2006 Mainship 400 Faria Gauge Manual/Specs?

[jefndeb]

Hello,

My latest project is interfacing the Yanmar 6LY2AN-STP analog engine data onto the NEMA 2K network via the Noland RS11 CanBus Adapter.

It takes in analog sensor signals that can be found on the rear side of the gauges. Trouble is, so far cannot locate any schematics or manuals/wiring specs for the displays.

I can see the Faria P/N on one of them, it shows Faria GF4017B, it is the Temp, Oil Press., volts and Fuel display. I cant see the P/N of the RPM display.

That P/N doesn't show up anywhere. The Mainship manual shows the wiring from the sensor to the display but its generic. I was hoping the wire colors would be reflected on the schematics but nope..

I placed a call to Faria tech support but I imagine they are out for the holidays..

Maybe someone out there has the data??

Jeff in Savannah

 

[Newtrawlerowner]

I know this has nothing to do with your gauge mod. request but I too am a "retired sailor" and had a few questions.

I see you have a 2006 Mainship 400. Would you mind terribly if I ask a few questions?
I'll wait for a reply before I ask. Thanks

 

[jefndeb]

Sure..

 

[Newtrawlerowner]

As you can tell by screen name I'm a newbie but not yet a trawler owner.
You have a 2005. My question is more about the condition of the boat you bought, the hours, single of 2 engines and what you paid. I'm looking at a few now, all private party and while none are exactly alike, each has some desirable features. They are all Mainship 400, all single engine. 1 has less than 700 hours, the other 3 over 2000 hours. Just trying to get some perspective. Thanks again for your help.

 

[ranger58sb]

I can see the Faria P/N on one of them, it shows Faria GF4017B, it is the Temp, Oil Press., volts and Fuel display. I cant see the P/N of the RPM display.

That P/N doesn't show up anywhere. The Mainship manual shows the wiring from the sensor to the display but its generic. I was hoping the wire colors would be reflected on the schematics but nope..

I placed a call to Faria tech support but I imagine they are out for the holidays..

For the tach... our original Faria models, power and ground kinda followed the whole boat color schema, and those same colors were power/ground to everything else in our dash, too. It happens gray was the color for the signal wire. (Our Faria tachs were from their Chespeake model line, and they looked like yours only with white face.)

You may be able to figure out colors for the multi-gauge by looking at the corresponding sender on the engine. IOW, if signal is brown at the on-engine sender, it could well be brown at the gauge. Et cetera.

Or... the colors might follow ABYC schedule. I think (from our schematic) that'd be something like: red power, yellow ground, gray tach signal, tan water (coolant) temp, light blue oil pressure, maybe purple/red fuel (not sure).

-Chris

 

[Tonic1]

Jeff,

I did a similar project on an 07 Mainship Pilot 34 twin engine using a Chetco G2 instead of an RS11 and posted a write up on TF, at this link.

http://www.trawlerforum.com/forums/s4/mainship-pilot-34-engine-gauges-nmea-2000-a-44474.html
The PDF contains several links to TF and The Hull Truth posting that were very helpful to me. If you're leery of following others links, just search those forums accordingly.

My gauge wiring mostly followed the ABYC schedule as Chris outlined. I think a couple of wires were off schedule colors to distinguish port engine from starboard. Many, if not all, of the wires were also labeled by Mainship with printing on the side of the wire. If I can get to the boat in the near future I will verify what the color scheme is and let you know.

You might also search TF for posts by RGano on his project to add indicator lights for the alarm circuits on a Pilot 30. He may have posted some wiring info that could be helpful.

You will also need to know the pulse count per revolution for your engine. That should be in the Yanmar manual and is based on the number of gear teeth on the flywheel.

Good luck,

Brett

 

[jefndeb]

Thanks very much, the wire code colors I think will get me going..

 

[rgano]

My project involved tapping into the alarm wiring at the back end of my 6LPA-STP using the engine maintenance manual wiring schematic to find the proper color coded wires to connect the individual alarm switches to a light panel with a light for each alarm. I ordered 20-foot lengths of wire from boatwire.com as close to the color code of the manual as possible. I did not mess with any sensor wiring from the engine; so there was no interface with Faria wiring, but I am sure the color code from water temp, oil pressure, tach, et al are carried forward to the gauges.

 

[ranger58sb]

Seems to me the terminals on the back of the Faria tach were also labeled, maybe P/N/S or maybe +/-/S, something like that... but it was a long time ago...

If they were marked, then maybe the terminals on the back of the multi-gauge are also marked... if you can figure out the shorthand... and/or maybe the signal terminals are located semi-close to where their respective displays are on the front...

