djdynex
Active Member
- Messages
- 4
- Reaction score
- 14
- Points
- 42
- Boat Make
- Yamaha
- Year
- 2013
- Boat Model
- Limited S
- Boat Length
- 24
So I did a thing recently. 2013 Yamaha 242 LS, the gauge screens went bad about a year ago so I sent them off to gaugesaver.com, they came back looking great. soon after that my transducer went bad and I had a nmea 2k comm error. Then 6 months later the starboard (main) tach went dead. (lost everything but port rpms) I tried to order both new tachs from partzilla for $1800. The site said they were in stock but 3 days later the starboard tach went backorder for 267 days. 
so for the same money I put in a simrad go9 connected the motors via an albacombi analog to nmea 2000 converter, this took care of fuel, both battery voltages, rpms. low oil warning and thermoswitch over temp replaced the stock airmar transducer with a Garmin airmar for half the price and it was a direct fit. the fusion radio connected through nmea2k as well. I still want to add fuel flow monitors but at 220/each it can wait. The converter is housed in a waterproof box in the starboard hold behind the captains seat.
It isn't perfect and I may redesign the dash however I had to prove the concept before I completely went crazy. This site has provided with so much information over the years I had to share my little custom swap, for some new tech.
After my factory gauges went bad on my Yamaha 2013 242 limited S. I went searching online for replacements. This left me with a few options. The first was to order from partzilla.com for $1800 and they were backordered for close to a year, or order from a Yamaha dealer which online showed in stock for close to $2600. I started to look for other options.
When my transducer went bad, I lost depth, since we normally head to sandbars in the Anna Maria Island area, depth was important. I had a Lowrance hds12 gen2 touch from an older boat I decided to install on the port side so that I now had my depth and a chart plotter along with a pretty useless structure scan since I don’t really have time to fish out of the 242.
This got me thinking, since I know the Lowrance has nmea2k capabilities and I had already had a nmea2k backbone
due to having the Lowrance point1 GPS antenna and feeding another display on a past boat. I searched online forums and found a person that did a swap on a 2005 Yamaha. He did a dash rebuild instead of buying a new boat. This was next level stuff, he completely rebuilt both dashes incorporated both motors with an albacombi, somehow installed water temp and oil pressure sensors, converted all switches to digital switches with yacht devices. His thread is here https://jetboaters.net/threads/2005-ar230-dash-rebuild-instead-of-new-boat.28875/ I reached out but didn’t get any solid info about the oil pressure and water temp sensors. Nonetheless it was the start of what I wanted this build to be.
I have a full factory service manual as I do all my own work to the boat. I also ordered YDS from ebay so that I could pull any diagnostic data. I read the manual from front to back, not that I remember any of it but if I run into a problem it triggers something in my head that tells me it was in the manual. From what I gather the gauges in the 2013 use a mix of proprietary Yamaha canbus communication and nmea2k, who knows there might be some nmea01813 in there too. In my case the starboard tach was the master feeding date to the speedo (I’m guessing through GPS), it was a little odd that the starboard tach was the cheaper of the two. The gauges were there to give basic information through there screens, fuel flow, hours, depth, and so on. They also would sound an alarm behind the dash and display a over heat or a low oil pressure warning. However these gauges are simply display devices, the PCM behind either motor actually translate the date from the engines and react respectively. Meaning if the termoswitch hit high temp the PCM would limit the motor to 3500 rpms and show a warning on the gauge along with a buzzer, this is the same for the low oil pressure. Every other problem would require YDS to see what the problem was and further diagnosis would be needed. With all that said if you take the gauges out of the mix and are cruising at 5500 rpms and suddenly a motor drops to 3500 rpms, you could have 17 different problems but the gauges would only tell you 2 of them, maybe a code but what are you really going to do out on the water. You are going to limp home and either hook up YDS or take it to the dealer.
The reason I say that is because the way I have hooked this up I don’t get actual temp or oil pressure but I don’t care, ill explain. The thread above has the temp sensors and oil sensors replaced. The reason for this is you cannot “tap” a resistance sensor (that is one that measures ohms and the PCM translates to temp or pressure) this is because if you add a wire to the sensor you add resistance and the PCM will read it differently, thus giving false information. If I replaced the existing sensors with different ones what would the PCM do? Would it always think everything is okay and if my system goes down then I cant rely on the factory one to do its job. Or would it stick the motors in limp mode (3500 rpm) because I’m not giving the data to the PCM.
