*I have a Lowrance LMS 522c in the shop that I've kept around as a spare for a couple of years. Recently acquired a Sea Ray cuddy cabin boat (deep v), and it needs a depth finder on it. I have the transom mount and transducer for the FF, and I understand you can mount them inside the hull.

On this Sea Ray the only good area I've found to put a transducer in the hull is right where the keel is, in an underfloor storage compartment, but it is built up/reinforced to an estimated 3-5" thick. Would this thickness of hull material harm the operation of the transducer? I would think it would, but have been wrong a couple of times in my life.

I could move it over a bit and get to just the hull thickness, but then it would be angled, not shooting straight down. The keel on this boat is pretty pronounced even at the stern, so there really isn't any area of the hull that is "flat" other than where they built up the material that reinforces the keel of the hull.

*Also, I'll need to mount the head unit at the helm where it will be at least partially covered by the windshield/glass. Will the GPS read thru the glass? Or should I be looking for a remote mounted puck?

*And lastly, if I do mount the tranducer in this storage compartment, I'll need to route the transducer wire thru the engine compartment within about a foot of the plug wires on one side. Will I get any signal distortion from the plug wires and such?

Thanks

Don't know about keel thickness. Run transducer wire thru a piece of runber hose while passing by plug wires to further shield from interference. A external puck would most likely enhance GPS signal .

I do not believe that the transducer will work inside your hull. While I'm not sure what thickness fiberglass is "too much", the bigger issue will be that the keel surface of the hull exterior is not parallel to the face of the transducer or the typical seabed. The imperfect refraction angle will distort and attenuate (reduce) the signal level as a portion of the returning signal gets reflected away from the hull at the angle of the deep V.

Each time a signal encounters a change in transmission media, we refer to this as a "discontinuity". This means transitions such as xducer-housing to epoxy, epoxy to fiberglass, fiberglass to water, etc. At each discontinuity, some signal intensity is lost via reflection/refraction instead of direct passage. The angle of each material matters as well. A performance killer will be signals coming back to the V-angled hull, which will reflect away to some extent rather than "punch through" to eventually find the face of you transducer pod. As an engineer, I seriously doubt this will work very well. If it does work at all, you shouldn't expect much detail/resolution. Also expect the signal to disappear as your speed of hull travel increases.

Adding a rubber hose covering as electrical shielding isn't worth 2 cents, unless maybe the material is several inches thick. A non-conductive non-grounded material shield is virtually worthless for electrical interference. The transducer cable already has a ground shield sheath that far out-performs a rubber/synthetic material. The presence of this sheath is one reason why a good clean Ground connection is important for the unit's performance. There is add-on conductive sheath material available that can be grounded if your boat has a Ground Plate in the hull. Tying this back to the battery probably wouldn't be much different than the shield already built into the cable.

Do yourself a favor and mount the transducer in a bracket on the transom. This should also help avoid close proximity to engine ignition components.

Do like flippin says and mount on transom. Go to Lowrance website and get mounting instructions. You are not going to take that boat in to the stumps so a transom mount is way to go. Get some 3m 4200 to seal screws. I probably have an extra transom mounting kit but may not be worth your time to come to Rockwall. You will be much happier with performance of transom mount with the exception of running at speed.

Looks like it's getting mounted on the transom. Thanks for the input fellas!