-Chris

 

[Tonic1]

Was able to get to boat today to verify wiring on my 07 Pilot 34 follows the schedule posted above.

 

[jefndeb]

Analog to NEMA Engine data

Update for this project-

After confirming the wire color codes per the ABYC standards on my 2 faria gauges, I simply had to added a wire from the back of the gauge post to the Noland Adapter box. I added one for Oil Pressure, Water Temp, Fuel Quantity, Battery Volts and RPM.

The tricky part is adjusting the values or otherwise called "calibration" using the SW utility...Not rocket science but not a box of legos either...

I have all the values tweeked for a first go, will probably do some more adjusting but its nice to have this info where I can now create a sidebar on my plotter to display this information.

Questions/guesses so far- (single Yanmar 6LY2AN-STP)

I think the "cold oil" Oil Pressure is around 30-40 PSI at 700 RPM idle.
I think the engine cooling water temp at normal run temp is about 165 to 175F.

The flywheel, according to the Yanmar spec, has 126 teeth, which helps to pin-point the RPM setting using the laptop utility.

Thanks for all the comments and suggestions.

Here is a picture of the Noland RS11 CanBus Adapter, mounted on the underside of the lower helm dash. with its NEMA 2K cable connected to my Raymarine Seatalk NG network..

Jeff in Savannah

 

[jefndeb]

I think it's really close now...

 

[Dougcole]

Hey Jeff,


Sorry for a dumb question at this point in the project, but what is the benefit of this project? Is it to get more accurate data than the analog gauges give? What are you using to get baseline data for oil pressure and temp? Are you trying to match the new digital gauge to the analog one?


I've also had issues with my Faria gauges, the port side FB Volt Meter doesn't work and my tachs bounce around. The needle on my FB stb tach gets stuck until I give it a little rap with my knuckles. So I'm interested to see how this project turns out.


I'm also considering taking my gauges into Lauderdale Speedometer to have them rebuilt.

 

[ranger58sb]

Faria can rebuild their tachs' at the time it was about $68... but that doesn't include re-setting the engine hours, which they won't (can't?) do. OTOH, I've heard Lauderdale Speedo guys maybe can do that (which doesn't make much sense to me).

When we got our Faria tachs rebuilt, they were still only as accurate as before: OK at the RPM used for setting (we used 2000 RPM), but then not quite correct at either idle or WOT.

So we replaced with 4" Aetna digital tachs. And replaced all the others with 2" CruzPro digital gauges.

-Chris

 

[Dougcole]

Faria can rebuild their tachs' at the time it was about $68... but that doesn't include re-setting the engine hours, which they won't (can't?) do. OTOH, I've heard Lauderdale Speedo guys maybe can do that (which doesn't make much sense to me).

When we got our Faria tachs rebuilt, they were still only as accurate as before: OK at the RPM used for setting (we used 2000 RPM), but then not quite correct at either idle or WOT.

So we replaced with 4" Aetna digital tachs. And replaced all the others with 2" CruzPro digital gauges.

-Chris

Thanks for the info Chris, how hard was the swap out to the digital tachs? Was it plug and play?

 

[ranger58sb]

Te Aetna tachs were really easy. Swap connections, enter (via dip switches) the number of teeth on the flywheel , done.

The other gauges, almost plug and play. The actual connections are easy, although I've had issues with oil pressure gauges and fuel gauges. The CruzPro setup menu didn't happen to include a great option for accurate translations of input from our original oil pressure senders. I could live with it; but decided to just replace the old senders.

CruzPro offers two fuel gauges, one for irregularly shaped tanks and which also include several different computational capabilities... and one for plain ol' cuboid tanks. Latter, easy, pick a sender off a menu and enter full tank capacity... but generally not quite accurate for our tank except at full.

Former... with additional capabilities comes additional setup work. Their instructions are to start with empty tanks, then fill at about 1/16th at a time, making some entry on the gauges at each 16th. I have not yet figured out how to start with empty tanks, nor how to entice a fuel dock to let me spend a half-day there yutzing around. I've been working to calibrate using tank modeling and math, not there yet. OTOH, getting closer, probably, after a few years. And at least our quantities are getting more predictable as I work on it. Turns out the extra computational capabilities only work at rest; underway, our fuel sloshes aft in the tank (where the senders are), seeming to raise levels by 3-20 gallons depending on speeds.

CruzPro customer service is excellent.

-Chris

 

[rgano]

Faria can rebuild their tachs' at the time it was about $68... but that doesn't include re-setting the engine hours, which they won't (can't?) do. OTOH, I've heard Lauderdale Speedo guys maybe can do that (which doesn't make much sense to me).

