So, after a long spring that has been rainy and cold here in the Northeast, I have finally been out for a recreational day.
I stated I had been working on installing a MFD display in my 24 Fasdeck
I am guilty of not taking many pictures of the process. Trying to pay attention to all the little details and cutting just took to much of my attention. The pictures I have are of the Preexisting gauge wire hookups, (Take pictures of those wire connections and have someone doing it with you to assist your memory, tape each wire with a position note also.
Caution that there is a significant number of Power jumps between the gauges , I needed to enlist someone with knowledge of the ignition system to help get the power between the gauges connected properly after removing two of the gauges ( Speed and Tach) now being reported by the Smartcraft gauge. This was not with some mistakes on my part.
I received the Dash frame minus all gauges that from Regal after a 4 week wait and $175 for the part. I would say to anyone else you may just take your current dash out to a fabricator and have them cut it for you. You could have someone do a dip type paint for the finish you want. It took some real detail to fit the unit perfect.
Your choice of units to put in this spot are the Simrad Go7, or Mercury Vessel View 5 or Raymarine Axiom 7, Those are the units I considered.
I went with the Raymarine Axiom 7, and along side it installed the Mercury Smartcraft Level 3 Merc monitor.
The unit would not fit in the center due to the RegalVue button cut outs being to wide to be covered.
Decision was made to offset the unit to the left and fill button holes 12mm with stainless buttons that are currently non functional just for appearance.
I used two boarders of the Regalvue cutout and with the overlying Raymarine template used a Dremel metal saw with a lot of planning and a metal square as a guide to stop any skips.
The finish on the dash held up to the metal saw cutting heat without any affect at all.
I did a surface mount that had a small overlap of the unit that was a little forgiving for any defects i may have ended up with. I do not think a flush mount is possible with the cutting that is required.
there are holes in this dash that are not in an area that had any thing behind them, I used hardware to just fill those wholes for appearance.
I am very happy with the finished product.
The Raymarine unit Axiom 7 with Lighthouse 3 is in its infancy, I have found that some features that are in the mature lighthouse 2 software have not made it to Axiom. This is all scheduled for rollouts over the near future. No fusion marine compatibility yet and some basic customization is not up an running yet. But I have the 3D sonar Transom mounted transducer installed and my limited experience with the 3d, downvision, and other sonar features find it impressive. really cool
Lighthouse 3 is not allowing full features of Navionics platinum+, 3d etc just yet. I hope they get that all up to date soon.
So here is the finished dash(having difficulty getting image sized correctly for forum. It is on Photobucket
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