Mercury Smartcraft
 

Does anyone have any experience with Mercury Racing Smartcraft System. It appears to be in place of all of the analogue gauges. How does it work, is it reliable? What happens when it fails, do the engines still run? What costs are involved, maintenance, replacement, etc. Would you recomend it or suggest staying away from it.
Any info would be appreciated.
Thanks in advance,
David

Smartcraft is great. It gets it's readings from the PCM on the engine. There's a lot of different ways to run it. You can get only the Vessel view display and that will tell you everything you need to know. Or, Smartcraft gauges. You can use the NMEA 2000 feed to your GPS. You can still have analog gauges too if you want.

My previous boat had a single SC100 gauge, and the rest analog gauges. That worked well, I could verify what the analog gauges read with Smartcraft. Also Smartcraft told me a few things that I didn't have gauges for such as oil temp, and GPH, fuel used.

My new boat has the Smartcraft SC1000 tachs and sc1000 speedo, water PSI, volts, and fuel. My speedo gets the NMEA 0183 input from my GPS. I plan on connecting my GPS to the NMEA 2000 backbone to be able to display the smartcraft info on my GPS too. A little overkill, but I am a computer guy, so I get off on chit like that!

My dash looks similar to this pic, SC Gauges to the left, GPS on the right.

Hi Dave,
Thanks for the info. The boat that I was looking at had no analogue gauges, only a flat screen and then you could view the different gauges on the flat screen. I didn't love the look, but maybe it is something that you can learn to love!
Dave K.

Works great. Connect to NMEA 2000 gateway and you can link the Vessel View with chartplotters, and Fusion radios to have a virtual I Pod touch screen or second set of custom configured gauges on the screen.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]559357[/ATTACH]

I know what you mean. I was going to go gauge-less but changed my mind. I still like the look of gauges.

The VV7 is AWESOME. I rarely look at my analog gauges, and wouldn't hesitate to delete them completely and go the glass helm route if I was building a new boat.

http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/e...pswyst0n7u.jpg

I am redoing my center console and all I have is a vessel view7 and a simrad gps. You can mirror screens and such. No need for gauges anymore. On a performance boat, I think I will still like my tachs. Another benifit is that the smartcraft guages and vessel view can read and clear codes.

Both of my boats have it, both boats had small issues this year that could have resulted in major engine damage without the monitoring and alarms of Smartcraft.

Once you have it and get comfortable with it you will never feel at ease running a boat without it. No more watching gauges, the system is tracking more than you could ever safely watch while underway.

Buy a scan tool and the necessary diagnostic manuals plus service manuals to go with your Smartcraft system, and troubleshooting becomes a breeze.