Cheap / Temporary Tachometer for '05 22v + Pulling Tips?

[co99tj]

Hey Guys,

Happy to finally be an 'acting' member of the forum here after picking up a new (to me) 2005 Tige 22v (first time owner here). Everyone here has been instrumental in this entire process - so much great info here.

I just picked up the boat a couple weeks ago and, during the water test, noticed that neither of the gauges (Speedo and Tach) work correctly. They are the multi-function Faria gauges with the depth, water temp, air temp, etc. The Perfect Pass is reading the speed correctly and is not GPS based - so that tells me that the problem is with the gauge and not with the sensor itself. I believe the same is true for the RPM's (reading correctly on PP), but I honestly haven't spent much time with the PP on RPM mode and need to do a little more digging there.

Here's my current dilemma...Faria has the gauge repair program ($225 / each...ouch) but they are backed up several weeks. In the meantime, I plan to use the boat and I'm wondering if there might be a way that I can purchase a cheap "temporary" tach to replace the Faria gauge with while it's in the shop being repaired. Is that possible? The speedo can wait until the end of the summer as I can at least still read the speed on the PP...but I have no way of knowing what RPM translates to what speed, so using the RPM function (which I'd like to do) is difficult at this point.

I'm also concerned about using the boat for any real purposes (wakeboarding, etc.) with a broken tach - as it's very difficult for me to know what kind of pressure I'm putting on the engine without being able to see the RPM's. I'm just going by sound and feel at this point - but are there any tips for how to pull up a wakeboarder without looking at the tach? When I'm pulling a 250 lb. rider out of the water, should I go to WOT - or just give it 60-70% and then back off? I assume these boats have rev limiters - is it possible to damage anything while waiting for the tach? I'm not really concerned about myself driving - more my friends (that don't own boats) when they're pulling me up...would be much easier to just tell them to go to 3000 RPM and then back off to 20 MPH - but not sure what kind of advice to give them based purely on speed.

Thanks for your help!

[co99tj]

Was thinking something like this (obviously need to verify size first - but just as an example) http://www.amazon.com/Faria-Kronos-T...ard+tachometer

[talltigeguy]

My brother in Law's 05 24V has the exact same issue. Are your air and water temp readings working on the bottom part of the gauge? His works just fine for that, but no RPM or speed. The Perfect pass works fine. I am wondering if there is a fuse, power or ground wire somewhere that is causing the issue. It seems strange to have both fail at once.

I am not too worried about this problem. You are not going to hurt anything unless you try and cruise steadily at 45 MPH for hours on end. The engine would be screaming and any sensible person will know it ain't right to do that.

Hit the throttle as hard as you need to in order to get the fat guy out of the water. Full throttle while getting on plane will not hurt your boat.

Now if you are considering a different prop, you will need to know what your RPM's are doing at the activity you need help with. But if you are happy with the hole shot and the time it takes to get up to speed with your preferred activity, you really don't have much need to have those gauges.

Are you sure the gauges need to be sent back? I wonder if any of the gurus here have an idea what can be done to troubleshoot this. But both gauges failing at once makes me think it is extrinsic to the units themselves.

[co99tj]

My brother in Law's 05 24V has the exact same issue. Are your air and water temp readings working on the bottom part of the gauge? His works just fine for that, but no RPM or speed. The Perfect pass works fine. I am wondering if there is a fuse, power or ground wire somewhere that is causing the issue. It seems strange to have both fail at once.

I am not too worried about this problem. You are not going to hurt anything unless you try and cruise steadily at 45 MPH for hours on end. The engine would be screaming and any sensible person will know it ain't right to do that.

Hit the throttle as hard as you need to in order to get the fat guy out of the water. Full throttle while getting on plane will not hurt your boat.

Now if you are considering a different prop, you will need to know what your RPM's are doing at the activity you need help with. But if you are happy with the hole shot and the time it takes to get up to speed with your preferred activity, you really don't have much need to have those gauges.

Are you sure the gauges need to be sent back? I wonder if any of the gurus here have an idea what can be done to troubleshoot this. But both gauges failing at once makes me think it is extrinsic to the units themselves.

Awesome - thank you - that's a big help. You're right - the strange thing is the depth, water, air temp, hour meter, etc. are all working perfectly...but the gauges don't move at all. They both actually come on correctly when the boat is started and the tach seems to work at idle, but the minute you give it any throttle, it's useless. Sometimes it will actually pin itself to the right with any throttle at all and then won't reset until the boat is turned off. The speedo just seems to sit at 10-12 MPH and doesn't move...very weird.

I'm using the stock prop for now - but will probably upgrade soon and definitely want to resolve this gauge issue. You're right though - I'm not 100% sure that the gauges need to be sent back - just not sure how to troubleshoot. If I don't have to, I would really like not to...a lot of other things I'd like to do to the boat with $450 + shipping + 3 weeks!

[Ditch Doctor]

Check your connections on the back of your gauges. I had a similar issue with the tach on my '05 20v and after wiggling all the connections on the back of the gauges it resolved the issue. Primarilly the grounds. You also need to make sure all connections are tight and in order under the dash while under there. I know mine has several buss bars for power and ground distribution.

[UNSTUCK]

Just grab any cheap tach from anywhere. Make sure you can set it to either a 4cyl or 8 cyl engine. Depending on what engine you have, such as the LS series, they actually put out a 4 cyl signal. So you would just flip the switch to that signal. As long as it reads close to what you have on the PP you've got it right.

