Smart Craft gauges

[nickstock]

Hi fellas,

I just received my new 5.5 meter platey from Viper. I am running a 115 Optimax and the guys down at Cooporoo Marine fitted the smart craft gauges to the boat.

My problem lies with the fuel gauge??????? My neighbour runs an Opti with the same gauges and calibrated his gauges to work out fuel usage ect.

When we try to set the fuel levels on mine it does not work. I can get liters used, liters burn per hour ect but not how much fuel is in the actual tank?

The only thing that I can think of is that Viper have messed up the fuel sensor or something like that as all seems to be working on the Smart Craft side of things other then the actual fuel gauge?

:-/

[Bowser]

I don't know the smart craft, but Yammies similar gauges which are NMEA200 give a tank reading but it is still an analogue signal I would need to put an NMEA2000 sender into the system to get the full value of the gauges etc. I can only track remaining fuel from a full tank i.e. if I fill up and then tell the system that I have done so it measures the fuel used and shows fuel remaining. If I put the NMEA sender in then it has the capacity to allow me to top and enter the amount of fuel put in as against only being able to completely fill up.

You may find that this is the case with your set.

[nickstock]

Thanks mate,
I know that it should be reading it after it has been calibrated as my neighbours boat does.

Any other suggestions?

Nick

[wags on the water]

Nick, call in/ring your local merc dealer and ask them for a copy of the smart gauge manual and reset the gauges yourself.

[nickstock]

Nick, call in/ring your local merc dealer and ask them for a copy of the smart gauge manual and reset the gauges yourself.

I was not supplied a copy of the manual when I received the boat however my neighbour has a copy and we have reset the gauges yet it is still not working.

By the looks of it Viper may have stuffed up the fuel sender or something?

Any suggestions on getting it fixed? The closest Merc dealer is a 700kms round trip!

[Dicko]

The smartcraft guages are awesome. The manual for them is crap.

Is the gauge even hooked up to the merc loom ? from memory it's just a single wire & marked pretty clearly.

There's 2 ways of calibrating it. The first is to have an empty tank- set the gauge. then fill to 1/4 - set the guage etc.

The other way (The easiest) is to set the tank size straight into the guage.

[MEGA'bite]

Niskstock had the same problem and the fuel gauge was not compatable with the smart gauges, i opted to install a lowrance L 200 i think it was, and it did more than the smart gauges ever did. it was not expensive either

[Robbo_Townsville]

I know it would be nice to have the gauges tell you how much is left in the tank, but if you know how much your tank holds, and use the "litres used" function on the smartcraft gauges you are just as good. Mine is acuurate to a couple of litres either side, everytime.

Robbo

[deefa66]

Hey nickstock, how did you go with your problem??

I had a similar problem with my smartcraft gauges,( wouldn't show correct % of fuel in tank but usage etc were fine)
My problem was a faulty fuel sender, do you know what brand of tank you have??
New sender fixed problem although I cant calibrate gauge to option of filling to 1/4 then set gauge, fill to 1/2...... repeat, three times after draining tank I have got to 3/4 and error occurs DOH!!! Is this what happens with yours??
Works pretty good just calibrating to tank size though.

Cheers Deefa

[megafish71]

G'day Nic, I think Dicko is on the right track, doesn't sound like the sender unit is wired up correctly, if at all. The active (+) wire from the sender hooks into the smart craft loom and the neutral (-) goes back to a common neg bus bar or battery neg. It may be hooked up backwards, worth checking it out.

Cheers Ron

[bobp]

check that you even have a fuel tank sender as some plates are built with out a fuel sender in the tank
can be a bitch to wire up a dip stick::)