Off the Yak wrote:
For now I have ghetto-rigged it together just twisting the wires and electrical taping it as a temporary solution until I can get a more permanent job done. The image on the screen has been working especially in deeper depths, but sometimes especially in shallower water the image doesn't seem quite right and has a fair bit of static or random vertical lines going all the way thru the image - assuming thanks to the less than perfect connection.
There's also a TON of extra wire floating around loose inside my kayak. I zip tied a bunch of it together, but this still leaves a huge wad of wire just flopping around inside. You mentioned that most companies do not recommend cutting and splicing the wires. Any tips on securing all this crap-ton of extra wire? I was thinking of rigging some velcro to the side of the kayak inside somewhere to strap the wires up to, to also hopefully help keep them out of any water that may build up inside the kayak while out on the water. Though I was hoping to possibly cut out a lot of the extra wiring to just clean it up.
just twisting wires together will cause you problems. Don't do it. If you're lucky, all that will happen is that you bump a wire and lose a connection, your fish finder quits working, and you have to return to shore and waste some fishing time trying to locate the problem and twist wires back together. If you aren't lucky, you'll get a short, and if your fish finder isn't fused correctly you could catch wires on fire or fry your fish finder.
You can keep extra cable under control by coiling it up, positioning it inside your kayak between two scupper holes (which look like pillars inside a sit-on-top kayak), and attaching the coil to the both scupper holes with cable ties. If you just attach the coil of wire to one scupper hole, the coil can move around a lot inside your kayak.