500/520 DB official thread

dstick said:
I also have installed the dual gauge to monitor both engines' EGT. Pretty straight forward. hardest part was snaking wires up to the helm. Use port on riser after turbo. Had removed old Clarion round remote control from helm and replaced with gauge. Used dual gauge by ISSPRO.
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This reminds me of a question, I need to run the wire for the new transducer from the bilge to the helm. How and where is that run made? What do I need to take off for access?
 
Josh, I still have and use the Activecaptain features it just won’t let me sign into my account to update the info.

Dstick, I like that both motors are in 1 gauge I’m looking into it as I have an extra hole in the dash to plug up.

Thanks.
 
Jeremygavin said:
This reminds me of a question, I need to run the wire for the new transducer from the bilge to the helm. How and where is that run made? What do I need to take off for access?
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Jeremy, run inside the wire casing along the starboard side and just past the bulkhead above the compressor for the air horns is access to behind cockpit ice maker, from there you go through the interior bulkhead to behind the entertainment center
Remove the balance above the tv and you’ll see wires running up the wall snake your wire to this point
Remove access panel on the starboard side at your feet on the bridge this is where it will be pulled up from
Then pull around the front facing helm seat where there is another access panel to behind the helm and your home.
 
Havana Shamrock said:
Jeremy, run inside the wire casing along the starboard side and just past the bulkhead above the compressor for the air horns is access to behind cockpit ice maker, from there you go through the interior bulkhead to behind the entertainment center
Remove the balance above the tv and you’ll see wires running up the wall snake your wire to this point
Remove access panel on the starboard side at your feet on the bridge this is where it will be pulled up from
Then pull around the front facing helm seat where there is another access panel to behind the helm and your home.
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Awsome, thanks for that description. That save me a lot of time figuring out the route.
 
Havana Shamrock said:
No Brian you read it wrong or I spelled it out wrong I guess I was referring to my boat (po) and my demo ride.
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Joe, ok, I guess we owe each other a Guinness.
 
quality time said:
That's ridiculous. I bought the kit from SBMAR and installed them myself a few years ago. There is a pipe plug on the exhaust riser directly after the turbo. Remove that plug, add bushing and insert the EGT probe.
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Any chance you have a picture where your probes are? My shop is telling me no such thing on my motors. Mike
 
Ok, here’s some data which is fresh from a lot of work done.

I had Cummins pull down both QSM11 engines raw water coolers, heat exchangers, replace one Aftercooler as the PO replaced on in December 2016. I didn’t really want to have 12 years difference in age of the Aftercooler.

We follows Cummins newest protcall as of April 2018. Pulled manifolds, heat shields, turbos and replaced both manifolds with new rather than sending out to be shaved flat and then fight to reinstall them. All new studs, new spacers, baskets which are really more like metal shims, turbo heat shields.

One of the first things I should note is the props where 28” 32 pitch when we started. The progression of pitch reduction has taken me to 28.5” and the results are as follows. Fully loaded with fuel, water, gear and personal belonging which includes a full liquor cabinet and Highfiled Ocean Master 390 Aluminum center console, full of furl with 40HP Honda on a Hurley H30+ Davit system.

Headed South to Key West run at this time in very calm seas at 2020 RPMs, Port & Starboard indicating 80% throttle with 64%-65% engine load, 20.8 & 21.4 Boost pressure, 20.4 & 20.1 GPH, EGT showing 975/980 degrees fluctuating and 22nmh+-.

Based on my last 20 months of working on the engines, props and running conditions I’ve come to the conclusion that this is about as good as I’m going to get, I can drop the tender off which all in weighs 725lbs.

The boat runs and planes fine. Obviously the extra tender weight is going to be more weight than most run with but I like having it with us all the time when we’re doing lots of outside running along the coast.

