Engine alert volvo d3 diesel - analogue v digital system

[george unthank]

THIS WAS INADVERTANTKY POSTED ELSEWHERE -APPOLOGIES
This will come across as amateurish , Bolshi , gauche , and suggestive of a person of insufficient disposition and unsound mind , but I'm beginning to wonder . And so I’m going to stick my neck out .
Since I started having trouble with my Regal 2565 computer system I'm coming round to the idea that they should have kept the computer nerds well away from the drawing - design room when constructing modern boats.
My recent experience ie getting a '' CHECK ENGINE '' ALARM and trying to resolve same has rendered me a complete luddite
The EVC ( A completely new term to me as it applies to monitoring as distinct from running the engine )- well those EVC s , while they may make for all manner of clever mechanical adjustments TO RUN the engine AL all the smoother and more efficiently , in the hands if a professed amateur , what precisely does CHECK ENGINE ALERT mean ?
This alarm came on dash in my first outing of the season this week . I get the alarm to CHECK ENGINE and immediately seek a safe close by place to drop anchor. I cut the engine and hang on in substantial wind on anchor and lift the engine cover . What am I looking for ? The console will give me no further info. I try to scroll down on the particular and THEN scroll up ; - no information regarding the nature nor the location of the fault is revealed on EVC I then try one button singularly and then combinations of one and two in a vainglorious attempt to unearth what the fault is. Needless to say my endeavours were fruitless. The beeper has come on now and is driving me to distraction , and only when I change screens does the siren- beeb –beep settle down.
For the following 2 days I have been reporting my problem to various fora .the contributors were all extremely helpful and comprehensive ; insightful and inventive .but other than getting an exclusively Regal engineer with regal software it seems my boat is destined to remain on a waiting list until one of these much sought after gentlemen becomes free, then travels 150 odd miles to where my boat is berthed - Galway , W. Coast Ireland .
In the interim a friend of a friend of my car mechanic (..don't. tell me ...............told you so !) - he made contact with someone else who advised disconnecting both batteries simultaneously . He did this . The computer system reconfigured itself and all was well .He took her for a 1 hour+ trip uneventfully - the alert had rectified itself ; I took her out yesterday and on 2 occasions the CHECK ENGINE alert appeared - but reconfigured immediately giving me the SYSTEM CKEAR -signal.
I still don't know what enraged the EVC to hassle me so much with this CHECK ENGINE ALERT in the first instance other than arcane maybes - coulda- beens; might- have -beens etc
Why didn't they leave the old dials as they were , ie fuel guage , speed . oil , temp . voltage ?
In those bygone days even idiots like me were more conversant with what went on under the hood.

Is there a way of reverting to a non digital system , reading out all the vital signals whereby a 66 year old retired medical man , who incidentally had to make himself (me) far more amenable and infinitely more accessible than a marine computer specialist in the west of Ireland
Can I have the system reconfigured to the ''older'' system which made at least some sense to me , and gave me somewhere to poke at harmlessly without losing my dignity .
No ! this is serious .
Keep the Nerds away from boats - what did they ever do for us any more than the Romans .
Seriously , does my proposition of de -digitalising the system of a 2007 D3 5 cylinder 190 hp engine - does it make any sense and does it have.any

 

[spannerman]

Sorry but its not viable, as the various engine sensors are digital sensors as opposed to analogue sensors, this means the signals from them are digital the same as the rest of the EVC system. The signals are fed into the engine ECU and then packaged and sent to the PCU (Power Control Unit) and then via the data bus to the HCU (Helm Control Unit) which then unwraps them and sends them down a daisy chain to the various instruments. There are only 4 wires between the helm and the engine 12v supply and earth, and two data wires, all the information from the engine goes up to the HCU while the Start/Stop, throttle and gear shift and trim demands go the other way on the same two wires, where they go to the PCU and then either to the trim pump, gear actuator or engine. An analogue system has a wire for every single instrument and several more for all the other functions.
This is the system for a D4/6 and is very similar for the D3, as you can see there is no way to convert it to an analogue system. The only way out is to re-engine with an older technology motor which would cost more than its worth.