2004 Sea Ray 420DA Electronics Refit DIY

[Jason_Peters]

Okay fellas', little help here. I'll very likely be taking possession soon of a new to me, 2004 Sea Ray 420DA (Merc 8.1, Gas) on LOTO. A dream thats been in the making for quite awile for me and the wifey! However, as you can see below she's in dire need of an electronics refit:

I've had some limited experience in tackling similar, though much smaller, projects on previous boats and am debating on tackling this myself in order to save the install cost. I'm definitely no expert, but I do remember given all the right parts, connectors, etc, it was pretty easy to get everything wired up and talking.

I'm hopeful the experts in here can help me narrow down the appropriate shopping list, and estimate the costs, should I choose to dive in. Perhaps I'll turn this into a project thread for folks to follow along. Here is what I have in mind:

-Remove the old Smartcraft display, upgrade to newer version, possibly move it to replace non-functioning SeaRay Monitor to left of Throttle above spotlight control.
-Remove the old Raymarine GPS, replace with 10"-12" screen. Likely Raymarine since that's what I'm most familiar with, but I may be interested in Garmin or others as well.
-Remove old VHF speaker, replace with small multi-function gauge? May, or may not, replace the VHF, as its not commonly used inland on LOTO.

Obviously, I'll want to network/integrate everything together as much as possible. I'd also like to leave some room for expansion, perhaps another display on the left dash, and a basic autopilot at some point in the future. The previous owner did upgrade the stereo with a new Fusion Marine system, boat has no radar, and I'm told a pretty much useless KVH M3 dish installed on the hard top (which is a whole other project...).

Budget of course is always concern, currently thinking around $5-8k but that's a wild guess on my part, and it's a boat... so I'm sure I can spend a bunch more. Anyone care to dive in and help a fella along? What should I be looking at? Is this something I can easily tackle, or should I bite the bullet, and pay to have it done? Help me refit a new helm! Thanks!

 

[gerryb]

First welcome to the site and thank you for posting.

Replacing all of the items in your list is a significant undertaking. Since you haven't done this before, I would caution against doing all three systems at the same time. There is a significantly steep learning curve in getting this to all work at the end and you'll have to do quite a bit of research. For instance, what version of smartcraft are you running? Upgrade options are sometimes limited if you have certain older versions. Also, will you be adding radar? What NMEA are you running (did the po install the Fusion on the nmea bus?)

I would fix the systems monitor personally and that would stay on the boat. When it works, it actually is a good system.
I would start my research immediately and would then likely go with a phased approach, upgrade the MFD along with a good Seatalk/NMEA network. Would probably also upgrade the VHF as well and probably a new antenna as these are important safety devices.

Much of the other upgrade items such as autopilot, radar, smartcraft would be moved to Phase 2. Smartcraft would be pushed to a future phase as the replacement process to the newer system monitoring displays are not 100% IMO and they will NOT interface with all the monitored items that you have available via the Systems Monitor. Some experts recommend moving away from smartcraft completely which is something I have considered but opted against for time and budget reasons.

Doing everything all at once will also make troubleshooting much harder as you won't really have a stable base environment to gauge issues against. ("I never had a problem until I added xxxx to the system.")

Speaking of budget, I think your budget is in the range if you are willing to make some compromises and unless you are going to go with the latest and largest systems. The big screen, latest gen MFD are EXPEN$IVE. You can save money buy shopping for the one-gen-older equipment such as Raymarine HybridTouch, instead of Raymarine's latest Axiom technology. Or go with smaller screen sizes. Same with radar - a new array system will quickly push you out of budget, but a late model used radome will be in budget.

Funny that with all that needs upgrades, the previous owner chose to start with the stereo! Is that LOTO thing? (JK)

The pride in this project will be learning and saving money doing it yourself, not in how much you can slap together at once.

 

[Jason_Peters]

First welcome to the site and thank you for posting.

Thank you!

Replacing all of the items in your list is a significant undertaking. Since you haven't done this before, I would caution against doing all three systems at the same time. There is a significantly steep learning curve in getting this to all work at the end and you'll have to do quite a bit of research.

What makes you think I haven't done this before? I've done DIY marine electronics installs on two previous boats, just nothing of this scale. Also, we agree this is going to take a significant amount of research to develop the required shopping list. Finally, I have no intention of tackling this all in the same go.

For instance, what version of smartcraft are you running? Upgrade options are sometimes limited if you have certain older versions. Also, will you be adding radar? What NMEA are you running (did the po install the Fusion on the nmea bus?)

I believe the Smartcraft is the SC5000 System View. Radar - no plans at this time, inland boat. To my knowledge boat does not currently have an NMEA backbone/network other than I believe NMEA 0183 from the old inop GPS to the SC5000. Fusion stereo was not linked to an NMEA bus, as there is no MFD to control it, thus no reason. It's a blank canvas, with the exception of the Smartcraft if you will.

I would fix the systems monitor personally and that would stay on the boat. When it works, it actually is a good system.

Valid suggestion, any ideas on where to start with that? To my knowledge it's not working at all.

Edit: I did some early research and it seems to be nearly impossible to source a replacement unit. If you do find one, its stupid expensive for what it is. However, I did come across a few threads where other display's were wired up to provide similar functionality, such as this one: http://clubsearay.com/index.php?thr...nd-improve-the-sea-ray-systems-monitor.91270/

Would probably also upgrade the VHF as well and probably a new antenna as these are important safety devices.

Jury is still out on this. Back when I was boating salt around Tampa Bay it would have been a no brainer to replace it. However, inland on LOTO it just isn't used at all... everybody just picks up their cell.

Speaking of budget, I think your budget is in the range if you are willing to make some compromises and unless you are going to go with the latest and largest systems. The big screen, latest gen MFD are EXPEN$IVE. You can save money buy shopping for the one-gen-older equipment such as Raymarine HybridTouch, instead of Raymarine's latest Axiom technology. Or go with smaller screen sizes.

We agree here, I've started shopping Raymarine and it appears I may be able to stay in budget with a basic Axiom chartplotter system (Not the new Axiom+). My previous 2 boats both used Raymarine's e-series hybrid's which were great units as well.

Funny that with all that needs upgrades, the previous owner chose to start with the stereo! Is that LOTO thing? (JK)

I know right? We have no idea where we are going, but the tunes are boomin'! LOL

The pride in this project will be learning and saving money doing it yourself, not in how much you can slap together at once.

Again, I think you may have read your own agenda into it. I have no intention of ripping everything out at once and throwing new equipment back in with hopes and dreams that it all works upon re-assembly... Regardless, that does not change the research or ultimately the shopping list. Everything needed must still be planned/purchased, and that's where this thread begins. Thanks for the input!

-Jason