captainhook
Jetboaters Captain
- Messages
- 911
- Reaction score
- 697
- Points
- 217
- Location
- Southern Maryland
- Boat Make
- Yamaha
- Year
- 2008
- Boat Model
- Limited
- Boat Length
- 23
I completed this project last year after having it on the list for several years. I always wanted a chartplotter to class up the dash and electronics in the boat as I've been envious of the 2015+ dash, but I've never liked the tacked on look of a chartplotter sitting on the top of the dash or hanging on the windshield support post and prefer a more OEM look. Any modern chartplotter would allow me to ditch the stock depth finder and speedometer so I could rearrange the gauges and fit a 7" in the center, and the Simrad Go7 looked like a winner.
The issue I always had was that any custom trim piece I used would not match the rest of the trim in my boat, as the trim in the 232 Limited is a faux woodish look so it would be difficult to match with paint. I decided that I would wrap the new trim piece in black vinyl and also wrap the rest of them to match. if I didn't like it, it was easily reversible and wouldn't cost much money.
Unfortunately the stock dash piece was quite a complex shape, and fit into a recessed area in the fiberglass dash so it needed to be very close to the correct shape. I began trying to cut a piece out of plastic board by tracing, but the stock piece isn't flat so it was hard to keep flush on the plastic board when tracing.
I was pretty unhappy with the first iteration shape as the curves weren't right and the edges weren't smooth.
Since I am decently experienced with designing for 3D printing, I decided to give that a go by taking a picture of the dash with my iPhone and then tracing the picture with Fusion 360. That seemed to go well until I cut the designed part into thirds and printed some draft pieces with low infill to perform a test fit. Unfortunately, it seems my iPhone camera lenses were skewing the dimensions and after two or three attempts, I could not get it to fit correctly either. This was a bummer because the pieces would've come up very clean with perfect edges and gauge dimensions.
I decided to go back to the drawing board on hand cutting the plastic board and I wound up buying a router to clean up the edges from the jigsaw cuts. I decided to cut several just in case since I was doing it by hand. This took awhile routing and sanding and I still wasn't totally happy with it but at some point I had to just call it good enough.
I also went through a ton of options of 3D printed bezels for the gauges to class it up a little bit. These were the final version after toying around with pods and various other shapes that could've acted as sun visors that didn't make the cut. I printed these in ASA and put them over top of the vinyl wrap. I attempted to wrap over top of one bezel in a test but it would not conform well enough for my liking and figured these looked fine in ASA anyway.
Test fit was pretty good and I was happy enough with it to continue. Also, I was very tired of this project by this point.
The final product after wrapping all of the trim pieces. This has held up well for a whole season of boating and an off season outdoors. All in all I classed up the dash in my boat and added a nice bit of functionality as well. Ignore the old chartplotter the previous owner installed at knee level, that was worthless in that location and never used.
The issue I always had was that any custom trim piece I used would not match the rest of the trim in my boat, as the trim in the 232 Limited is a faux woodish look so it would be difficult to match with paint. I decided that I would wrap the new trim piece in black vinyl and also wrap the rest of them to match. if I didn't like it, it was easily reversible and wouldn't cost much money.
Unfortunately the stock dash piece was quite a complex shape, and fit into a recessed area in the fiberglass dash so it needed to be very close to the correct shape. I began trying to cut a piece out of plastic board by tracing, but the stock piece isn't flat so it was hard to keep flush on the plastic board when tracing.
I was pretty unhappy with the first iteration shape as the curves weren't right and the edges weren't smooth.
Since I am decently experienced with designing for 3D printing, I decided to give that a go by taking a picture of the dash with my iPhone and then tracing the picture with Fusion 360. That seemed to go well until I cut the designed part into thirds and printed some draft pieces with low infill to perform a test fit. Unfortunately, it seems my iPhone camera lenses were skewing the dimensions and after two or three attempts, I could not get it to fit correctly either. This was a bummer because the pieces would've come up very clean with perfect edges and gauge dimensions.
I decided to go back to the drawing board on hand cutting the plastic board and I wound up buying a router to clean up the edges from the jigsaw cuts. I decided to cut several just in case since I was doing it by hand. This took awhile routing and sanding and I still wasn't totally happy with it but at some point I had to just call it good enough.
I also went through a ton of options of 3D printed bezels for the gauges to class it up a little bit. These were the final version after toying around with pods and various other shapes that could've acted as sun visors that didn't make the cut. I printed these in ASA and put them over top of the vinyl wrap. I attempted to wrap over top of one bezel in a test but it would not conform well enough for my liking and figured these looked fine in ASA anyway.
Test fit was pretty good and I was happy enough with it to continue. Also, I was very tired of this project by this point.
The final product after wrapping all of the trim pieces. This has held up well for a whole season of boating and an off season outdoors. All in all I classed up the dash in my boat and added a nice bit of functionality as well. Ignore the old chartplotter the previous owner installed at knee level, that was worthless in that location and never used.
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