Trollmaster installation experiences sought

d.boat

Chief Petty Officer
Joined
Sep 19, 2008
Messages
520
I posted this in the outboard non-repair forum and didn't get any action. Thinking it was the wrong forum, I decided to re-post here. Hope it's not an etiquette problem, if so I will be fine with any moderator actions.

I need some advice and ideas for cable routing and connecting/disconnecting.

I have a Mercury 9.9 four stroke and just installed a Trollmaster Pro2. It installed easily (I had to tweak the rod slightly), and have dry tested it - everything works as it should moving the throttle, full speed, back to idle, etc.

Now I'm wondering about cable routing. The control unit has two cables coming out of it - the gray, sheathed cable that runs to the engine, and a black/red double wire for power and ground. The red/black wires I have going directly to the battery for now, which is directly under the kicker, so it's convenient.

How are people routing the cables out of the cowling? The gray sheathed cable goes to the engine and has a quick connect with the servo motor's wires. The only way I can see is just to come out of the cowling and the wires getting squished and worn by the cowling when it is latched down. I don't know if it's better to have that pressure and wear on the gray sheathed cable or the wires coming from the servo motor. Maybe there's a better solution that someone smarter than me had thought of.

Second - how about disconnecting? Is there a way to simply disconnect the cable at the control unit? Otherwise, I'd like to install a weatherproof disconnect somewhere near the engine for the gray cable, and somewhere near the battery for the power wires. My kicker is one I remove and replace every time I move it so I need some sort of easy and quick way of disconnecting.

Finally, just a question - it seems that a lot of images and videos I see of the Trollmaster units show only the gray cable coming out of the control box, not the red/black power wires. What's up with that? I plan to get a tidy cable loom to house both wires so that I can walk from the front of my boat to the back without a bunch of wires getting caught on stuff.
 

tmitchell5188

Seaman
Joined
Mar 17, 2008
Messages
73
On my Yamaha set up, I ran that wire out the same port than the large batter cable was run out. I loosened the locking block, and clamped it in there. I tried to power it off the power connections in the kicker, and there was too much electrical noise. Once I moved it to the battery, it worked great.
 

d.boat

Chief Petty Officer
Joined
Sep 19, 2008
Messages
520
Thanks for the pointer tmitchell5188. I'm going to mess around with it this weekend and try to get some sort of easy connection so I can remove it from the boat with minimal hassle. It's a nice product, but certain design features as well as the instructions are pretty darn amateurish.

The instructions I received (on CD, not printed) as well as the ones online are not current, they acknowledge they aren't current, but have not corrected them. In this day and age of instant updates to web-based and CD ROM materials, there's no excuse for this.
 

blackhawk180

Petty Officer 1st Class
Joined
Jun 14, 2012
Messages
367
No Title

I have the same basic setup with a Merc 9.9 kicker and the trollmaster. Love it.
I ran my power cable to a buss under my dash so I didn't have to run the wires all the way back to the battery. The gray wire runs back and I zip tied it to the main wiring harness out of the way of everything. I entered the kicker similar to tmitchel, squeezed it in alongside starter wires. I don't disconnect mine so no much help there but it's seems like there's lots of options available to splice into a convienent location.
 

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d.boat

Chief Petty Officer
Joined
Sep 19, 2008
Messages
520
Thanks. Good ideas. I do have fuse (power) and grounding blocks under the dash so could easily connect the power there.

Right now I have it set up with its full length control and power cables (which I inserted into a split loom so they don't present as much opportunity to caught on stuff) so theoretically I can move it from the front of the boat to the back. I can't imagine running it from the back, since I steer the kicker from the helm, but I'll give it a go this week and see how it actually plays out in practice. Traditionally, I've sat at the helm with my GPS watching speed and yelling at the rod-tenders at the back of the boat to adjust the kicker speed.

There's no substitute for experience to decide if the installation is adequate or not, and whether I really need to figure out some quick connection type of stuff. After all, to connect and disconnect from the battery and engine would take,what, 5 minutes max? But the connection at the servo motor is, to put it nicely, cheesy.

The main reason I want an easy disconnect is that I do not leave my kicker on the back permanently, and my boat is not enclosed. I only put the kicker on the boat when I'm going to do some trolling which is about 1/4 of my usage of the boat. I also remove it for trailering. So it's off far more than it's on, and the controller is exposed to rain.

I like the unit, but seriously, it is a little lacking in some details, for what they charge.
 
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