New fish finder and new wiring

My 5 year old Lowrance Hook2 fish finder started acting up earlier this year with weird readings from the sonar.  The map and GPS function worked fine, but the sonar would stop and go sometimes, and the temperature readings were way off.  After some troubleshooting, I found the culprit: corrosion in my hastily assembled wiring of the power cable from many years back.  Back then, I just soldered the wires and wrapped it up in electrical tape.  After seeing the salt damage, it was obvious that this was a weak point because salt water would inevitably creep into this area.  I decided it was time to treat myself to a new fish finder and this time, wire it up the right way, and I'm pretty happy with how things turned out. 

Lowrance provides a power plug/cable that's about 2 feet long with exposed leads. To make a waterproof connection between these leads and the wire extending to the battery, I found these marine grade heat shrink wire connectors on amazon.  Basically, it's a heavy duty heat shrink tube that has a low-melting point ring of solder in the middle, and a heat activated adhesive on either side of the solder ring.  I pre-soldered the wires just to ensure a good connection, but I don't think it was necessary, given how efficiently the solder was liquified from the heat of the heat gun.  The liquified adhesive also completely fills in the gap between the wire's insulation, the heat shrink tube, and the exposed metal.  I'm pretty confident that this will create a durable waterproof connection but only time and salt water will tell! 

I also used marine grade tinned copper wiring (16ga) to further try and prevent any future salt corrosion.  This particular brand was nice and flexible and the wires were protected in heavy duty insulation.

I finished up the wiring project by attaching some wire fasteners to the topside of the hull to lift the wiring from the bottom of the hull and I bunched up the extra transducer cable to the front, again zip tying it to the wire fasteners.

I went with the Lowrance Elite FS 7 with HDI transducer, mainly because the transducer just barely fits in the Revo 13 transducer cavity without modification and its tucked away inside.  This was important to me since I find myself dragging my kayak on the sand and rocks sometimes.  The larger side scan transducer can also be used with this FF, but there's a bit of DIY modification to do and I believe the sonar would hang off the bottom a bit.  This FF also accepts the new C-Map reveal cards with shaded relief, and the images that are produced on the screen are on another level. 

The last thing I need to do is to prevent corrosion on the plugs themselves, and I'm hoping a healthy application of dielectric grease will do the trick.  If anyone has any suggestions, I'm all ears (these are the standard, screw-lock plugs, not the pressure plugs that dielectric grease will ruin, as in my hook2). 

I'm looking forward to getting the new set up on the water soon, and will report back! 

I spray all of my electrical connections with CorrosionX every few outings and so far everything is staying like new.

I used some of those wire connectors to make a splitter to run my FF, and SharkShield off of the same battery. Super easy to use.

I use the same/similar connectors. After those I then use heat shrink over each connector and then a second heat shrink over both. Probably overkill, but it makes me feel good about it.