Searay 180 Instruments

[ANDREW SMITH]

Fellow Searay owners, love my boat,but, I find the fuel guage and temperature guages to not read properly. Kozman,do you find the same in your '04?

 

[markvictor]

Re: Searay 180 Instruments

How about a little more info...read high , low, intermittant?

 

[ANDREW SMITH]

Re: Searay 180 Instruments

Mark, the temp gauge reads 190 when the sender is 160; the fuel guage reads half full when the tank is full. I was curious if the Searay boys had a similar experience with their gauges.

 

[markvictor]

Re: Searay 180 Instruments

RR,<br />I was a shop foreman for a searay dealer before going independant..How did you come up with the 160 reading? With an infrared therm. on the sender body? That is not necessarily a true indication of water temp... To test the instrument, you must take a resistance reading to ground at the sender(disconnected) at operating temp. Then reconnect, and take the same reading at the helm from the sender wire to ground...if the same(or very close) so far so good... Then you would need to check the Teleflex chart to determine what the instrument would read at a specific resistance value..(the reading you took) If it matches, there is no problem with the guage or wiring. If you were still not satisfied that it was correct, you can then remove the sensor and recheck the resistance measurement under controlled conditions,ie. a pot of boiling water..<br />The fuel guage can be tested exactly the same way. however if it is reading at a 50% error rate I would suspect the float. But remember, that guage is only truly accurate on a level, unmoving boat...and a float type guage is not measuring fuel by volume in gallons, it is only measuring the HEIGHT of the fuel in the tank so half full doesn't mean there are 5 gal. left in a ten gallon tank, it would mean there are 6" of fuel left in a tank that was 12" high..unless the tank is perfectly symetrical and it can draw fuel from the bottom of the tank (it can't)....<br />regards,<br />markvictor

 

[ANDREW SMITH]

Re: Searay 180 Instruments

mark, I ran the engine to operating temperature and noted the sender resistance was 107 and the temp gauge read 190. Then I removed the sender, attached an ohm meter and dipped it in a pot of water. The water temp was raised and every 3 degrees, the ohms were recorded. At 107 ohms, the water was 160F. With the sender disconnected, and a trimmer resister connected, 125 ohms equalled 160 on the gauge. So the difference is 18 ohms. I have permanently mounted an 18 ohm resister between the sender and the gauge. All is well with the temp, but the fuel gauge bugs me. The tank holds 80L of fuel. With 20L of fuel in the tank, the sender reads 195 ohms and the guage reads E should be 1/4). At 40L, 135ohms and 1/4 full( should be 1/2), at 60L, 80ohms and 5/8 full(should be 3/4). With the sender disconnected and a trimmer resister installed, E =236 ohms, 1/4full=150ohms, 1/2=100 ohms, 3/4=60ohms. My point is, the sender is not calibrated to the tank. The tank has an irregular shape, but my searay dealer won't replace it. As an ex Searay shop forman, would you expect the sender to be replaced??.

 

[markvictor]

Re: Searay 180 Instruments

RR,<br />So that would tell me that either you have the wrong temp sender or it is faulty, or the guage is out of cal, but you cannot tell without knowing the factory resistance values to compare it with...You can get that value from tech support at teleflex marine dot com...I understand it's working now for you, but that was a treatment of a symptom,not a cure for the actual problem...but if you're ok with it...However if you're under warranty it should be done right. There is no way to calibrate the float to the tank other than full and empty..This is done by adjusting the length of the float rod or bending it so that it is at the bottom of its travel when empty and top of its travel when full.. Like I said, you are not gauging volume, only the height of the fuel in the tank, therefore it is more of a kinetic reading moving between full and empty and not an indication of how much fuel is left.It is normal for the guage to read empty when the tank is still in the neighborhood of 5 to 10% full, as you cannot draw from the bottom of the tank, to help cut down on contamination of the fuel system with debris and minimize ingestion of any accumulated water. Therefore you want to measure the"usable" fuel level, not actual. So in essence, if it reads full when it is, and reads empty when it is down to somewhere between 5 and 10% (app.) , that's as good as it gets. If it doesn't do both, they should fix it. If you have an unresolved service problem and get nowhere at the dealership, call Sea Ray customer service direct..I guarantee that will spur some action from the dealer muy rapido...because their CSI rating can be adversely affected..and that is the basis by which a dealership is rated with corporate...<br />Regards,<br />markvictor

 

[bobo993]

Re: Searay 180 Instruments

My sea ray 180 is the first boat I've ever owned where all the gauges, especially gas gauge, actually work and are very accurate. Even the trim gauge is accurate.

