Holy crap! I cut a hole in my boat!

[scooper321]

Well, it's been a year to the day that I've owned her (Happy Anniversary to me!) so it was time. Finally took out the Raymarine 215 VHF and began putting in a replacement. Too bad, too. The 215 is a nice radio! But the mic cord was deteriorating, like all do, and no replacement to be found. So as Step 1 in a larger electronics upgrade strategy, I bought a Std Horizon GX1600 and located the template. That's when the fun began:

The template worked great. Ignore the hole above my cuts. That's from the 215. I didn't fill it in so that I can later move other small controls (radio remote perhaps?) there. Here's the test fit:

I also ordered a faux wood panel from FP Marine to cover the holes and match the rest of the dash. Used the same GX1600 template (cleverly aligned) and cut that, too.

Tip: when you get devices with templates to use for cutting holes, immediately make many copies of that template. You will often need more than one. I did! Here's the final product, mounted but unconnected electronically.

I simply ran out of time today. But all I have left to wire it up is a couple snips and about 6 crimp/heat shrink connectors. Should go smoothly, I hope! I'm going to connect it to the NMEA0183 outs of my ancient Raymarine 435 GPS to the inputs of the radio, so I get GPS on the display. At a later time, I'll connect it to a new plotter to get GPS and enable DSC. This is just step 1.

Special thanks to CSR and the YouTube vids from BOE on how to cut fiberglass. Especially the parts about covering your to-be-cut area with masking tape, using a fine tooth jigsaw blade and working slowly. Now that I've done this, mounting a MFD should be no problem! It's fishing the radar cable that I don't look forward to doing...




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[JC3]

Steve, Looks very good! JC

 

[HUMPH]

Nice job but if you contact Raymarine directly they will let you order the replacement cord. All dealers I asked said no replacement cord available then a friend gave me a Raymarine phone number and I had no issue ordering a perfect replacement!

 

[scooper321]

Nice job but if you contact Raymarine directly they will let you order the replacement cord. All dealers I asked said no replacement cord available then a friend gave me a Raymarine phone number and I had no issue ordering a perfect replacement!

Too late now! I wonder if that cord would be close on price to the SH radio I bought? And I was tempted to remake mine from scratch. I'm rather handy with a soldering iron. But I've heard the mic was a bear to disassemble and that it has waterproof potting material inside. Big mess to deal with. Why they'd make that waterproof but the cord not UV proof is beyond me. Besides, now it has a matching wood grain panel.

Off to connect the electricals!



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[JimFromMD]

Too late now! I wonder if that cord would be close on price to the SH radio I bought? And I was tempted to remake mine from scratch. I'm rather handy with a soldering iron. But I've heard the mic was a bear to disassemble and that it has waterproof potting material inside. Big mess to deal with. Why they'd make that waterproof but the cord not UV proof is beyond me. Besides, now it has a matching wood grain panel.

Off to connect the electricals!



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Mine was replaced by Raymarine for $75 including shipping out and back. Very good to work with, just have to know who to contact. Several threads here. But as you said, you have a more modern radio for not much more now.

 

[Robf]

Not meaning to highjack the thread about the install, but wanted to comment on replacing the cord on the Raymarine 215/230. I did just that, ordered the cord and replaced it with new, but appears that I am now having issues transmitting. Anyone experience that? Could I have messed up the connection to the board? Everything else seems to work as far as receiving, and when I key the mic, it shows transmit on the screen, but when I tried to communicate with the lock master, he was not hearing me. Any thoughts? PS, the install of the new radio looks great! Sorry for interjecting!
Rob

Mine was replaced by Raymarine for $75 including shipping out and back. Very good to work with, just have to know who to contact. Several threads here. But as you said, you have a more modern radio for not much more now.

 

[scooper321]

Thanks for the compliments. But if you want an answer to your question, you'd be better served starting a new thread with an applicable title line in the Marine Electronics forum.


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[scooper321]

Off to connect the electricals!

Well, not so fast. After hours in the heat and humidity, here's what I learned.

Even though the Ray 215 had NMEA 0183 inputs, when I spliced them into the new radio, they didn't work. So I started at the plotter and traced the NMEA signals forward. Whoever installed the plotter just routed power but not NMEA signals. They were snipped and taped off. I have no idea what NMEA was connected to the Ray 215. None, apparently.

So I cut into the power/NMEA cord coming from the plotter and spliced those lines into the SH GX1600 radio. Still, the radio showed no GPS coordinates. After a bit of googling and poring through manuals of the radio and plotter, I determined that the radio needs NMEA 0183 2.0 or higher. I couldn't find out what level the Ray 435 plotter outputs but did see that it outputs NMEA commands with "Talker IDs" starting with EC not GP. EC refers to charts and GP to GPS. My conclusion? The EC IDs come from super old NMEA equipment - earlier than 2.0. And so iI have concluded that my plotter is too old to communicate with the GX1600. I saw elsewhere on line that someone couldn't connect their 435 to a West Marine radio and tech help said software incompatibilities in the NMEA commands were the reason, too. The WM radio say is supports NMEA 0183 v3.01. Even newer!

I should've spent the extra $40-50 and bought the GX1700 and this wouldn't be an issue. Now I won't have GPS data on the radio screen until I update the plotter. Maybe this will accelerate that process? My checkbook doesn't think so, though.

Ugh. Patience, Padawan...

On the positive side, the radio looks good and works quite well! So it's definitely still usable.

Anyone want to buy a Ray 215?



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