Boat Wiring Question

I’ll soon by installing a depth finder and I have a couple questions so that I hopefully avoid interference problems.

1) I know the depth finder wiring should be run as far away from the trolling motor wiring as possible, but I’m unsure as to whether that means I should keep both the power and transducer cords away from the trolling motor wires, or do I want the transducer cord seperated even away from it’s own power cord?

2) It’s a smaller boat and a 12V trolling motor. Will I get intereference from sharing the same battery for my fish finder?

Thanks for the help!

Generally speaking, the TM wires are run down one side of the boat and the FF and transducer down the other.

Will you get inteference? maybe you can always try it out, if weight was a big issue, you could probably get by with a smaller 12v battery for the FF, I ran my marcum lx3 all the time on the ice pack battery only, even during the summer.

I think you’ll want/need 2 batteries anyways one for the TM only and one for everything else.

You’ll be just fine running off the trolling motor batteries provided you begin your plumbing for the fishfinder with seperate wires from the battery.
Never power a fishfinder from a fuse box or splice
into other wiring, your just asking for trouble.
This is a prized boat that you have probably worked
very hard for, hook it up right. do not use crimp style butt connectors at the electrical connections, soldier
all connections and use a polyetheyelene shrink wrap.
If you don’t know how to soldier electrical joint or
have a freind that knows how to do it. hire it done.
Don’t let them tell you; “butt connectors will work just fine” tell them you want them solierd. Once it’s done there are no worries about your electrical connections.

Some people say i’m over the top, but I like to do things once and then not worry about them.

Brian

I just dropped my jon boat off at Smittys Marine in Lake City last night to have lights wired and am having my battery moved up towards the front to get some weight out of the back end which will mean that the trolling motor wires will need to be lengthened along with the fish locator wiring too. I don’t want electrical problems so to be sure its done properly I chose to have my dealer to it. Its starting to get dark earlier now and I need lights to be able to stay out past dark on the water. Using the jon boat on week nights will allow me to stay out later and not have to mess with the cover on the bigger boat when I get home so I can spend that extra time on the water. [now is that getting lazy or what? lol]

Thanks, Bill

ps. The only battery in this boat is my trolling motor battery and I run the trolling motor, fish locater, and GPS all at the same time without interferrence. All three are on the same side of the boat all within 2 feet of each other [before the battery gets moved to the front] and have had no problems. The battery is being moved up front for weight reasons only.

jphersh22

I have never had interferance from running transducer wires close to electrical wires?

Interference(sp?) on a depth finder usually comes from being hooked to the same battery as a “noisy” trolling motor… some trolling motors create a lot of noise when they are running, and you will see the noise change as the speed setting changes. The same can also happen on some main engine charging systems. I hook up to a seperate battery if I am getting interferance from another accessory, its all you can do.