Yamaha has 3 temp sensors on each motor, engine temperature sensor (resistive) Thermo sensor (resistive) and the thermoswitch (conductive) based on the diagnostic steps for a overheat warning the resistive sensors seem to give the PCM info in order to adjust fuel/air mix, spark advance, etc. to trigger the alarm the thermoswitch must have continuity with ground (this is something I can measure) and “tap”. The thermoswitch wire is pin 64 at the PCM it is P (pink) when temp is over 201 degrees this has continuity to ground.
The same goes for the oil pressure switch, there is only one per motor and it checks for continuity with ground when pressure is low (again this can be measured) and “tapped”. The oil pressure switch is pin 79 at the PCM it is P/W (pink and white) when pressure is below 18.2-23.6 psi this has continuity to ground.
The RPM data I got from each engine is from pin 82 on the PCM this wire is also behind the access panel on the starboard side of the engine bay. I got start battery voltage from here as well. There are marked harnesses for port and starboard EP1 and ES1.
I tapped the G/L for RPM for each motor and the R/Y for power as this is only “hot” when the motors are running, and B for ground.
The Fuel tank sender on the boat is a resistive sensor but since I don’t care if the PCM “sees” the fuel level. I just cut the wires where they entered the starboard hold and wired them to the albacombi.
These are Brown and black top right. I removed my sender and measure the resistance, it was 33.2 ohms full and 190 ohms when empty.
Depth and temp come from the factory transducer. If yours still works you can access the harness behind the starboard access panel, cut the wires from the harness
and wire in a nmea2k drop cable Blue is Can-, W is Can+, Black is ground, R is positive, shield to shield or ground. Mine no longer worked so instead of paying over $600 from partzilla. I ordered this one for under $300 and it is a drop in replacement with a nema2k connector Garmin Airmar Smart Sensor Depth & Temperature 20 Degree Tilted Nmea 2000 Dt800
House voltage comes from the connection to the simrad from the accessories behind the dash.
You need a nmea2k backbone, this includes a nmea2k power connector, the number of T’s for each drop you have, and a 120ohm resister at the end. I had 5 drops, transducer, Simrad, Albacombi, Fusion head unit, fusion swim deck remote.
The Albacombi AlbaCombi Analogue to NMEA2000 Converter - Engine Monitoring I purchased was from amazon https://smile.amazon.com/albatross-...d=1675304845&sprefix=albacombi,aps,104&sr=8-1 The price has gone up $100 since November.
The Simrad was a Black Friday deal at west marine for $799
GO9 XSE Fishfinder/Chartplotter Combo with Active Imaging 3-in-1 Transducer and C-MAP Pro Discover Charts | West Marine
A waterproof box from amazon GO9 XSE Fishfinder/Chartplotter Combo with Active Imaging 3-in-1 Transducer and C-MAP Pro Discover Charts | West Marine
4 12v relays from amazon https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B072QXDZRD/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&th=1
¼” black starboard for the dash from amazon https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B08M6DJNH4/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&th=1
These are the connectors I used to tap the wires.
I don’t like cutting factory wires close to harmesses so I used these with plenty of dielectric grease. https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B004D0C18C/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 and these heat shrink but connectors with solder https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B089D5GD4Y/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&th=1 wire I used was 16/2 tinned marine wire from west marine. Probably over kill but hey why not.
I want to do fuel flow sensors for both motors https://smile.amazon.com/Lowrance-F...d=1675305247&sprefix=nmea+fuel,aps,162&sr=8-1 however at $219 each I cant justify it right now.
Now the Albacombi is a neat device. Nmea2k works with simple PNG’s being sent through the network the devices on the network can read these PNG’s. A nmea2k motor would send out all the PNG’s it would have for reading such as RPM, temp, oil, rudder angle, trim angle etc. and your display would be able to display them on a gauge or scale for you. These motors don’t “talk” nmea2k so I used the albacombi to decode the signals from the wires I tapped and turn them into PNG’s. the Albacombi has a ethernet interface so you can plug in a computer and assign each pin a PNG. You can even adjust what the signal means. For example the RPM reading that the albacombi “saw” was not a RPM range for a tach. I used the YDS software to read the engine RPM, I used the albacombi to see what it saw at the same RPM and adjusted the info so that what was displayed on the tach was with 100 rpms. I copied this date for both port and starboard PNG’s
For start battery voltage I tapped the 12v wire behind the access panel
and designated the pin with a start battery PNG.
