Labour involved in swapping chartplotter and radome

[stranded]

I have just received a quote to replace my current faulty Raymarine E120 and analogue radome with an E125 and digital scanner. Knew it was going to be expensive but with a fixed Raymarine charge of £800 to look at the E120 with no guarantee of a repair being possible, had decided to bite the bullet. But a labour estimate of over £1200 (ex. vat) has me gulping. That equates to not far short of 30 hours labour. Does that sound realistic? Is it diyable (electronics virgin but I can read and climb a mast)? Mark

 

[RAI]

Dunno about Raymarine but I changed my JRC scanner to a Sitex one so it would display on my SH 300i plotter. Very straightforward. The hardest part is threading the cable from the mast to the plotter.

 

[Skylark]

I paid a similar labour charge in 2010 for similar, slightly more, work.

I'm sure it's DIYable but the guy giving the quote, presumably, has the knowledge, prior experience, special tools and knows the tricks of the trade which would otherwise make it hard work for a first-timer.

Raymarine appears to be taking the pi55 with an £800, no guarantee, charge. I trust that you'll vote with your feet and buy a competitors product (unless they're all in collusion, of course).

 

[pvb]

I have just received a quote to replace my current faulty Raymarine E120 and analogue radome with an E125 and digital scanner. Knew it was going to be expensive but with a fixed Raymarine charge of £800 to look at the E120 with no guarantee of a repair being possible, had decided to bite the bullet.

Why not get an alternative repair estimate? Try The Service Centre - http://www.theservicecentre.eu/index.htm

 

[maby]

Most of the job is mechanical and fairly easy - though the digital raydome will not run on the same cable as the analogue, so you will have to pull the new one through which may be a real pain. The only significantly skilled part of the job, as far as I can see, is setting up and calibrating the new radar. Never done that myself, so cannot comment on the difficulty - we have a resident Raymarine engineer in the marina who is willing to do such things for DIY installations - you may be able to find similar local to you?

 

[robmcg]

I have replaced a radar system on our old boat. It took an hour to bolt the new dome on and thread the cable down the mast. Another hour or so to get the cable to the chart table and maybe a half hour to run a new power cable for the MFD. I am not an expert in electronics or electrics by any means. Difficulty level is fairly low, particularly as you should be able to use the existing cable as a pull through for the new digital cable. I hired the yard crane and basket for an hour to get the dome up, so no mast climbing involved. If I was in your shoes, I would get a quote for repair as PVB suggested, particularly if its just the MFD that is broken, not the dome, alternatively, you could buy a replacement E120 classic for about the same as the labour charge to fit a new system and save the cost of buying a whole new system.

 

[stranded]

Thanks guys. Exploring a bit more based on your helpful comments it seems I may have done Rayarine a disservice in that it appears that the charge is £126 if they can't fix it. Still a gamble though repairing old kit with the risk that something else goes wrong. Really its the radome swap that sticks as existing seems to work fine. I'll check out the repair centre and possible like for like replacement options first. As I have never (only had for 7 months mind) used the radar out of anything except curiosity and doubt I would understand enough to rely on it in extremis, I also wonder about swappting the MFD now and not connecting radar until I get a new dome maybe next year.

Incidentally, drifting my own thread, I have a heap of stuff that came with the boat that I probably want to sell - some at least of which will (I hope) breach the forum £400 limit. Is ebay the best place to do this?

Mark

 

[robmcg]

You've done it now, you will have piqued people's interest on what you have for sale. eBay is fine but maybe a general post on here as to the particulars of what might in theory be available shortly and no one will tell the Mod Bods

 

[stranded]

Well of course I wouldn't dream of abusing the system here but if it merely peoples' curiosity that needs satisfying there can be no harm I suppose. Still finalising list but looks like being (all from 44ft boat and all (I think) same age as her i.e. 2007, though much apparently little used):

140m2 Para sailor
Carbon spinnaker pole (damaged but apparently fully repairable)
Storm try sail
Storm jib
Para anchor
Para drogue
M802 SSB, ATU and Pactor modem
Raymarine remote full function keypad (for E120)
Zodiac 6 man liferaft (service overdue since 2010) - this is a huge cannister job - looks much bigger than others I have seen

 

[TonyBuckley]

"Labour involved..." I started to read this as a political thing lol.

Perhaps should be "coalition involved in swapping chart plotter and radome"

 

[GrahamM376]

Fitting and setting up radar can be a DIY job, the installation and setup manuals have been very explicit on the 3 Furunos I've installed.
The tricky part is joining cables which may have to be cut to feed through. There are multiple wires and one or two are very thin coax, easy to miss if you're a bit sloppy stripping the insulation, can look like a single wire. £1200 + VAT must surely be a mistake for labour alone?