Mercruiser/Mercury Smartcraft

[QBhoy]

Guys
Anyone fitted a smartcraft gauge to their mercruiser set up ?
Looking to fit one of the gauges that manually display rpm, but digitally display (at bottom of gauge) other indications, like hours, temps and fuel consumption.
Read a little into it and from what I can figure, may need all gauges to be interconnected through a NMEA gateway ??
Was hoping I could just fit the one gauge (as above) and connect straight to engine NMEA (hopefully the right term) ?
Any experience with this appreciated.
Thanks

 

[spannerman]

You will need the harness from the engine up to the helm, the Smartcraft junction box and the harness from that to your instrument. Then its plug and play.
Not sure what engine you have but older ones only have analogue output, the later have analogue and Smartcraft. With Smartcraft you can have just one instrument or several which are daisychained together. A tacho will display just about everything except speed/distance/range which is on the Smartcraft speedo.

 

[QBhoy]

Spannerman.
Just the sort of "to the point" and specific info I was looking for...and failed to find until now.
The engine is a 2003 MPI, so defo compatible. Has the logo on the air filter cover too.
So, at the risk of pushing it...any idea where I would find the required gear ? I'm ok with the gauge. Just the rest of it. And what kind of price would I be looking at ? Do I need oem parts or just the nmea 2000 gateway standard stuff ?
Any help or links appreciated.
Thanks again.

 

[Hambleite]

Hi QB,

We had a Mariner 150hp Optimax (2001) and replaced it with a Mercury 150hp Optimax Pro XS (2015) on our RIB. Both have the same Smartcraft set-up. Whilst I didn't rig these myself, I can vouch for the value of the data it can show.

We have a Smartcraft tacho and a Smartcraft speedo on the console.

Digitally it we can display RPM, engine temp, instant fuel burn - lph, total fuel burnt (waaayyyy more accurate than a wobbly float gauge), trip fuel burn, trim angle, engine hours, voltage, oil reservoir level. I'm sure they can display others but this is pretty useful.

I tend to use one for RPM and the other for fuel burn. I then use the Garmin chartplotter for speed. This way you can really accurately work out the fuel burn for any given speed. I hardly ever look at the actual needles.....

 

[MapisM]

Any help or links appreciated.

The harness Spannerman mentioned is this one, but you can obviously google around for other sources - I just picked the first one I found on eBay, as an example.

In most Merc engines, there is a connector matching the purple one that you can see in the harness, but to find it you must remove the plastic cover with the decal "350 MAG MPI" (or whatever the engine is).
Once you find that, all you need to do is attach the harness to it, and to the Smartcraft gauge at the other end.
The junction box that Spannerman mentioned should only be necessary if you wish to attach more than one Smartcraft instrument, which as I understand is not what you are aiming at.
Anyway, you can easily find that too by googling "smartcraft junction box".

Mind, before buying anything, check carefully under your dashboard if by chance you find one of those purple connectors already there, lying around disconnected.
I've seen a few US boats with no Smartcraft instrument, but where the harness was already installed anyway, just in case.
Don't count on that, but you never know...

 

[QBhoy]

Absolutely brilliant info guys. Mapism, I'll look for a plug under the dash tomorrow. Not getting my hopes up too high...just a little !
A real testament to the value of such a forum.
Thanks again.

 

[spannerman]

Spannerman.
Just the sort of "to the point" and specific info I was looking for...and failed to find until now.
The engine is a 2003 MPI, so defo compatible. Has the logo on the air filter cover too.
So, at the risk of pushing it...any idea where I would find the required gear ? I'm ok with the gauge. Just the rest of it. And what kind of price would I be looking at ? Do I need oem parts or just the nmea 2000 gateway standard stuff ?
Any help or links appreciated.
Thanks again.

You will need oem parts so that the connectors match up, you won't need the nmea 2000 gateway unless you have a speedo and want to use a GPS source to give speed data instead of a paddle wheel. Most installations I have seen or installed use the junction box as this is where we plug in the diagnostic tool when we access the system.

 

[QBhoy]

Thanks again. Still not looked. I'll have a look at weekend. Managed to find all the parts I'll need though and know where I'm going now, so thanks !