[Captainkurk72]

Welcome and congrats to Tige family.
I would bet your gauges are good. I bought my 05 22v a few years ago and had speedo gauge issues. Your Faria speedo and perfect pass have their own sending units. The perfect pass is on the hull starboard side of tranny. The Faria speedo is located on the transom starboard side. Can't miss it since only thing back there besides Taps. Check to see if your paddle wheel is still there. I suspect is gone, broke or stuck. Mine was broke such that it would spin sometimes and sometimes not. Instead of replacing this $100+ unit for old technology I upgraded to GPS. NauticLogic makes a sweet and super easy to install unit. http://www.nauticlogic.com/
Get the NL4-Fc + swift 10Hz $239. It will give GPS to PP and Faria Speedo. You will still have temp, depth etc so don't remove the sending unit. Best/Easist mod I have done.
That said, you Tach is a electrical gremlin that you have to locate and start with a checking connecting in the gauge.
I also had some electrical issues that haunted me the first few years. My voltage gauge would read 11 when I new I had more and several other problems that resulted in a few tows to the dock. Long story short I eventually had to take to dealer. They found some loose wire connection inside the connectors back at the motor. I have since pulled every connector coming off the motor and cleaned with electrical spray and waterproofed. I also check every connection under the dash. I now have gauges that read more accurately. The hardest one was the main cable bundle. It's on their tight but doesn't come off.
There are several others on here that are far more qualified to solve your issue and I am sure they will chime in soon.


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[skiguy]

Welcome and congrats to Tige family.
I would bet your gauges are good. I bought my 05 22v a few years ago and had speedo gauge issues. Your Faria speedo and perfect pass have their own sending units. The perfect pass is on the hull starboard side of tranny. The Faria speedo is located on the transom starboard side. Can't miss it since only thing back there besides Taps. Check to see if your paddle wheel is still there. I suspect is gone, broke or stuck. Mine was broke such that it would spin sometimes and sometimes not. Instead of replacing this $100+ unit for old technology I upgraded to GPS. NauticLogic makes a sweet and super easy to install unit. http://www.nauticlogic.com/
Get the NL4-Fc + swift 10Hz $239. It will give GPS to PP and Faria Speedo. You will still have temp, depth etc so don't remove the sending unit. Best/Easist mod I have done.
That said, you Tach is a electrical gremlin that you have to locate and start with a checking connecting in the gauge.
I also had some electrical issues that haunted me the first few years. My voltage gauge would read 11 when I new I had more and several other problems that resulted in a few tows to the dock. Long story short I eventually had to take to dealer. They found some loose wire connection inside the connectors back at the motor. I have since pulled every connector coming off the motor and cleaned with electrical spray and waterproofed. I also check every connection under the dash. I now have gauges that read more accurately. The hardest one was the main cable bundle. It's on their tight but doesn't come off.
There are several others on here that are far more qualified to solve your issue and I am sure they will chime in soon.


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Fantastic idea!! I'm not very familiar with the gauges on this year but I was under the impression the depth was fed to the speedo screen as well. If that's the case how would you get depth to display ?

[ChrisSnow]

On my 06 20i the 4 in 1 started sticking and the needles slipped. Then the tacho died last year...

Their warranty is useless outside USA too.

So I set about replacing them with something custom. I will post about it when I finish the project.

Their is a known tach failure on mefi4 though you may have a mefi 3. Fix involved moving some wires around. It's on marine powers download section.

If you have a multimeter that can measure frequency you can check the signal. Rpm is hz * 60 /4 for a v8

Similar for the speedo. I think it's 20k pulses per nautical mile.

A simple dc measurement and slow rotation of the paddle will prove enough though.

Other senders can be checked by their resistance. There is a faria PDF about it.


Also I would have no worries without a speed or tach. Annoying yes but not going to do any damage.


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[killerbren]

I had the same problem you are describing, except only on the speedometer. My tach was fine. The speedo would sometimes work, sometimes it wouldn't. For a 2 week span the needle just stuck at 8mph, didn't move even when the boat was off. It was weird. Last year was the first year I had the boat and had no money so I just used a handheld GPS unit to know my speed. By the end of the year the speedometer seemed to work pretty reliably on its own. I'm not sure what was causing the problems but i'm thinking it was my paddle wheel.

Over the winter I bought the Nautic Laugic setup. It is going to take over the feed from the paddle wheel and input a gps speed to my speedo. It also has a cable to feed into my speedset. Im going to install it in the next couple weeks and report back.

[Captainkurk72]

Fantastic idea!! I'm not very familiar with the gauges on this year but I was under the impression the depth was fed to the speedo screen as well. If that's the case how would you get depth to display ?

The Faria speedometer transom transducer provides depth, temp and speed. The nauticlogic will splice unit the signal line going to the PP and Faria. It will allow the depth and temp to pass through so you still have those readings but send a gps generated paddle wheel speed signal. If you have questions or need help they are great to talk with but it's easy. Took me a whole 10 min to install.

[co99tj]

This is great - thanks guys - a lot of great info. First thing I'll do is check the paddlewheel - I just assumed that was feeding the Perfect Pass as well. If that's broken - that's the answer for that gauge. I love the GPS upgrade - that sounds like a no-brainer. If I were to order that system - they have an offer to extend the wiring for $1.75 / ft. Did you the kit as-is @Captainkurk72? Would suck to get in there and find a need a few more ft. of cable. Is the install pretty simple for someone that's not overly technical? I'm not great at electrical analysis with multimeters, etc...is it a pretty basic installation?

I'll also get behind the dash and fiddle around with the connections to the tach. Best case scenario is broken paddlewheel and loose wire on the tach - will let you know how it goes but thanks for the great advice!

[Captainkurk72]

Installation will be the easiest mod you will ever do. You won't need any cable extensions. The brain and the wires all will be up under the dash. Gets some 3M double stick tape or similar. The kind that is 1/8" thick. I put The GPS receiver on the bilge vent which is same color as GPS puck (black). I will take some pics tonight of how routed wires etc.


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