The fuel level sender was plugged into a pin to read resistance, I set 100% at 33.2 ohms and 0% at 190 ohms. The albacombi uses this as a sliding scale. I designated this a 50-gallon fuel tank and activated the PNG. The simrad then gives me a percentage of fuel remaining and also gives me gallons left which I have found to be within .5 gallons.
Now I had to incorporate the temp and oil “switches”.
If you remember these have continuity to ground when activated which should sent an alarm. Well the albacombi is grounded with everything else so the pins that read voltage would have to work off of a positive trigger, but my temp and oil are basically negative triggers (did I loose you yet) meaning when they are active they send ground from the block to the PCM and this triggers a over temp or a low oil pressure event. In step the relays from above. The relay can be wired multiple ways and the way I needed it to work was to activate a positive signal upon a negative trigger. Ill add a picture but all relays work the same way.
An energized coil sends voltage through a circuit. With these pin 87a is not used and removed, pins 30 and 86 are wired from the same engine battery feed R/Y behind the access panel, pin 85 is your negative trigger from either oil or temp at the PCM pin 87 then feeds 12v when activated (alarm event) to a pin on the albacombi. I designated these pins as low oil PNG and over temp PNG respectively. When 12 v is present my temp is reported at 212 and alarm activated, when there is not 12 volts present my temp is reported as 190. These numbers mean nothing, but they tell me if the thermoswitch is activated or not. The oil is the same thing, when 12v is present oil pressure is reported 0 psi and alarm is activated when 12v is not present oil is reported at 18 psi. I can’t stress enough even though you don’t get actual numbers with his setup you didn’t get actual number with the stock setup either. The only way to pull the real info is with YDS which you won’t be using on the water most of the time.
I think this covers most of what was done. I used the stock dash plate as a template. If I was to do it again, I would make the starboard a bit taller for the go9 because the plastic under the dash cover is really brittle at this point and I couldn’t get it to cut squarely. I may try my hand at using it as a template for a fiberglass and gelcoat form to make it a cleaner install. That's for another day.
so for the same money I put in a simrad go9 connected the motors via an albacombi analog to nmea 2000 converter, this took care of fuel, both battery voltages, rpms. low oil warning and thermoswitch over temp replaced the stock airmar transducer with a Garmin airmar for half the price and it was a direct fit. the fusion radio connected through nmea2k as well. I still want to add fuel flow monitors but at 220/each it can wait. The converter is housed in a waterproof box in the starboard hold behind the captains seat. It isn't perfect and I may redesign the dash however I had to prove the concept before I completely went crazy. This site has provided with so much information over the years I had to share my little custom swap, for some new tech.After my factory gauges went bad on my Yamaha 2013 242 limited S. I went searching online for replacements. This left me with a few options. The first was to order from partzilla.com for $1800 and they were backordered for close to a year, or order from a Yamaha dealer which online showed in stock for close to $2600. I started to look for other options.
When my transducer went bad, I lost depth, since we normally head to sandbars in the Anna Maria Island area, depth was important. I had a Lowrance hds12 gen2 touch from an older boat I decided to install on the port side so that I now had my depth and a chart plotter along with a pretty useless structure scan since I don’t really have time to fish out of the 242.