 

[kozman01]

Re: Searay 180 Instruments

Hey RebelRipper,<br /><br />Sorry I couldn't respond sooner. I forgot my login and for the longest time, the site wouldn't acknowledge my e-mail address. Anyways, back to your situation. The fuel gauge is always in my mind never going to be very acurate. Being only 18 feet long, the boat bobs on that mid point way more than a boat that is longer in length. If I'm looking to fill up, I just pop the engine cover and look over to see how full I am. On the water, the gauge is a good estimate of how much youhave in there. The water temp. seems to be accurate in that it holds a steady temp of 180-190, then will cool down a little and then back up tot he 180-190 area. Is the gauge accurate in temp.? I don't know, but it always reads the same temps everytime. Hope that was some help!

 

[ANDREW SMITH]

Re: Searay 180 Instruments

thanks Kozman, my temp guage reads 190F at normal running temp, or about 30F more than the t-stat at open. My dealer has installed a 42 ohm resistor in series with the sender, now the guage reads 160F. The fuel guage is not even close to being accurate. Like you I have to lift the dog house to see the fuel level. My dealer explained the sender is not calibrated to the shape of the fuel cell, the Searay engineers declined to purchase the more expensive sender. So now I have to live with an innaccurate fuel guage. Its not the sloshing or the length of the boat, its the "linear" sender. My dealer said they would replace the sender when the engineers had a calibrated sender, but it has been 4 months, and no fix yet. I guess I'm suprised that we are living with less than "searay" accuracy. (I still love my boat...)

 

[kozman01]

Re: Searay 180 Instruments

Why did they add a resistor? Is there a problem with the temp sender or the wiring? The reason I'm asking is that I'm wondering if I should go back to the dealer or do this myself on adding the resistor or should I just subtract 30 degrees from the actual reading so I don't have to take my boat back to the dealer. I hate doing that because everytime you get the boat back there always appears to be some sort of bad scratches or something else wrong with the boat. This actually really pisses me off a bit on the gauges. I can get 20 dollar gauges on a car to work flawlessly, but Sea Ray can't put a fuel gauge and temp gauge in that work!!!! You are right, I love the boat though and for the price I paid, there wasn't anything that could touch it. RebelRipper, what year is your boat and do you know if Sea Ray has anything like a TSB out on that fuel sender?<br /><br />By the way, if you have the 04 or 05 consider yourself lucky! I just went back to the dealer yesterday to get a couple quarts of oil and was looking at the 06' "175", man, what an ugly, ugly looking boat. Looks cheap as hell. This is actually a good thing because it will help keep resale of the 04/05's up because they look like Cadillacs compared to the 06's. Just my opinion.

 

[ANDREW SMITH]

Re: Searay 180 Instruments

koz, they added a resistor to re-calibrate the Teleflex guage. The sender is within specs, but the guage is 30F off.( kinda neat play on words,eh). Some electronics buddies of mine cannot re-calibrate the linear fuel sender, about the only workaround they could do is adjust the "perfect point" to 1/4 full, so I would know when to start thinking about filling, but this would make every other guage reading totaly meaningless. Koz, mine is an 05 red with two tone interior, beatifull boat. First year of the Turn Key Start, that for me was set too lean, but now has been adjusted richer. The 06 175 is a dog, don't get the colours or the cheapness. The 06 185 looks like a Bombardier Jet boat rip off. Anyways, I was wondering if Searay 180Sport owners had similar challenges??

 

[kozman01]

Re: Searay 180 Instruments

RebelRipper,<br /><br />Was it easy to adjust the mixture? How did you do it? Thanks. Yep, 06' is a dog!!

 

[ANDREW SMITH]

Re: Searay 180 Instruments

koz, the dealer made the adjustment, since it was a warrantee item, I wanted the mechanics to do it right. I would like a swim platform, maybe a "half width" , do you know if one is available?

 

[kozman01]

Re: Searay 180 Instruments

Swim platform??? I'm not sure what your looking for. Explain a little more sir. I didn't think the dealer would do that adjustment. Good to know they will.

 

[kozman01]

Re: Searay 180 Instruments

Just wanted to know if anyone with a newer Sea Ray, within the last year or two has had a problem witht he Clarion radio that is installed. The CD player on mine went out last year, while still under warranty and of course I didn't call until my warranty expired this year. Stupid me. Just wanted to know if anyone else has had problems with the factory installed Clarion. JVC here I come!!

 

[atomictaco]

Re: Searay 180 Instruments

Not sure about the Clarions installed in Sea Rays, but I have had several Clarions in my car and have had the CD player go out on all of them. I will not buy another Clarion head unit. Their quality the last 6-8 years seems to have gone to nothing.