Upgrading gear at the nav station. Messy woodwork.

[hoppy]

For those of you with older boats, have you upgraded electronics and found that the new units don't fit the same as the old and your left with a mess?

I just upgraded the GPS at my nav table, replacing an old Garmin unit with a RM e7 matching the e7 at the helm. Thankfully when I installed the radar I knew I would eventually add a 2nd RM unit and made sure that the Radar and e7 network cables joined up behind that panel, so I just needed to add the network switch in there and plug in the new unit

As you can see I have a big hole under the e7 which is partly plugged by a part of the panel I cut away. As the e7 is flush mounted and I'm thinking of getting a thin piece of wood that I'll mount the e7 on and will cover the hole. It will probably look better than if I try to plug the hole.




It's probably overkill having the i70 there now. Perhaps one day I'll move it to the helm swapping with an ST60 unit

[Don Reaves]

I have a nice picture frame fastened over the hole where my old chart plotter used to be.

[touchngo]

I got a new piece of teak faced ply put in there. I may have been ripped off for the ply and labour, but all in was less than $150 to source, cut, satin varnish it and install a replacement VHF (My new VHF was a different shape/size to the previous one, which meant that we would have had a similar issue as you).

PT

[vasko]

I think in your case you can cover the hole with nice piece with wood or metal\bronz engraved with boat name or mmsi

or another option will be to place a new piece of play wood under the new chart plotter which will cover the hole and you can mount buttons or usb's on the part under the plotter or just leave it just wood 

another option will be to take the whole wooden panel out cover it with vinyl\leather with matching colour to the rest of the boat and fir it back this will cover every previous  exiting not nice looking things 

[zofiasailing]

When we relocated the chart plotter to where they should really usefully be on a cruising yacht - at the helm, we were left with a huge hole. We contacted our dealer and they, in turn, Jeanneau. They sent a replacement panel. Cost? Lending our boat to the dealer for a boat show. Lucky!
We've subsequently added an AIS display and other switches etc. over the years and been faced with trying to recycle the holes and gaps. Replacement blanks should really be readily available as a 'spare part'. IMHO
SV Zofoa

[dbostrom]

This thread makes me wonder if it would be worth taking high quality photo of the standard Jeanneau wood veneer (which when you look at it closely is quite remarkable in how it is made) and printing it on rolls of self-adhesive vinyl. For the gaps between panels etc. it might not be too bad. 

[so40gtb]

I'm installing a new B&G 4G radar this summer, networked into the Zeus2 display at the helm. The old, 2000 vintage monochrome, Raymarine radar (with sagging magnetron) will be retired, leaving a hole in Voyageur's nav station side panel. Replacing the panel would not be fun, as the same holds the circuit breaker panel. It seems that covering the hole with a thin piece of veneered plywood or something similar would be the best approach, with new instruments mounted in it (such as my new VHF) so that it's not so noticeable. Pix to be posted at the end of the journey.