This got me thinking, since I know the Lowrance has nmea2k capabilities and I had already had a nmea2k backbone
due to having the Lowrance point1 GPS antenna and feeding another display on a past boat. I searched online forums and found a person that did a swap on a 2005 Yamaha. He did a dash rebuild instead of buying a new boat. This was next level stuff, he completely rebuilt both dashes incorporated both motors with an albacombi, somehow installed water temp and oil pressure sensors, converted all switches to digital switches with yacht devices. His thread is here https://jetboaters.net/threads/2005-ar230-dash-rebuild-instead-of-new-boat.28875/ I reached out but didn’t get any solid info about the oil pressure and water temp sensors. Nonetheless it was the start of what I wanted this build to be.I have a full factory service manual as I do all my own work to the boat. I also ordered YDS from ebay so that I could pull any diagnostic data. I read the manual from front to back, not that I remember any of it but if I run into a problem it triggers something in my head that tells me it was in the manual. From what I gather the gauges in the 2013 use a mix of proprietary Yamaha canbus communication and nmea2k, who knows there might be some nmea01813 in there too. In my case the starboard tach was the master feeding date to the speedo (I’m guessing through GPS), it was a little odd that the starboard tach was the cheaper of the two. The gauges were there to give basic information through there screens, fuel flow, hours, depth, and so on. They also would sound an alarm behind the dash and display a over heat or a low oil pressure warning. However these gauges are simply display devices, the PCM behind either motor actually translate the date from the engines and react respectively. Meaning if the termoswitch hit high temp the PCM would limit the motor to 3500 rpms and show a warning on the gauge along with a buzzer, this is the same for the low oil pressure. Every other problem would require YDS to see what the problem was and further diagnosis would be needed. With all that said if you take the gauges out of the mix and are cruising at 5500 rpms and suddenly a motor drops to 3500 rpms, you could have 17 different problems but the gauges would only tell you 2 of them, maybe a code but what are you really going to do out on the water. You are going to limp home and either hook up YDS or take it to the dealer.
The reason I say that is because the way I have hooked this up I don’t get actual temp or oil pressure but I don’t care, ill explain. The thread above has the temp sensors and oil sensors replaced. The reason for this is you cannot “tap” a resistance sensor (that is one that measures ohms and the PCM translates to temp or pressure) this is because if you add a wire to the sensor you add resistance and the PCM will read it differently, thus giving false information. If I replaced the existing sensors with different ones what would the PCM do? Would it always think everything is okay and if my system goes down then I cant rely on the factory one to do its job. Or would it stick the motors in limp mode (3500 rpm) because I’m not giving the data to the PCM.
Yamaha has 3 temp sensors on each motor, engine temperature sensor (resistive) Thermo sensor (resistive) and the thermoswitch (conductive) based on the diagnostic steps for a overheat warning the resistive sensors seem to give the PCM info in order to adjust fuel/air mix, spark advance, etc. to trigger the alarm the thermoswitch must have continuity with ground (this is something I can measure) and “tap”. The thermoswitch wire is pin 64 at the PCM it is P (pink) when temp is over 201 degrees this has continuity to ground.
The same goes for the oil pressure switch, there is only one per motor and it checks for continuity with ground when pressure is low (again this can be measured) and “tapped”. The oil pressure switch is pin 79 at the PCM it is P/W (pink and white) when pressure is below 18.2-23.6 psi this has continuity to ground.
The RPM data I got from each engine is from pin 82 on the PCM this wire is also behind the access panel on the starboard side of the engine bay. I got start battery voltage from here as well. There are marked harnesses for port and starboard EP1 and ES1.
I tapped the G/L for RPM for each motor and the R/Y for power as this is only “hot” when the motors are running, and B for ground.The Fuel tank sender on the boat is a resistive sensor but since I don’t care if the PCM “sees” the fuel level. I just cut the wires where they entered the starboard hold and wired them to the albacombi.
These are Brown and black top right. I removed my sender and measure the resistance, it was 33.2 ohms full and 190 ohms when empty.Depth and temp come from the factory transducer. If yours still works you can access the harness behind the starboard access panel, cut the wires from the harness
and wire in a nmea2k drop cable Blue is Can-, W is Can+, Black is ground, R is positive, shield to shield or ground. Mine no longer worked so instead of paying over $600 from partzilla. I ordered this one for under $300 and it is a drop in replacement with a nema2k connector Garmin Airmar Smart Sensor Depth & Temperature 20 Degree Tilted Nmea 2000 Dt800House voltage comes from the connection to the simrad from the accessories behind the dash.
