OK guys the Minn Kota Powerdrive with auto pilot is here and mounted on the boat. Everything is ready except for one small detail...my transducer. I had a transducer mounted on my old t.m. so I didn't get the MK with built in transducer. Now I wish I had. I didn't think about the problem of the cable when the motor is stowed and not being able to go through the collar. Anyone else have a transducer mounted on their Minn Kota? I don't see any way to do this with out having transducer cable dangling around either in stowed or deployed. The way the manual shows it just doesn't make sense as they are saying put a wire tie on the shaft...how ya gonna do that with the shaft sliding all the way up through the collar when stowed? Any ideas are appreciated. I know there are people out there with more ingenuity than me

the very top of the shaft. It has to flow freely along the shaft to deploy and receive the motor. I had one like that on my last boat and it works okay when you get use to it. I am waiting on my new boat and I did get the one with the built in transducer. I hope it works as good as the factory transducer that came with my sonar. Good luck and it will work out fine when you get use to it.

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Capt.C........Life's short. Be a friend. Eat good. Have fun and fish hard!

I have a transducer on my Minn Kota Powerdrive, and I used electrical tape to fasten the cable at the very top of the shaft. I taped it in a way that the cable will slip through the tape if pulled on. I bundled together the excess cable and have it stored inside of the heavy,curly cue cable on the motor head. It works great for me. When the auto-pilot gets a mind of its own and goes round and round, the cable will pull out from the curly cue instead of breaking. The reason the unit will go round and round is because of the compass built into the unit. If there happens to be a large piece of metal in the proximity of the unit, it will cause the compass to lose its bearing. This has never happend to me, yet. But a friend of mine has had this problem. He doesn't have a tranducer on his TM, so he doesn't have to worry about wrapping up his cable.

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Kellog

"Get the net!"

I'll try these things along with the way the manual has it. I don't think anyway is going to be real neat but maybe I can get it where I'm not grabbing it and tripping over the cable. Dang...I mounted mine on a 12" X 6" 3/8" piece of aluminum (because that's the way my old t.m. was mounted to my Tracker Tahoe) ... hope that aluminum doesn't mess up the compass. What do you think? Thanks gents!!!

Nope

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Give a man a fish, feed him for a day.
Teach a man to fish, he'll sit in a boat and drink beer all day.

Thanks guys...I ran it up thru the coiled wire taped it, left some turning slack, ran it down to prop area and cable tied it. Be going to Jordan tomorrow to see what the Minn Kota is made of.

olefisher if you will go to crappie.com homepage and scroll down to fishing electronics and trolling motors they have a step by step picture diagram of mounting your transducer and it works just like it should without tangling up and no loose wires.

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ENOMAN

Aluminum will not affect the compass. It is non-magnetic.

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Kellog

"Get the net!"