Mine did the same thing every once in awhile. Turns out when the door is open, the sun shines on the “receiving eye” (one sends the infrared light, one receives it). If the sun is bright it messed up eye and I had to hold the button down to get it to close. I made a shade to block out the sun and it has worked ever since…
what year is your motor Dan?
My TM batteries are Northern, I assume from Northern Tool and Equipment. They came new with my 2004 Lund, 1850 Tyee. The boat weighs in around 2800-2900 lb with a full tank and gear (well close to that). Gotta weigh it one of these days. The batteries were going strong last year… My TM “was” a Minn Kota, 74/US/AP, 60″ and soon will be a 80/US2/I-Pilot 
. The 74 lb thrust unit worked okay in almost all situations and received a boost from the Yamaha T8 when it needed it. I think my batteries have survived this long because I keep the on-board charger plugged in on a timer for 2 hours a day when the boats not in use. I also remove the batteries and charge them once a month during the hard water season.
I haven’t heard anything on mud flaps or options for bow protection from flying road rocks. Also retractable bow and stern tie downs (boat buckle?)
I was there the second week of Jan. and went out with Mike’s fishing charters. I wouldn’t recomend them. They have a lot of boats and captains and maybe we got the bottom of the barrel. I would tell you to go check out the boat, the captain, and the equipment before you plan to go out with them. We signed up through the motel and trusted them, my mistake! The captain could speak a little English and the mate turned out to be his 16 yr old younger brother that couldn’t speak English and had his head over the side before we even left the harbor! We caught one fish for the day. The highlight was a pod of whales we saw outside of the bay. They breached eleven times 
got it on video. Good luck.
On the switch panels I’ve dealt with, the main power switch is as you described, an input wire comes from the battery, goes through this switch and supplies power to the other switches in a daisy chain fashion. The opposite end of each switch supplies power to whatever is hooked to it and that line should have a fuse appropriate for that device. There may be a place for a ground wire on the panel if the switches have indicator lights to tell when they are on. Oh, the wire to the panel should be fairly hefty, I would use #10 or #8, depends on what it will run… Also put a main fuse that will handle the sum of the current of the accessories you plan to run off of the panel, on that wire as close to the battery as possible. My thoughts anyway.
My brother in-law has one (a 10″) that he bought earlier this year and it seems to cut and run fine. It hasn’t seen much use yet.
Gander Mountain was selling them at that price. Note thats the VX-1 not the VX-1 Pro. A friend just ordered one from the Gander Mountain in Port Huron, MI and they had a few left. Their # is (810) 385-6700
I bought these rope, LED lights at the Scheels store in Mankato. They were on sale for $9.99. I wish I would have found them before I bought a set of Clam lights at 3X the price 
. I run them off of my flasher or camera battery and haven’t had any problems. http://www.scheelssports.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?langId=-1&storeId=10001&catalogId=10101&categoryId=41657&productId=85487&productName=Ice+Shelter+Rope+Light
Check this out http://www.lei-extras.com/store/search.asp?SearchType=Category&Category=Gimbal+Brackets+and+In%2DDash+Mounting+Kits quite abit more than you paid for the unit but, not to bad. I have the LCX-15mt and they are pretty good units. You’ll want to update the software from the Lowrance site on it.
Congrats on the X27 
. I have both mounts on my Tyee, Johnny Ray on the bow and Ram under the windshield. The Ram does slide down in the big waves but, I’ll put up with that for the flexibility to point it anywhere from under the glass. Due to the angle of the windshield I couldn’t do that with the Johnny Ray. If it fits the Johnny is a more solid unit (my thought anyway). I mounted my GPS antenna close to the location of my sonar transducer. Some of the structure I fish is 6′ x 6′ in 25′ FOW, with nothing around it and hard to find. When I’m on a waypoint the transducer is right there, not 9′ or 10′ away like it would be if I mounted it by the SONAR/GPS unit. The GPS isn’t exact but, why add to it? Having the two close together seems like it adds to the accuracy of the combination. My 2 cents worth…
