Volvo RPM Counters

[miket]

Volvo Penta TAMD 61A x 2.
Engine hours 500 (approx' and history known)
10 years old.

Problem:
Most of time revcounters don'y work at all.
Sometimes one works.
Occasionally both work.
Hour meters work all time.
Dials have supposedly been off for checking/ calibration, and found OK.

Any suggestions? (printable and preferably useful!)

 

[Guest]

There was an earlier thread on this, but no useful outcome from memory. Might be worth searching the archives. Mine are tempremental, too, BTW

 

[MikeBrazier]

My Volvo Car (1991) has problems with the clocks too, so did my old Volvo. The Fuel Guages alway fail on older ones and the speedo's stick at common speeds in the warm weather. Faults are usually intermittent.

Could there be a link here?

 

[ChrisP]

Hi mike still not learned about volvo's then. First option wave a £50 note oner the gauges and see if that attracts their attention. No luck try this then.

The fact that they are intermitant could be a loose connection in the engine looms. Try all the loom plugs especialy if there is a connection where both sets of engine wiring runs through it like the one that runs to the console from the main board. It might be worth going round all the connectors to check for corrosion. Even the smallest bit can cause the weirdest problems. You wouldn't believe the grief that a mucky shunt in the domestic battery charging system gave me on a friends boat over the weekend.

Check the senders if the gauges are ok. If they are the tachogen type the should be kicking out between 1 & 5 volts. If they are prox switches you will neel an osciliscope to detect the pulses in the signal. A call to Volvo's should give you the correct signal values.

Anyway a chap of your experience should be syncrnising the lumps by ear and judging the speed by the number of yachts you're sinking.

Good luck and if you want to kick around some more ideas give me a ring at home.

ChrisP

 

[byron]

Being the world's worst engineer with people running screaming with fear if I even glance at a Spanner. I do know this much... on the forward part of the engine there is a box with all electrics running into it. Open the box, unclip (pull apart) the plug that joins the wires up, ensure it is all nice and clean, push it back together and everything should be OK.

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[Guest]

Hi yet I see another request for a solution to this problem, what make of boat is it, I may have the answer to this problem as I have repaired a few boats mainly 40,41,61,71 series, they all work from an electromagnetic switch, but there are also wiring loom problems,chip problems in rev counters which can be repaired by VDO who make most of the instruments for Volvo, if it is a flybridge boat then the Y connector may corroded,reply for any further info, pjs

 

[miket]

Thanks to you all.

No Chris. Having spent all these years avoiding Volvos it finally happened. I hope I am not now paying the price. May well call you. Thanks.

Pauljseng: Thanks for your comments. They are on a Broom 37, with single helm. They are the 306hp TAMD 61A's, and I believe they have some sort of sender. Bit over my head I'm afraid, but I have a very nice man who will find out the problem in due course. I just thought I could save him some time if someone had already experienced this phenomenum.

Have to confess that they appear to be performing well, and on the rare occasion that the revcounters do come in, I am happy to say that I am rarely more than 100 rpm out, on "balance by ear".

Thanks all.

 

[miket]

Paul/ Chris.
My engineer (reliable) has now taken them to Keyparts, who have confirmed that they are sealed items, and that VDO no longer do guage repairs (presumably because they are sealed!)

Am trying someone else's revcounters at weekend to see if they work. If they do I guess it must be the guages.

New ones ex Keypart are £200 (approx') each. My engineer will open "sealed" guages to see if he can see the problem.

Any other suggestions for source of supply of correct guages. Don't really want non matching guages.

Thanks.