My observation about the EGT is you need to stay under 1,000 degrees and most problems seem temperature wise to be more common when running under 1800RPMs. You try and drop back to 1500-1800 to better match comfort when running in rougher water conditions your temperatures shoots up very quickly. Looks to me like I run much better around 2000RPMs than less.

I’ve made 4 pitch adjustments each time think I was going to see considerable change with the EGT dropping and have not found that to be the case. It almost seems like 950-985 is the normal running EGT range I see. I have no idea what you’d have to do to stay in the <900 degree range other than trawl around of operate in much colder northern waters during the summer time.

I’ve read everything I could fine that Tony has put out but this is what I am seeing and love to see & hear about what others are seeing?

John

PS, someone tell me how to post the pictures of the gauges and I’ll be happy to!
 
Gimme Time said:
Ok, here’s some data which is fresh from a lot of work done.

I had Cummins pull down both QSM11 engines raw water coolers, heat exchangers, replace one Aftercooler as the PO replaced on in December 2016. I didn’t really want to have 12 years difference in age of the Aftercooler.

We follows Cummins newest protcall as of April 2018. Pulled manifolds, heat shields, turbos and replaced both manifolds with new rather than sending out to be shaved flat and then fight to reinstall them. All new studs, new spacers, baskets which are really more like metal shims, turbo heat shields.

One of the first things I should note is the props where 28” 32 pitch when we started. The progression of pitch reduction has taken me to 28.5” and the results are as follows. Fully loaded with fuel, water, gear and personal belonging which includes a full liquor cabinet and Highfiled Ocean Master 390 Aluminum center console, full of furl with 40HP Honda on a Hurley H30+ Davit system.

Headed South to Key West run at this time in very calm seas at 2020 RPMs, Port & Starboard indicating 80% throttle with 64%-65% engine load, 20.8 & 21.4 Boost pressure, 20.4 & 20.1 GPH, EGT showing 975/980 degrees fluctuating and 22nmh+-.

Based on my last 20 months of working on the engines, props and running conditions I’ve come to the conclusion that this is about as good as I’m going to get, I can drop the tender off which all in weighs 725lbs.

The boat runs and planes fine. Obviously the extra tender weight is going to be more weight than most run with but I like having it with us all the time when we’re doing lots of outside running along the coast.

My observation about the EGT is you need to stay under 1,000 degrees and most problems seem temperature wise to be more common when running under 1800RPMs. You try and drop back to 1500-1800 to better match comfort when running in rougher water conditions your temperatures shoots up very quickly. Looks to me like I run much better around 2000RPMs than less.

I’ve made 4 pitch adjustments each time think I was going to see considerable change with the EGT dropping and have not found that to be the case. It almost seems like 950-985 is the normal running EGT range I see. I have no idea what you’d have to do to stay in the <900 degree range other than trawl around of operate in much colder northern waters during the summer time.

I’ve read everything I could fine that Tony has put out but this is what I am seeing and love to see & hear about what others are seeing?

John

PS, someone tell me how to post the pictures of the gauges and I’ll be happy to!
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John,
Thank you for all that info. It is good to know. I was going to take 1” pitch out of the props but I may take 1.3” out to get closer to your 28.5”. I am at 31.3” right so that will get me to 30” even and I can see how that performs.
 
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Havana Shamrock said:
One problem with our era Boats is the delaminates of the cabinet doors. As we know finding the material is unlikely so my buddy took his doors to have another solution done
I like this idea where you could pick a color or material to match your decor.
We have 1 door behind the sink that suffers from this.
Here’s our door and his larger doors after the repairs.
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What about making a trim piece of solid cherry finished to match what you have? Seems like it would fairly easy to do if you are handy.
 
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John and I have discussed this a few times and our numbers are pretty close. My EGT is closer to 900 but definitely jumps up when running between 1500-1800. Like I mentioned before, there’s no magic formula that works for all since John ended up 2.5” less pitch than I did.

I think you’ll end up taking more out down the road if you do 1.3” now since your currently burning almost 24 GPH. I was always told that 2” is the most they can move pitch.

