I love my 2011 242 LS, but one of the things that has always driven me crazy was how small the gas and depth indicators are. Does anyone have a recommendation on a solution for this that looks good?
I don't really like drilling holes in the cockpit of the boat but the layout is almost impossible for me to see them.
I came into this thread because the gauges on our 2010 242 limited S have become unreadable. I agree at baseline they are annoyingly small, but with time and sun exposure (We keep our boat covered in florida but it has been exposed to sun over 10 years, that's why we boat!) the display has gotten progressively harder to read. I did all of the contrast and brightness tricks suggested with little real improvement. It got to the point where you could no longer read the fuel level, and I would gauge my fuel use based on hours of operation and prior trips- not an ideal fuel management plan!
The problem with installing different fuel gauges and fuel totalizers on a larger display is Yamaha uses proprietary codes on the boat's installed data bus. The only NMEA standard information on the data bus is the depth sounder and water temperature, most likely because the depth finder transducer is sourced outside Yamaha. The engine data, fuel level, and fuel flow information is coded with Yamaha proprietary codes that are not recognized by industry standard NMEA displays. So if you want to install NMEA compatible displays, you need to replace the fuel senders and install fuel totalizers that generate NMEA compliant data, and construct your own NMEA backbone. Not an impossible job, but its going to take you a bit of time and money to get it all up and working.
Replacement gauges are basically unobtainable. I've seen an occasional one for sale on ebay at ridiculous prices. The problem is the polarizer on the gauges degrades with time and sun exposure. You can replace the polarizer yourself (check out youtube) but there is a company called gaugesaver that I found thru one of these forums that will do it for you for a reasonable price. I've attached photos of our before and after. It saved me hours of labor trying to add NMEA fuel sensors and totalizers, run the wires, construct the NMEA backbone, etc.
I have no connection with gaugesaver except as a customer who paid in full for the work.
