Replacing Raymarine Hybrid touch E series

[Captain JR]

I?m presently looking to replace my raymarine 2013 hybrid touch units. They have some issues that can not be resolved. I was looking at the Garmin 8600 series. Question I have is how does the ray marine auto pilot work with the Garmin units. I looked into the Garmin autopilot for the Volvo with pods and they wanted 7000 dollars which is crazy. Any experiences with this combination.

 

[twarble]

i swapped classic e-series, E-120 MFDs, for Garmin 7600's. the autopilot worked, but there were gotcha's....it didn't talk so well to the MFDs, so there was no SOG, or heading from the autopilot. and if i remember right, there was even a bit of an offset on heading between the two. not as important, things like auto-routing didn't work at all.

in short, i could activate the auto-pilot manually from it's own control panel, and it would hold just fine. just couldn't control it from the MFDs if i remember right. it was a super expensive swap for me too....and the cable run to the gimble was ridiculous. i decided it wasn't worth it...

good luck with the swap..
todd

 

[Fossil Fuel]

Im finding the integration of Navionics maps in garmin is not as easy as you would think, even though garmin now owns navionics? The raymarine seems to me much easier to get the maps to display in a user friendly format. Garmin customer service is although second to none. So I am a garmin fan. Just finished up setting a friends boat with all the latest garmin glass cockpit, way too many calls to garmin tech support, and it still does not have the seamless feel of my older raymarine E-120

 

[gwazoo27]

I had a 2013 ray marine hybrid and changed over to Garmin 8616xsv. I had to get Garmin reactor autopilot corepack and Garmin rudder feedback censor. MRP was 2300. Autopilot works perfect. It’s not on a Formula.