w5pfg
Well-Known Member
This past week I was off work. A buddy of mine from Iowa came and we boated a good 4-8 hours a day. It was nice...7 long days of burning gasoline on the lake!
One of the days we pulled the boat to replace my Garmin 95. My boat is a 2011 and apparently Bennington was still getting rid of those dinosaur units back then. It was still quite functional, but lacked some features I really desired.
I selected the Garmin Echomap Plus 43cv because it fit perfectly where the Garmin 95 had been installed. I would have liked to have gone with the 53cv, but the paper template I downloaded and tried was not as good of a fit. Frankly, having installed the 43cv I do not think I needed the larger screen. There are some other trade-offs, but I'm quite pleased overall. Two things are the 43cv doesn't come with the snap-on cover and the mounting hardware. I bought the plastic cover separately and got my own mounting hardware locally ($2 vs $16.)
Running the new cabling from the helm to the transducer was quite simple. On this Garmin unit, the transducer cable is hardwired on the transducer end. This meant we had to fish the cable from the stern up to the helm. Unfortunately Bennington used cable ties between the transducer and the helm on the original installation, so it was useless to use as a fish line.
We pretty much used the same cable route as the original transducer cable. Like others, the cable supplied by Garmin was about 2 feet short. I used a 10 foot extension, which is pretty much coiled up under the helm now. The OEM cable makes it to about 8" inside the hole in the floor underneath the helm.
Working in the helm was a slight challenge for this big boy. I could have pulled it, but wanted to save time. The problem was the old Garmin and the new Garmin were on the far starboard side, and that meant I had to go "all in" and get both my arms inside the helm. We managed.
Overall it was about a 4 hour project for us because we took our sweet time.
I'm very pleased with the functionality of the Garmin Echomap 43cv. It has the charts I want, sonar, speed, temperature, and alarms. There are other features that I could enable, but for the time being it's a winner at this price.
PS. I now have a Garmin 95 and transducer sitting in my storage. If someone comes along that needs one, it's available for shipping and reasonable handling.
One of the days we pulled the boat to replace my Garmin 95. My boat is a 2011 and apparently Bennington was still getting rid of those dinosaur units back then. It was still quite functional, but lacked some features I really desired.
I selected the Garmin Echomap Plus 43cv because it fit perfectly where the Garmin 95 had been installed. I would have liked to have gone with the 53cv, but the paper template I downloaded and tried was not as good of a fit. Frankly, having installed the 43cv I do not think I needed the larger screen. There are some other trade-offs, but I'm quite pleased overall. Two things are the 43cv doesn't come with the snap-on cover and the mounting hardware. I bought the plastic cover separately and got my own mounting hardware locally ($2 vs $16.)
Running the new cabling from the helm to the transducer was quite simple. On this Garmin unit, the transducer cable is hardwired on the transducer end. This meant we had to fish the cable from the stern up to the helm. Unfortunately Bennington used cable ties between the transducer and the helm on the original installation, so it was useless to use as a fish line.
We pretty much used the same cable route as the original transducer cable. Like others, the cable supplied by Garmin was about 2 feet short. I used a 10 foot extension, which is pretty much coiled up under the helm now. The OEM cable makes it to about 8" inside the hole in the floor underneath the helm.
Working in the helm was a slight challenge for this big boy. I could have pulled it, but wanted to save time. The problem was the old Garmin and the new Garmin were on the far starboard side, and that meant I had to go "all in" and get both my arms inside the helm. We managed.
Overall it was about a 4 hour project for us because we took our sweet time.
I'm very pleased with the functionality of the Garmin Echomap 43cv. It has the charts I want, sonar, speed, temperature, and alarms. There are other features that I could enable, but for the time being it's a winner at this price.
PS. I now have a Garmin 95 and transducer sitting in my storage. If someone comes along that needs one, it's available for shipping and reasonable handling.