New Member- 2010 Cobalt 242 in Durham NC

[wss48126]

New to the forum, but not new to Cobalt boats. This is my second one I have owned. Previous was a 2005 Cobalt 220. Made the huge mistake of selling it to buy a center console fishing boat. My Cobalt dealer I bought my last one from had this 2010 242 with a 6.2 L Mercruiser with 80 hours on it on consignment. It was stored in a boat house its entire life, and it is as clean as you would expect an 80 hour boat to be. Luckily I didn't have to go far to find what I was looking for and was lucky enough to get it from one of the best boat dealers I have ever worked with. I am reading the forum as I am getting ready to do some large audio upgrades. New Head unit, 6 new speakers, 2-10" subs, Tower speakers, and change out the 12 year old 4" Garmin that looks like it was a factory install or added in 2010. Thank you for all the members that have put pictures of their projects up to give us new members ideas.

Boat Pic.jpg

[Big Block Power]

Sweet congrats

[AsLan7]

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So glad you found us Wss4…

LOVE that color scheme! Thanks for the pic.

Welcome aboard mate!

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[wss48126]

I figured I would post some updates after 8 weeks of working on it off and on. The major upgrades was Navigation and Audio. But there were lots of small repairs along the way on things I noticed when I was buying the boat. The biggest thing was sourcing all these items to stay within my $3500 upgrade budget. It meant buying Open box items, one of my amps was used, Nav system open box and using the Cobalt Forum discount at Creative audio for the 6 JL speakers and 2 - 10" subs. It meant shopping even the wiring used for everything. It also meant all the Labor I needed to do as I could pay someone and fit in my budget. I still want to clean up some of the amp wiring as I am not happy on how its dressed in, but its tough with fitting that much stuff in that tight of location. Plus with the boat having a Head, I had to run all the wiring around and through the channels from port side of the boat for the radio controller over to the starboard side where the old amplifier was. No space to mount it on the other side since the head.

Now lots of cleaning the dirty floors since the install is essentially done for now

Boat Upgrades
Transom Tilt/Trim Switch- Installed Switch in starboard Transom area
Replaced Water Temperature sensor- wire was worn through in multiple spots
GPS-Installed Garmin 743XSV- Had to weld and fill in existing panel as top gap was larger. Existing 4" Garmin had the panel wrapped in black vinyl. I painted it Satin black as I figured I couldn't match the tan on the other side panel. Epoxied new transducer in the bilge to feed the Garmin (transducer I would do different next time and swap out the one feeding the Faria depth gauge and use a Airmar B150 to bare wire and feed the Faria depth gauge and the Nav System with the same transducer. I do not like that the thru hull does not do temp. I have a separate temp sensor, but it is not on my NMEA2K network, therefore it does not show on my Garmin and I cant pull up water temp from my fusion control panel on the transom. I can pull up all the other Garmin info on the NRX300
Drilled out and riveted all the Bimini Quick Release Pins
Replaced Radio with Fusion MA-RA70NSX
Replaced Dash radio controller with Fusion NRX-300
Installed Transom Controller Fusion NRX300
Replaced all (6) speakers with JL audio M3’s 6.5” -Ran new 14 gauge wire to all speakers
Installed (2) JL audio 10” M3 Subwoofers - ran 10 gauge wire to all speakers. Still need to install the separate Sub control. That part is on Order. I balanced the Amps w/ the speakers and subs since I do not have the separate Sub control wire ran yet. Also, for anyone installing the subs like this in a 242. The port and starboard angles where I installed them are not the same dimensions. Starboard is smaller and almost did not fit. I had to do a significant amount of work to get it to fit.
Installed (2) JL M600/6 Amplifiers. Ran 2 gauge wire, installed 100A circuit breaker, installed Fuses and installed ground distribution. USed 4 gauge from the Fuse and Distro blocks to the Amps
Installed NMEA2000 Network wiring to control all the devices
Dressed and cleaned up all under dash wiring
Rebuilt the trim and tilt sender switches. Wiring was in great condition, but the contacts were brittle and the trim gauge would jump and not read accurately
Re-ran the Trim Pump lines. They were not ran correctly and were not strapped down properly

Trailer Updates
Replaced 5 wire Plug for 7 Pole RV plug
Replaced Winch Strap
Replaced Bow Roller/ Bell Assembly
Replaced License Plate Bracket
Riveted side brackets on replacing plastic push pins that disintegrated
Greased and repacked all the bearings

Items remaining to upgrade during winter when boat is not in use:
Change all the bulbs out to LED. Including the Faria gauges.
Install Mercury NMEA2000 Engine Gateway module
Install new Carpet
Install JL Audio 7.7 M3 tower speakers
Install Samson swivel wakeboard racks

[wss48126]

Adding some more Pictures. I wanted to show the raw aluminum panel that was under the black vinyl from the 4" Garmin Nav. It had some very rough cuts on it . This looks from the factory since it was not finish painted, but the only Nav option I saw on the 2010 options list was a removable nav. So not exactly sure what is up, but that took me the longest since I had to fill an opening at the top. I had thought about leaving the gap, but my wife told me it would bother me every time I used the boat and had to look at it. Im glad she made me not take a short cut.

Lots of scrubbing to clean the floor before the carpet goes back in......

[Titaniumboy]

Wow, very very nice. You did a ton of work.

[AsLan7]

Yes fantastic work WSS...
I bet that stereo rocks the boat literally.
Nice job and thank you for the pics!
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[wss48126]

The Audio does rock. I cant wait to get my Sub remote volume controller wire though so I can finish balancing everything out. I could have ordered that at full price, but Im OK waiting for it to save $30 on it. Unfortunately, I'll need to take all the Head interior apart to run the wire through and below and from port to starboard.

If anyone has ideas on an easy way to get water temperature feeds into the Garmin, I am open for suggestions. I might change the transducers out again and reconfigure those once I get a few of the other upgrades done to do this unless I run across another idea. My next big upgrades will be buying the engine data module to get the data to the Garmin, tower speakers, and Carpet. I figured I better wait a little while before asking the wife to be able to spend another $1600 in parts....

I figured I would show pics to hopefully give others on the forum ideas for upgrades just like I saw when looking through other forum members upgrades

[AsLan7]

I figured I would show pics to hopefully give others on the forum ideas for upgrades just like I saw when looking through other forum members upgrades

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We so appreciate that!

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[Krob1114]

Welcome. Glad you found us.