Dash 3" Hole Cover

[OllieC]

I don’t know if your upper dash is the same as mine. If so, you might have the issue of how to repair the holes in the upper dash from the old mounting bracket. That area is textured gel coat, and after a long time researching it I realized no one makes a matching pattern to repair it, and no professional gel coat guy would touch it. Eventually I figured out a really simple way to do it. The texture itself is a very thin layer, on top of a normal thickness of gel coat, and it can be sanded off with 600-1000 paper to leave regular smooth gel coat. So I repaired the holes the normal way, then using masking tape to protect the area of the texture I wanted to keep, I sanded the unprotected portion of the texture off to effectively move the border between smooth and texture farther forward on the dash. Problem solved. Even on close inspection you’d never know it was done, and to my eye the position of the textured portion looks as good as, or maybe even better than, the way they did it at the factory.

Also, just to show you, I did the same thing you did with the flooring, just different color “caulk” lines.

Seems like we’ve been doing a lot of similar things to what are essentially the same boats!

I did repair holes on the upper dash when I replaced my Lawrance with this new Garmin. Yes there is a thin texture that I assume is there to cut glare, because it doesn't stop anything from sliding around. I purchased "Pearl Ash", which is the hull color and it seemed to match up nicely, even with the texture, although there is a shiny spot. It's hidden underneath the new unit.

I had purchased a Lawrance Elite 7 in 2012 and ended up replacing it with this unit last year. The Lawrance GPS was slow.....suuuuupppper slow. I'd zoom in while cruising by the Apostle Islands, looking for shoals, and in some cases it would take 30+ seconds to refresh. I couldn't have that. Plus the newer touchscreen Garmin's seem to have more bang for the buck as far as features.

That color flooring looks great!! I put my 'WHITE Igloo" cooler on the Port side!! LOL!! However I don't have the floor mount for the cooler. I bungee it to the passenger seat. If you look, you can see the small eye bolts. There used to be rod holders in the port location , just like the starboard side when I purchased the boat, but I removed that side. I don't really put rods in there anyway because they hit the canvas top. My deck brush, landing net & dock hook/pole sit in there to grab when need be.

"Weekenders from another mother"

 

[OllieC]

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Yes, the outlet for the VHF microphone is on the bottom left. The VHF itself is a Standard Horizon PS2000 black box unit mounted inside the dash. I wanted to conserve dash space, which this boat is a bit short on.

I looked that up. I like that too!! You're going to make me go broke this Spring. The Admiral might not be too happy about that.

 

[lawndoctor]

Funny thing about the Admirals. I have sort of a similar issue here. She likes the 225WE so much after all the custom work we put into it she won’t let me sell it. There is a chance we may not keep the 330DA and may instead opt for a beach house with a dock, and if so the 225WE would be perfect for that. So my “punishment” for putting so much into the boat is being forced to keep it!