Re: Trim gauge questions
 

Be a real man and snip ALL the wires you can find.
Who do those electricians think they are anyway?
Does anybody really care what gauge readings are?
I find my enjoyment of boating is much better if I have no idea what's going on with the engines. Why worry?












Before you snip any wires just check today's date.

Re: Trim gauge questions
 

Edd just wanted to post whore to get over 1000 !!!! :rolleyes:

not to beat a dead horse 88Fount33, but if you loosen the outside cable wire plate covers (tucked way the crap in there) you could pull the wires tight while you spliced and shrink wrapped, then pull them back until the splice hits the transom and get the proper slack back again on the outside??

just a suggestion, but may be more trouble than worth.....

liekwise, ctadams. if you have the guages, and the wires and pucks are there. then you could re splice to make them work again....

like dana marine mentions - 12V goes to the guage, out the guage, to the sender (potentiometer/resistor) and back into the boat and to ground. depending on the potentiometer position, the resistance shows up via the REMAINING voltage drop through the gauge. so if your gauge is pinning, that tells me that the other end of the wire is grounded somewhere.

Ramb

Re: Trim gauge questions
 

I learn something new about boating everyday. I learned that I do not have Gaffrig Gauges even though they say Gaffrig Performance Instruments. Who would of thought that it is really a Livorsi.
Anyway there is a resister on the back between the signal wire and the + hot wire. What's that all about. The signal wire should have a reduced voltage since the puck on the drive varies the voltageas the drive rotates. Right???

Re: Trim gauge questions
 

There's a whole other string about Gaffrig by Livorsi and Gaffrig.... who ownes the name etc.....

anyway. this is where my first hand knowlege ends, but my logical assumption is that the resistor gives some internal gauge resistance when the puck is at 0 or minimum resistance, otherwise your current condition would not only pin the needles, but result in a dead short and then smoke and heat and stuff....... :eek:

now, this will show my ignorance..... is the guage an ammeter maybe? and negligible voltage drops occurs across the gauge pins? current controlled by the puck resistor, otherwise the resistor is a calibrated shunt ( precision resistor) needed to calibrate the meter.


just my assumption.



Dana Marine????


Ramb

Re: Trim gauge questions
 

Just got back into town, I will get the required information regarding our LED kit from my electrical engineer Monday am.
Thanks

Re: Trim gauge questions
 

It's definatly a trim gauge. What you are saying makes sense.
I had to drop circuits class the first time around so electical issues require some extra though... :p

Re: Trim gauge questions
 

I don't think it measures voltage. I think it measure ohms of resistance to change the gauge readings.

Anybody sure of this?

Re: Trim gauge questions
 

Yes it measures resistance, the trim gauge measures the resistance from its wire to ground as the unit moves. The sender has a contact that wipes along a coiled wire in the sender, as the wiper moves along the coiled wire the resistance either gets higher in one direction and lower as the wiper moves toward the other end of the coil.
When I replaced mine the wiper had worn though the wire and lost contact to ground. I did get it replaced without removing the drive, but it was tricky. I tried to solder the wires once and shrink wrap, but being in water constantly, it just corroded and broke again. I have a set if you want to just replace both the trim and tilt senders.

Re: Trim gauge questions
 

rlsage

Looks like both of my senders change ohms as I rotate the puck so I think I will look into bench testing the gauge itself and then send them back if that's the problem.

Thanks!

CTA

Re: Trim gauge questions
 

Looks like my problem has to do with the factory wiring vs. the wiring harnesses that are on the transplant HP500s. I think the Trim wires ran through the engine harness and through the Mercathode on HP 500 equiped boats but origionally (according to Chris Craft diagram) the sender wires would have went straight to the sender.
Anyhow, I wired the sender straight to the gauge and the starboard side now works. Port side I am still having problems but it looks like the resister on the gauge is broken so I may just send that one back for repair.

Later,

CTA