Furuno/Airmar on Garmin GSD 21

[jcsp]

Has anyone rewired the plug on an Airmar triducer from Furuno (old NavNet) to Garmin's new GSD 22? Looking at Airmar's wiring diagram, it looks like it would be easy to change out from the 10 pin plug to the 4/6 plug used by Garmin. The transducers don't appear to have changed, unlike the units themselves, which have gone digita.. Does anyone know of a change to a "digital" transducer?

[dowop]

I don't know about the Triducer, but I did a similar change from a Garmin to a Furuno for a Airmar P79. Don't fall for all that crap that you can't cut the cable. Talk to Airmar, you think they pull all these commercial boats everytime they want to change a sonar. Look how many transducers Airmar sells with pigtails. My Furuno had a 10pin pigtail cable and I connected Blue-Blue, Black-Black and Shield-Shield. What I did was buy a Garmin transducer extension cable and cut that (making a pigtail) and then connected it to the Furuno pigtail using 3M weatherproof scotchlok connectors. This way I saved the original Garmin connector on the transducer. Works perfect.

On a side note, I'd be hard pressed to change any Furuno FF for a Garmin unit.

[jcsp]

Thanks, dowop. I'm considering going with one box and making that box the Garmin 5215, using the GMR24 HD and the GSD22 digital with my existing through hull triducer, although I might just change out my old 2010c with a 5212 and leave the radar/ff functions to my old Furuno unit. It is just tempting to have it all in one, easy to use box and I've heard good things about Garmin's new digital FF.

The pigtail is a good idea, I actually have one for the Furuno which I haven't used yet, to feed sonar data into my Garmin. I agree with your assessment of the amonition against cutting the cable. I did with with two different transom mount transducers and just soldered the connections near my old GSD20 on my old boat and it worked like a champ. You just have to be careful to re-wrap the conductors in that tin-foil sheathing, and I wrapped that in heat-shrink tubing, tucked it up under my helm and it was fine. It made it much easier to run the cables from the transom to the helm.

[ElectronicsGuy]

You should be able to buy a crossover cable direct from Airmar to connect your Furuno 10-pin to the Garmin. I use the same setup in my Contender to test a variety of gear for my website: http://www.marine-electronics-reviews.com/index.html