furuno and yamaha NMEA no one could give me a darn answer so i figured it myself.

[lembo]

hi guys
just thought id share a little dilemma i had recently with my motors and sounders.
Ive got a little kevlacat with twin 07 60 hp 4 stroke yammies and 2 furuno (now 1 furuno) sounder gps's. a gp1870 and a gp1670 model.
Now my dilemma was i had no way of telling how much fuel was in my boat, no tank gauges nothing.
So after a bit of research i thought i could get myself a Yamaha/NMEA cable and plug my motors staright into sounder to show fuel flow.i checked and both furuno and Yamaha had the correct plugs so i rang furuno to ask if there untit would display fuel flow and they said "pretty sure it does" and a call to Yamaha to ask if the motor would output this info and they said "umm maybe, it might and might not 07 was a funny year".
So i bit the bullet and bought the cables just to see as the info i received was useless. fired it all up and wham! temp,boost,rpm, and some other bits of info but not the one i want fuel flow..
so after a heap more calls to Yamaha and furuno they both started saying there unit would definitely do fuel flow , so why the hell isn't it showing up !!!
so after reading every manual and going through every setting i was pulling my hair out.not knowing weather it was motor or sounder to fault.
considering buying a $800 fuel flow setup i had a mate that recently got a lowrance unit and hadn't installed it yet. so i burrowed it , put it on some power plugged in NMEA cable and WHAM fuel flow data. so next day i went out and bought a Garmin 751xs and couldn't be more happier. it whips the furuno in every way and displays all sorts of very valuable fuel info.
so if anyone is having trouble with NMEA can bus setups don't believe what manufactures say because i had about 15 Yamaha guys and 4 furuno guys all give me mixed answers and they all wanted me to bring my boat in and pay to find out if it displays info or not. and bloody Yamaha just wanted to sell me there $1200 less accurate setup.

[scottar]

You should have asked. There is a previous thread by Flex some time ago about exactly this issue. Not the first time I have seen fuel issues with Furuno NMEA2K. Navnet 3D would read fuel flow but only from one engine at a time and there was nothing you could use to calculate capacity remaining in the software anyway. Garmin has in my experience been the most friendly in this regard. The Japanese have been very slow on the uptake with NMEA2K. No real idea why but it wasn't their idea so they just weren't interested was the guess at the time. As for the Garmin being better than the Furuno - Furuno makes very high quality equipment - excellent sounders and good radars - unfortunately their GPS systems in recent years have always been difficult to operate at best by comparison IMO.

[rodneyk]

Hi Lembo the tanks on the old KC fill directly down from filler into top of tank from memory the tanks are rectangle and you can fill tank and use a dowell dipstick mark the top fill mark divide it into 4 and its pretty close but that only gives you an idea you still have fuel doesn't give flow which is what you were after this is for a backup piece of mind Rod