then reinserted them into the adapter plug. These new leads were attached to the depth sounder unit's leads with spade connectors. Using the stereo's power ensures the unit will power-down when the master power is off.
The transducer comes with 30 feet of wire so there was way more than enough for this tiny boat. After threading it through the starboard side from the engine compartment to the dash I tried various mounting locations. Posts here make it sound easy to put the transducer in a twist-tied bag of water and tape it down to the hull, but my ducttape would not stick worth a darn and the thing kept moving around. It's also hard to keep the transducer facing the right way when the tape only secures the bag, not the unit itself. I also tried vaseline, the other recommended test method, but that made taping it in place even worse.
After three or four test locations I ended up installing the transducer directly under the motor on the port side, near the hull centreline and ahead of the water intake. This is not the location recommended elsewhere in these forums but worked for me. I sanded the hull as best I could but admittedly not perfectly smooth as instructed. Also contrary to the instructions I used a 60-minute marine epoxy that dries grey, rather than clear.
In any case it works. This weekend I tested it around the lake and got good readings up to about 45 miles an hour, which to me is great.
If anyone else is going down this road during the off-season feel free to drop me a PM or reply with any questions.
Dave
Originally I bought Hawkeye's in-dash product, the D10DX, planning to find a place somewhere on the boat for the 2" gauge. I also picked-up one of Hawkeye's surface mount adapters just in case I couldn't find a good spot. The difficulty with this particular SeaDoo model, however, is the absence of any dash space for additional gauges.
I also originally bought the transom-mounted transducer. I figured it would be less prone to failure since its signal would not need to pass through the hull, and it would also give me water temperature.
When the kit arrived, however, it became clear the transom-mount was going to be tricky. There are almost no straight or flat surfaces on this boat and the transom is no exception. While I could get the angle right relative to the bottom of the hull without too much trouble, the problem was the transom angle from above, relative to the boat's midline. Unlike most boats the transom is not perpendicular to the hull's centreline when you look at it from above. I would need a large home-made shim to make the transducer pass through the water straight.
I contacted Hawkeye. Using their live chat feature I got excellent customer service, but the bad news that they did not recommend a transom-mounted transducer for jet boats. I was told that as a general rule they do not perform as well as through-hull. After some thought I decided to exchange the works for the in-hull transducer and the surface-mounted D11S gauge, which I thought would give me more mounting versatility. Hawkeye was great to deal with and I only paid shipping for the exchange.
I attach pictures of my final install.
I dealt with the difficult dash by mounting the gauge in the centre, visible through the steering wheel, on the unevenly shaped grey plastic fairing. I made rubber shims from an old innertube to account for the mounting surface's curve. The camera angle in the second picture makes it look crooked but it's in fact straight.
This unit has a large separate module behind the dash I secured with zipties. While I find the dash frustrating I will say that this boat has great access from above to the wiring behind it. I installed the depth alarm through the fibreglass under the console, beside the ignition alarm.
I took power and ground from the stereo. Here I removed the hot and ground pins from the stereo's adapter, soldered short leads directly to each pin, then reinserted them into the adapter plug. These new leads were attached to the depth sounder unit's leads with spade connectors. Using the stereo's power ensures the unit will power-down when the master power is off.
The transducer comes with 30 feet of wire so there was way more than enough for this tiny boat. After threading it through the starboard side from the engine compartment to the dash I tried various mounting locations. Posts here make it sound easy to put the transducer in a twist-tied bag of water and tape it down to the hull, but my ducttape would not stick worth a darn and the thing kept moving around. It's also hard to keep the transducer facing the right way when the tape only secures the bag, not the unit itself. I also tried vaseline, the other recommended test method, but that made taping it in place even worse.
After three or four test locations I ended up installing the transducer directly under the motor on the port side, near the hull centreline and ahead of the water intake. This is not the location recommended elsewhere in these forums but worked for me. I sanded the hull as best I could but admittedly not perfectly smooth as instructed. Also contrary to the instructions I used a 60-minute marine epoxy that dries grey, rather than clear.
In any case it works. This weekend I tested it around the lake and got good readings up to about 45 miles an hour, which to me is great.
If anyone else is going down this road during the off-season feel free to drop me a PM or reply with any questions.
Dave