You need a nmea2k backbone,
this includes a nmea2k power connector, the number of T’s for each drop you have, and a 120ohm resister at the end. I had 5 drops, transducer, Simrad, Albacombi, Fusion head unit, fusion swim deck remote.The Albacombi
AlbaCombi Analogue to NMEA2000 Converter - Engine Monitoring I purchased was from amazon https://smile.amazon.com/albatross-...d=1675304845&sprefix=albacombi,aps,104&sr=8-1 The price has gone up $100 since November.The Simrad was a Black Friday deal at west marine for $799
GO9 XSE Fishfinder/Chartplotter Combo with Active Imaging 3-in-1 Transducer and C-MAP Pro Discover Charts | West MarineA waterproof box from amazon GO9 XSE Fishfinder/Chartplotter Combo with Active Imaging 3-in-1 Transducer and C-MAP Pro Discover Charts | West Marine
4 12v relays from amazon https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B072QXDZRD/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&th=1
¼” black starboard for the dash from amazon https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B08M6DJNH4/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&th=1
These are the connectors I used to tap the wires.
I don’t like cutting factory wires close to harmesses so I used these with plenty of dielectric grease. https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B004D0C18C/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 and these heat shrink but connectors with solder https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B089D5GD4Y/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&th=1 wire I used was 16/2 tinned marine wire from west marine. Probably over kill but hey why not.I want to do fuel flow sensors for both motors https://smile.amazon.com/Lowrance-F...d=1675305247&sprefix=nmea+fuel,aps,162&sr=8-1 however at $219 each I cant justify it right now.
Now the Albacombi is a neat device. Nmea2k works with simple PNG’s being sent through the network the devices on the network can read these PNG’s. A nmea2k motor would send out all the PNG’s it would have for reading such as RPM, temp, oil, rudder angle, trim angle etc. and your display would be able to display them on a gauge or scale for you. These motors don’t “talk” nmea2k so I used the albacombi to decode the signals from the wires I tapped and turn them into PNG’s. the Albacombi has a ethernet interface so you can plug in a computer and assign each pin a PNG. You can even adjust what the signal means. For example the RPM reading that the albacombi “saw” was not a RPM range for a tach. I used the YDS software to read the engine RPM, I used the albacombi to see what it saw at the same RPM and adjusted the info so that what was displayed on the tach was with 100 rpms. I copied this date for both port and starboard PNG’s
For start battery voltage I tapped the 12v wire behind the access panel
and designated the pin with a start battery PNG.The fuel level sender was plugged into a pin to read resistance, I set 100% at 33.2 ohms and 0% at 190 ohms. The albacombi uses this as a sliding scale. I designated this a 50-gallon fuel tank and activated the PNG. The simrad then gives me a percentage of fuel remaining and also gives me gallons left which I have found to be within .5 gallons.
Now I had to incorporate the temp and oil “switches”.
If you remember these have continuity to ground when activated which should sent an alarm. Well the albacombi is grounded with everything else so the pins that read voltage would have to work off of a positive trigger, but my temp and oil are basically negative triggers (did I loose you yet) meaning when they are active they send ground from the block to the PCM and this triggers a over temp or a low oil pressure event. In step the relays from above. The relay can be wired multiple ways and the way I needed it to work was to activate a positive signal upon a negative trigger. Ill add a picture but all relays work the same way. An energized coil sends voltage through a circuit. With these pin 87a is not used and removed, pins 30 and 86 are wired from the same engine battery feed R/Y behind the access panel, pin 85 is your negative trigger from either oil or temp at the PCM pin 87 then feeds 12v when activated (alarm event) to a pin on the albacombi. I designated these pins as low oil PNG and over temp PNG respectively. When 12 v is present my temp is reported at 212 and alarm activated, when there is not 12 volts present my temp is reported as 190. These numbers mean nothing, but they tell me if the thermoswitch is activated or not. The oil is the same thing, when 12v is present oil pressure is reported 0 psi and alarm is activated when 12v is not present oil is reported at 18 psi. I can’t stress enough even though you don’t get actual numbers with his setup you didn’t get actual number with the stock setup either. The only way to pull the real info is with YDS which you won’t be using on the water most of the time.I think this covers most of what was done. I used the stock dash plate as a template. If I was to do it again, I would make the starboard a bit taller for the go9 because the plastic under the dash cover is really brittle at this point and I couldn’t get it to cut squarely. I may try my hand at using it as a template for a fiberglass and gelcoat form to make it a cleaner install. That's for another day.
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