Transom mount transducer in bilge area

[somfas]

I've been reading about mounting a transducer. I have a 2000 Sea Pro 180cc and a Simrad NSS7 Evo 3 with a (3 in 1, or totalscan Lowrance I think) transom mount transducer. Then I came across a thread that appeared to be talking about mounting their transom mount TD inside the hull in the bilge area. Would that work for my application? Seems unlikely but wanted to ask.

Assuming that does not work, would there be an issue with me mounting it in front of the engine by the drain plug? That area is forward of the transom by about 6" or so and it looks like it would fit there fine. 

In lieu of drilling into the transom, or the area I'm talking about near the plug, I was planning to glue a piece of starboard with 5200 and mounting to that. Unless it would be better to drill some more holes into the transom.

Thanks for any tips or advice

[Juan]

You "could" mount it inside the hull but a transom mount transducer needs to be in water to work correctly. If mounted in the bilge area, it would have to either be kept wet or glassed onto the hull and there can't be any air bubbles in the glass but by doing that, you're deleting all the functions of a 3 in 1 transducer to nothing more than reading standard sonar and even that probably won't work very well. The temperature, side scan and down image functions won't work unless it's correctly installed on the transom. You can buy a shoot through transducer if you need to mount the transducer inside the boat.
Mounting to a piece of starboard or transom saver is a good idea since you could have different transducers mounted there in the future and there wouldn't be a need to drill more holes into the hull but I'd use 5200 AND screws to mount the starboard since the 5200 could break loose should the transducer strike something.
You should Google "transducer locations" or search the forum for other posts but the transducer needs to be mounted where there is no turbulence or air bubbles so in front of the motor is not a good place to put it.

[somfas]

Thanks for the info. I'll transom mount it then. I "thought" in front of the engine would be before any turbulence. Otherwise, it looks like a good bit starboard of the engine. Thanks

[gnrphil]

In front of the engine will likely mess up the water flow in front of the prop which will cause you other problems, check out stern saver for a transom mount, I've had one on mine for 5 years or more.
sternsaver.com/

[somfas]

Thanks for the info, I'll check out sternsaver as well.