Ulterra Transducer mounting

[BassMan11]

So over the winter I have noticed that some other members of the forum have purchased the Ulterra as well for this year and I wondered if any of you were having the same issues I was having with an external transducer.

 

Personally I like to at least have down imaging at the trolling motor as well as 2d sonar. Great for seeing detailed structure right under you.

 

There are a few video's on Youtube on ways people have been able to do this. The one below being my personal favorite:

 

 

But there isn't really any info anywhere on how to actually set this system up.

 

 

What you need:

 

1 - stainless steel eye bolt

2 - stainless nuts and washers

1 - pulley

1 - small recoil

stainless screws or bolts

electrical tape

 

Obviously to start you will need the proper trolling motor mounting brackets for you brand of fish finder transducer. Once that is mounted take the eye bolt and open it slightly to be able to just get your transducer cable into it. To do this I had to put a lot of heat on the bolt and use a fairly good amount of force to get it open.

 

I drilled a small hole through the plastic removable side panel of the trolling motor and put a nut and wash on that side... as well as a nut on the outside of the panel.

 

 

 

Next you will need your pulley and your recoil. I ordered a small recoil of of amazon and the pulley was bought at home hardware. Some work needed to be done to the pulley to get the cable in place and the recoil was mounted as far away as possible from the motor to have enough transducer cable to fully deploy it the whole length of the trolling motor shaft.

 

 

Next take the transducer cable and run it around the trolling motor to the other side. This will be the anchor point for the other end of the transducer cable (background).

 

 

 

 

 

From there it is really up to you what to do with the rest of the transducer cable. I drilled a hole and hid it in the front compartment, then ran it out to the sonar with the Network and power cable.

 

 

 

Lastly, take some electrical tape and wrap it around the transducer cable near the transducer. The plate under the trolling motor has a rough edge and could possible cut through the wire over time.

 

 

Once that is done you will now have your down or side imaging transducer on your Ulterra! I have had no issues thus far with this setup with stowing or deploying the motor around 50-75 times.

Obviously you can use this same solution for your Terrova or Powerdrive with a few modifications.

 

Hope this can help someone out there.

 

 

BassMan11

 

 

 

 

 

 

[fishindevil]

that's pretty cool.....thanks for sharing some great ideas there....cheers

[Terry]

Cool. I always had ducer cable issues with any power drive electric. Good idea

[porkpie]

Clean install.

[G.mech]

I'm just wondering why you couldn't just network your bow HDS to your main one and use your DS/SS transducer on the stern?

[John Bacon]

I'm just wondering why you couldn't just network your bow HDS to your main one and use your DS/SS transducer on the stern?

 

You could, but the information on the screen would be what your stern has already passed. Having the transducer on the bow motor is providing more up to date information when casting of the front deck.

[mark demmery]

Very clean! thanks for the tip... I have a Terrova and the first time i used the spot lock, it did a 360 and tore my external tranducer cable apart! I went back to the built in transducer, but gave up the down imaging to do so.... Looks like this would have solved the problem!

[BassMan11]

Very clean! thanks for the tip... I have a Terrova and the first time i used the spot lock, it did a 360 and tore my external tranducer cable apart! I went back to the built in transducer, but gave up the down imaging to do so.... Looks like this would have solved the problem!

Hey Hoser,

 

When I had a Terrova I watched this video and used this install method. Now it's a little more tricky and you need to be a little careful but it's pretty straight forward.

 

 

This works very will with Humminbird transducer since the cable is a bit thinner than Lowrance. Can't comment on the other brands.