Here’s a pic of my EGT probe location on the STBD engine. Let me know if you need better pics and I’ll get them in a few days.
 
quality time said:
View attachment 63279 John and I have discussed this a few times and our numbers are pretty close. My EGT is closer to 900 but definitely jumps up when running between 1500-1800. Like I mentioned before, there’s no magic formula that works for all since John ended up 2.5” less pitch than I did.

I think you’ll end up taking more out down the road if you do 1.3” now since your currently burning almost 24 GPH. I was always told that 2” is the most they can move pitch.

Here’s a pic of my EGT probe location on the STBD engine. Let me know if you need better pics and I’ll get them in a few days.
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I have a feeling you are correct but I don’t want to take it too far either. I am going to start with that get some better data over the course of the season with the boat loaded the way I am going to use it and see how it goes.
Can smartcraft read the egt if you add the correct probe.
 
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I was the same way and didn’t want to shoot myself in the foot performance wise. Surprisingly though I didn’t lose any speed due to the higher cruising RPM.

I would guess no to Smartcraft displaying EGT’s but can’t say for sure. My gauge is a standalone in the left of this pic.
 
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Making some progress today. I got the New Vessel View 703 installed and wired in. I wanted the touch screen and updated look to go along with the rest of the new electronics I will be installing. Plus the VV703 comes with VV link so I can push the data to the new Axiom XL 16s I will Be I stalling.
 
Nice upgrade Jeremy. What’s involved with swapping out the cummins smartcraft to vesselview? Did you have to convert the data to Nmea 2k ?
Did you have smartcraft or older vesselview?
 
The VV703 comes with the vessel view link and that is what converts the data to Nmea2k. You actually don’t really need the VV703 display or any of the Merc vessel view displays for that matter. The link alone can push data to the MFDs via the nmea2k network. I chose to keep the Mercury Hardware as well because it wasn’t clear if alarms and all engine diagnostics would come over the the MFDs and I needed to have something in the place of the VV01 on the upper display anyway.
I did have to get an extra harness to tie it into the diesel harness but the additional harness was $80 or so.
 
Joe, Great idea starting this thread! Thanks! Btw, your upgrade dash and wheel looks great....

Jeremy, I too am curious about the VV. Can you customize the screen to display the information you want? The nice thing about smart craft is to be able to monitor RPM, temp., oil psi, batt volts, fuel burn at a very quick glance with its simple "line item" display? I just wish the engine load was on the same page as well.
 
cod said:
Joe, Great idea starting this thread! Thanks! Btw, your upgrade dash and wheel looks great....

Jeremy, I too am curious about the VV. Can you customize the screen to display the information you want? The nice thing about smart craft is to be able to monitor RPM, temp., oil psi, batt volts, fuel burn at a very quick glance with its simple "line item" display? I just wish the engine load was on the same page as well.
Click to expand...

The main page has the basic info RPMs,batt Volts, Fuel total, MPH, Gear. If you touch the batt read outs it brings you to a larger page with just batt detail. same with fuel. If you push the Merc symbol in the middle it gives you a line by line read out with engines side by side but the read out is a bit small. On the left side in my pic you can pull up more detailed info and leave it up there if you want to. This is where you will see the Generator info as well. Also, After I took the pic I found a sidebar that you can customize. Here i added all the extra info you are talking about such as Load%, % throttle, Fuel burn, Water pressure, ETC. in this sidebar you can make them what ever you want from sea temp and air temp to DTW Etc. I think there are 10 total fields you can change.
I wish you could customize the front Merc page more such as replacing the volts read out on top with fuel burn as that is more useful info at a glance but you cannot change that main Merc page.
 
Great idea on this thread.

Nobody has ever tried to remove this cabinet?
 

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Mac Magic said:
Great idea on this thread.

Nobody has ever tried to remove this cabinet?
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I haven’t tried to remove it but I like the anchor carpet.
 
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