gauges

[dantheman]

Just bought a 2003 196 with 350 hours on it. This was an awesome upgrade coming from a 78 ski nautique. I will have to say I am a little disappointed though. I have a few issues with the boat. #1 the depth gauge is very inaccurate. It mainly dispalys
----- every once in a while it will give you a depth....? The next issue is when the boat has a 1/4 tank fuel left, you stop the boat and are idleing, it will drop to zero, and start displaying "low fuel" but once you get going again (25-30mph) it will raise back up to 1/4 tank. I suspect the fuel level sensor in the tank... #3 The speedometer on the boat - compared to the perfect pass displayed speed are about 3-5 mph differant. I tried to transfer the warranty when I bought the boat, and correct craft told me "Sorry you are the 3rd owner we cannot transfer the warranty" I do not expect these issues out of a correct craft this new. Its starting to remind me of owning my old 78 - always something wrong with it, always something to fix!!!

[richard]

gauges

you are not lonely, the depth finder,the tacho.the rpm gauage of my 01 SAN,can't funtion 2-3 years ago, it means they can use for 2-3 years ! become no good, the main problem cause is water can go inside make the pcb rust, so the circuit broken and electric leak, CC will replace the no good free of charge, unfortunatly, I bought not first hand, CC give up second owener, I feeling bad to be.

[gotpwr]

RE: gauges

Try searching for Hummingbird or HDR 600 as there have been numerous threads on problems with the depth finder. Basically it's a POS and most people have had issues. The Perfect Pass can be calibrated so that it reads the correct speed. Your pitot tube speedos may or may not match once you get the perfect pass dialed in.

[TRBenj]

Re: gauges

you are not lonely, the depth finder,the tacho.the rpm gauage of my 01 SAN,can't funtion 2-3 years ago, it means they can use for 2-3 years ! become no good, the main problem cause is water can go inside make the pcb rust, so the circuit broken and electric leak, CC will replace the no good free of charge, unfortunatly, I bought not first hand, CC give up second owener, I feeling bad to be.

The '03+ boats have different gauges than the '00-02 boats, so his situation is a little different. In my father's boat ('03 196) the PP readout and analog speedo read slightly different. Theyre the closest at skiing speeds, but are off by 3-4 MPH on the top end. We always go by the PP- the paddlewheel should read more reliably than the pitot's.

[Quinner]

RE: Re: gauges

Both the PP and speedo can be calibrated, I took my boat out with a hand held GPS, dialed in the PP and adjusted the speedo to match. They do tend to show slightly different speeds however not really a problem for me since I normally use the PP when pulling a skier anyways.

[jhiestand]

Not sure what might be going on with the fuel gauge reading, but it does sound like the sending unit might be the culprit. I haven’t known the fuel gauges to be all that tempermental on Nautiques, which certainly is not the case for at least one of the other major brands. :shock:

Depth gauge – yeah, there’s threads here that the Hummingbird finder is junk. Mine pretty much went inoperative last season and I haven’t decided yet to replace it. The Hummingbird was original equipment on my ’01 btw, and from what I’ve read they typically don’t last longer than a couple of years before they start giving erratic readings.

Speedo & PP speed readings – My understanding of pitot systems is that they are really only accurate for the speed they are calibrated at, as opposed to the paddlewheel speed sensor PP uses which should be accurate for all speeds. For that reason old-school pitot systems were typically calibrated at slalom or trick speeds. My ’79 had one speedo set to trick and the other to slalom, and I think they had a 4 or 5 mph difference nearly all the time.

[dantheman]

Thank you everybody for your responses - I am planning on taking a handheld gps with me to the lake this weekend to see what is what with the speedo's I guess my 78 SN with dual pitot's was reading really slow. I was running 30 mph on the slalom behind the 78' - Now that I have the new 2003 196, 30.4 mph set on the perfect pass is way to slow. I bump it up to 34 to make it feel like it did behind the 78'