Re-wiring CC410 - Questions

"Wow, this forum sucks... "

How? As opposed to those forums where someone will answer your question even if they have no idea what they, or you, are talking about? Consider the silence as meaning no one had an answer you could depend on and rather than make something up just kept out of it.

Getting bad advice and acting on it really sucks.

I've only worked one boat with tranny pressure gauges. Although they're nice to have the tranny level should be part of the pre-cruise check.

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That note was meant for the novices who don't understand the importance of the pre-cruise check. I know that's not you. Although I will say that it's rare that I'm looking at a gauge when shifting gears and 10 hours is a bit long to go without a recheck. Where I can see it as handy would be in the case of a moderate leak (slight leak will be picked up on the check and a dump...well you'll know about that real fast )
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Just to make sure there is no confusion to the dual sender issue.

Senders are providing a variable resistance to ground. They are either externally or internally grounded. A sender designed to drive two gauges has a different range of resistance than one designed to drive one gauge. Mounting the sender on the engine, tranny etc. is usually where the problem starts. If it is an internally grounded sender - common - you should have very clean threads and use an anti-ox for thread sealer, not teflon tape etc. All wiring must be on very good connectors or the gauges will be off, frequently high.

An externally grounded sender must have one terminal going to a good engine ground, sometines hard to find and maintain.

As far as tranny gauges go, IMHO they are as critical as oil pressure on the engine. Anything that stops the vessel from forward progress is critical in my book!

Hope this helps.

Ted

Welcome to the Forum TedZ. I agree that you can never have too much information and a total engine monitoring system is certainly preferable. Trannys tend to be very reliable until they're NOT if you get my drift. That gauge will seldom give you information that you won't get in your engineroom check or when you hear that unmistakable sound. So although preferable to have, it's easy to see why a manufacturer would leave that off when costs have to be cut. The Viking SC I recently came off had no fuel gauges at the upper helm station. They all seem to cut somewhere.

Hi,

Pascal is correct here as to the usefulness of these and temp gauges

The coolers are most likely to start leaking when you are underway on your cruise- this will cause a loss of oil into the cooling medium as it's pressure will be greater than the coolant, the loss of fluid cannot always be seen when underway by the eye but for sure it will lead to high temps (as will over filling) and clutches to slip.

Not something you would necessarily notice at pre sailing checklist time.

On a bigger yacht the drop in clutch pressure is also a good sign that the prop will be turning before the shaft tachos (if fitted) give a reading.

I agree, I too like to have transmission pressure gauges and they have alerted me to a problem when the transmission pump was going bad on a MY with ZF's. It allowed me to travel 250 miles home (after a ZF dealer came out and checked it, cleaned filter, said it "should" probably be ok to get back as long as pressure stays above X amount).

If you need any gauges for your Hatt, I have a lot of those origional AC gauges from a '79 58' Hatteras.

Hi,

I am not sure about the gearboxes used on smaller yachts but on the bigger ones and commercial ships I have worked on it is not uncommon to have a get home facility where you can manually crank up the pressure on the clutch pack with some bolts- This is done when Oil Press is lost or shift valves are not working and is done when the engine is stopped- the shaft starts turning as soon as the engine starts so it isn't any use for maneuvering as it takes a while to setup and has to be undone to change direction and the other set tightened up -all through a series of small Judas Hole type openings.

This ZF had the features where you could lock it into gear. BUT, that would've been the problem, it would be locked into gear. I needed neutral and reverse as well as foward to cross lake okeechobie safely and go through all of the locks and manuever. I was at cruise and watched the RPM's go from 1950to 2350 and at the very same time and quickness gear pressure drop from 250 to 0. I quickly brought the throttle back and into nuetral. The gear pressure only fluctuated from 0-40 and back down instead of being 140 in neutral. I checked fluid it was fine, etc etc...... zf came out cleaned the filter (fine screen with the scraper) pressure only came up to 90lbs neutral and 90 in gear at idle (when it's supposed to go to 250lbs and stay all rpm's). It did come up with a little throttle at 800rpm's it was 150lbs and at 1000 rpm's it was 250lbs....... ZF of north america came out in fort lauderdale......it has $6k for the oil pump installed on a ZF wb165 transmission..... unbelievable......the pump was over $4k alone

That sounds like a pretty cool setup, and again, the more info I have available the better but most owners of smaller yachts wouldn't have a clue what to do with that. A tranny blows, it's time to call Sea Tow. Remember, these boats don't go out for more than maybe 2 or 3 days and that would be trolling for fish (at cruise speed you're talking 15 hours tops). In 20 years of running these boats I've only had one tranny blow (and one that should have blown when the owner threw it from forward cruise into reverse ) and that was on a new boat heading back to the dealer. More than a pressure gauge on that one I'd have loved to have a fuel transfer system or at least a garden hose to syphon with. The only boat I've run with tranny pressure gauges though was a 51 Bertram, and that includes dinner yachts and crew boats. Considering that in those 20 years it would never have helped I can understand why they're seldom found on these boats.

Now there's something I've never seen, but wouldn't it be nice (lost my steering to a leak coming into Norfolk last fall). If we got all the gauges we'd like though the helm would probably look a bit like that on a 747.

I have run a few yachts where it did look like a 747. One Broward I ran had full gauges for both generators at the helm, everything and anything that you could think of.

It would be pretty easy to put a pressure gauge at the helm. You'd just have to put a T on one of the fittings on the helm steering and run it to the gauge.

Since I'm generally on boats that the owners envision themselves running (-80') the problem is selling them a boat that looks like only a professional should be running and explaining the added cost. If it's not in the salon or master bath why pay more for it . Remember most of these guys buy the latest GPS/Chartplotter/Radar (for bragging rights), turn off the radar and watch their boat go across the "map".