When we got our Faria tachs rebuilt, they were still only as accurate as before: OK at the RPM used for setting (we used 2000 RPM), but then not quite correct at either idle or WOT.

So we replaced with 4" Aetna digital tachs. And replaced all the others with 2" CruzPro digital gauges.

-Chris

I felt that a digital tach was the best way to go for replacing what i considered inadequate my single Faria tach. I was considering Aetna, but found a Floscan with integrated digital tach online at a really good price. THAT'S what I really wanted; so for a couple hundred more bucks (1/5 of a boat unit), I have the best of both worlds.

 

[ranger58sb]

I felt that a digital tach was the best way to go for replacing what i considered inadequate my single Faria tach. I was considering Aetna, but found a Floscan with integrated digital tach online at a really good price. THAT'S what I really wanted; so for a couple hundred more bucks (1/5 of a boat unit), I have the best of both worlds.

Sounds like a good deal; I don't have FloScans... but would like to. Lots o' work to pull cables in our case, though, which makes it pretty low on my list.

-Chris

 

[Dougcole]

Just for informational purposes I called Lauderdale Speedometer yesterday and asked them about my tachs. They said they don't repair or rebuild Faria tachs and said I should just replace them.

 

[rgano]

Sounds like a good deal; I don't have FloScans... but would like to. Lots o' work to pull cables in our case, though, which makes it pretty low on my list.

-Chris

On this little boat with its impossible access, pulling any new wiring is always a pain, but I just keep finding more project which can only be accomplished with wire-pulling. My most recent one was adding an optional APRA circuit board to my Furuno VX2 navnet MFD. Simple, you think; just pull the the MFD and take the back off to install the CB per directions. OK, but then I discover the compass unit way down low and forward needs a separate cable run to the MFD. UGH!!! The couple of thin wires for the FloScan were nothing compared to that cable run which required pulling part of the head apart. I would have dearly loved FloScans on my trawler, but I just could not justify in my mind two of them for a couple of fairly consistent FL120s.

 

[ranger58sb]

pulling any new wiring is always a pain,

I would have dearly loved FloScans on my trawler, but I just could not justify in my mind two of them for a couple of fairly consistent FL120s.

Yep, almost always... no matter the boat.

I'm good using our engines' projected fuel flow curves, in the meantime. Close enough... and there aren't very many decisions I'd be making on the basis of FloScan reporting. We either go slow, when we can, or faster when we need to/want to/have to... and the incremental differences in fuel consumption -- deviations from flow curves in those specific ranges -- probably (I hope) aren't significant enough to make a huge difference.

For example, I don't expect much difference between 2200 RPM on plane (our norm, when we're going faster) versus 2150, etc.

Slower speeds might show larger differences, but then we just aim for about 8 knots and then just adjust RPM to give us that, compensating for wind, current/tide, etc. Fluctuation can run from 1000 to 1225 RPM, depending, but then when 8 knots is the target we get what we get.

-Chris

 

[rgano]

Yep, almost always... no matter the boat.

I'm good using our engines' projected fuel flow curves, in the meantime. Close enough... and there aren't very many decisions I'd be making on the basis of FloScan reporting. We either go slow, when we can, or faster when we need to/want to/have to... and the incremental differences in fuel consumption -- deviations from flow curves in those specific ranges -- probably (I hope) aren't significant enough to make a huge difference.

For example, I don't expect much difference between 2200 RPM on plane (our norm, when we're going faster) versus 2150, etc.

Slower speeds might show larger differences, but then we just aim for about 8 knots and then just adjust RPM to give us that, compensating for wind, current/tide, etc. Fluctuation can run from 1000 to 1225 RPM, depending, but then when 8 knots is the target we get what we get.

-Chris

My useable fuel capacity of around only 150 gallons can go pretty quickly at up to 10 GPH if I want to run at about 3000 RPM (16-17 MPH) or rather slowly if I come to a long stretch where I need/want to go at hull speed. The resettable cumulative counter of the FloScan is a great help in overall fuel management. If I ever elect to run the 165 miles across the Big Bend to Tarpon Springs, the FS will be closely monitored because I would likely use a combination of fast and slow cruising getting across - I get a consistent 2 miles to the gallon at most all useful planing speeds. Theoretically, on that run, I'd use 83 gallons, but my fuel sight gauge, my Faria gauge's fuel level indications, and the FS would all be carefully watched. Monitoring the FS displayed GPH is another tool in monitoring engine health of my thirsty Yanmar 315 HP.

 

[jefndeb]

Here is the spec for the Faria displays...

 

[Newtrawlerowner]

I wanted to ask what the part number of the Raymarine display is. I'm close to buyer an older boat that needs some TLC and the survey revealed issues with current gauges.