stevesxm

two things of casual interest.... say what you want about efi and its alleged complexity and how carbs will save you... but i developed a missfire coming home the other day on the starboard motor so , not knowing what it was, just shut it down and finished the ride home on one. got there, plugged in the scanner... its says " he dummy, the wire fell off the air temp sensor" or words to that effect. and sure enough... it had. instant solution. with the right diagnostic tool, nothing is easier than this stuff.

second... when i got this boat it had 10 year old gaffrig gages in it... one or two were ugly... one was dead so i said " oh what the hell" and spent a grand on all new gaffrig instruments and sensors.... and they are incredible JUNK. fill w/ moisture... 3 sensor failures in 12 mos, gas gages are so inaccurate as to the point where i keep a distance traveled log as opposed to trusting them... i would NEVER buy this stuff again... the people in chicago (?) or wherever they are are nice... just SEND em BACK.. they say... sure... let me just rattle my dashboard to pieces every three weeks to install more junk. where is stewart warner when you need them.

yo ho ho and happy thanksgiving from the carribean

Pismo10

You just made a nice argument for carbs, for you would never have had the problem in the first place as you don't have air temp sensors on carbed motors.

RBeyer

I'll stick with blown and injected. A little more work to get there but well worth the time.

Griff

Which Gaffrig guages?????

Gaffrig by Livorsi that are labeled "Gaffrig Precision Instruments" prior to being labled Livorsi Marine. Most people agree these are the better ones.

The other gaffrig is labled as "Gaffrig Performance" and still is.

Fuel guage innaccuracy is generally due to the float sensor and how it is adjusted.

stevesxm

you sure right about the carbs being easy and simple.. i know this because the guys on either side of me have carbs and i know how easy they are to work on.... because between the times when their boats aren't belching black smoke because the floats have sunk or back firing and spitting because some piece of smeg has gotten in somewhere, they are generally spread out in pieces when i show up, flick the switches and drive off... and ill take the great milage and performance for the last 240 hrs all day for a single wire falling off and 1 bad injector ( at 350 hrs).

yup... carbs sure are easy to work on... and a damn good thing too.

these gaffrig are the original guys... not the livorsi ones... and the senders couldn't POSSIBLY be easier to adjust... set the empty with the sender out of the tank dry ( as per instructions) and the full with it full .... they track at completely different rates and are completely non repeatable... and yes... the wiring is new. even the 10 yr old ones were at least accurate and repeatable. and the moisture and sending unit failures just smack of junk mfg

Too Old

So what are the labeled?

Gaffrig Performance
or
Gaffrig Precision Instruments?

US1 Fountain

iTrader: (1)

Only time I have ever seen an accurate fuel gauge is right after fill up. After that, notta.
To many varibles, reading while on plane, at rest, on the trailer, waves, load......etc


Luckily you had a scanner back at home, otherwise might be saying no way to trouble shoot this dang EFI motors. At least a carb motor can be diagnosed on the water. Sometimes. But I agree, when the EFI's run good, they are nice.
My EFI leaves my transom black in under 1 minute.

stevesxm

gages are "gaffrig performance ", elk grove villiage, il

dear fountain 1,
all kidding aside, the scanners are cheap.. couple hundred bucks i think i paid for this one on e bay... and i am really surprised at your specific issue... rich running is a really simple thing to fix most of the time... could be lots of things, of course, but most common are a bad water temp sensor... thinks its too cold... or someone took the thermostat out and it really IS too cold. or air temp sensor, or fuel press regulator /hi fuel pressure. either way, the scanner tells you that answer in two minutes. when your carb does the same thing what do you do ? you check all the same things ( or similar) except you do it manually... check the float levels, power valves, clean the jets etc etc ... and if you have a spare float or carb with you on the water , then its just as easy for me to have a spare sensor or two... my opinion ( and i stress opinion) is that efi, if left alone, is really the way to go. most of the problems i have seen with them are the same simple maintainence related failures that stop or screw up any system... bad wiring, bad filters , etc AND what people do to them... sending the ecu's off for " recalibration" jacking the fuel pressure thinking they are remapping the fuel curve etc. it simply doesn't work that way. in stock trim... like my 502's, i couldn't ask for a better system. if i was building a " hot" motor from scratch, i would use efi but with a user configureable engine managment system rather than try to modify this stuff. for me it would yield better results and be less money in the end. if i lived on a desert island w/ no phones or access to civilization, then yes... i would have a carb.

if you have an unmodified efi system, buying a scanner is buying 100 dollar bills for 10 dollars. it will pay for itself the very first time you fix something instantly rather than have someone guessing and just throwing parts at it.

Griff

I don't need a scanner for my carb engine. I'm already a few hundred bucks ahead. I'm on my 4th carbed engine and this one is SC'd. Between all of them, I have put over 700 hrs on them. The engines with them had a combined total of around 1400hrs. Not once did I ever have a failure associated with a carb. Carb engines can be just as reliable as EFI. If a wire fell off on my engine, it would take me about 5 minutes to find and I wouldn't need scan tool to see it. As far as mileage, EFI is only slightly better(about 7%) when comparing the same HP engines. Besides does it make that much difference if you get 1.4 or 1.5 mpg?????

Stock engines that you don't want to ever upgrade are fine for EFI. The Merc EFI also does not adjust for conditions like automotive EFI systems. It uses set fuel map curve and does not use O2 sensors to make optimum effiency and HP. EFI when done right in HP stuff is great. When its done wrong or there is a problem it usually creates a major problem--like detonation or holes in pistons.


As far as your fuel guage problems, it has to do with the float sensor in the tank. It could be in the adjustment or it could just be from all the bouncing around. Personally, I would buy Livorsi. The current Gaffrig Performance guages are NOT the good ones. The 10 year old ones you had were probably Gaffrig Precision Instruments aka Livorsi Marine.

DORaymond

I have also recently put in new Gaffrig gauges, and they fog up, do not read accurately, and the senders begin to corrode on the outside almost immediately.