The Lowrance NMEA 2000 Fuel Management System, WOW!

[jergofish]

I purchased the Lowrance 337c GPS/Sonar system for my 215. As an accessory I also purchased the EP 10 fuel sensor. The installation was simple, cut the fuel hose, fit in the sensor with the arrow pointing in the right direction and put on the hose clamps. Plug the cable into the NMEA 2000 system and turn on the fuel management module on the GPS/Sonar.

I now know my fuel consumption as I'm motoring and know exactly how much fuel is left in the tank to the tenth of a gallon. It's fairly simple to operate and would be even simpler if Lowrance thought to include the instructions in their 337c GPS/Sonar instruction manual. Instead I had to fumble around with menus and enters and exits until I could make sense of the whole thing. A lot more options are available including averaging, economy, usage per trip, usage per season but without a manual I haven't figured out how to use them all. I've written Lowrance and am waiting for a reply, hopefully with a set of instructions on the programming of the system.

However, other than that complaint, when I see my fuel gauge sloshing from quarter tank to three quarter tank while under way, it's comforting to know how much fuel I have in the tank down to the tenth of a gallon. The best part of the deal is that the fuel sensor is only $49 at Cabela's.

[woodNfish]

Hi Jergofish,

I know this is a bit late for a reply, but Lowrance has all their manuals online so you can download them to your computer. They are pdf files. They also have simulators of most of their sonars and gps units so yo can learn how to use them on your computer. They mostly work pretty good and you can play wih the menus and work the buttons, etc.

I have the same unit you have on my console and an x67c on my bow. The gps functio is so-so. I bought their fishing elite maps for the northeast only to discover that they don't even have the major lakes here in New Hampshire, and their topo maps are worthless for the water. If I had to do it again I'd probably look at a different company to see how they compare.

That said, I do like the sonar.

Good fishing,

woodnfish

[AstroDiver]

I'd like to get a fuel monitoring unit to see what my consumption is. GPH or milage. All the units I seen in the catalogs are in the $400 range.
All of my electronis are Garmin except for the radio.

[jergofish]

I figured out the Fuel management system by trial and error. I absolutely love it. I can't imagine operating the boat without it I NEVER wonder how much fuel is in the tank and know to the tenth of a gallon.

Funny, I find the Navionics maps of the west coast and Mexico excellent! In Mulege we laughed because the charts did not always correspond to the GPS location but were within a mile or so of being correct. Here in Northern California the charts are so accurate that little clumps of tules in the river are actually marked.

The 200 mhz sounder is great but I wonder since no matter how much I dial out sensitivity I seem to be charting fish under the boat and I can't believe there are THAT many fish. I've found the 50mhz sounder to be pretty much worthless and probably wouldn't have bothered to spend the extra $50 for that capability.

[woodNfish]

Hi again jergofish,

I'm sure the Navionics maps are good, they are third party and not from Lowrance - they are also offshore saltwater maps. The only freshwater maps Navionics does are the great lakes. The maps I bought "Fishing Hotspots Elite" are lake maps. The lakes they do have are accurate - it is just very strange that they don't have the major lakes in New Hampshire. I guess I should be happy though - there is only one lake for all of Massachusetts in the charts.

The 337 comes with the dual sonar and I am not aware that you can purchase it any other way. The manual mentions when the 50khz sensor is useful, but I don't remember offhand when that is. I only use the 200 khz as well.

I looked through the fuel sensor manual and there is no info on how to use it with any of the sonar units. That figures. I've found that Lowrance's tech support isn't very good either - they don't even know the features of their own products.

I suppose I could spend my time worrying about all this, but I'd rather go fishing.

woodNfish

[jergofish]

While I have the 337 with the dual transducer, the 332 comes with only the 200mhz and is $49 less.

On Lowrance Tech Support:

While in Mexico my through the water speed sensor started acting up.

It finally quit and I sent Lowrance an e-mail describing the problem. No response.

I waited a week and then sent a second e-mail mentioning that this was my second attempt at contact. I received an e-mail within 24 hours asking that I phone because of the possible outcomes to the problem.

When I returned to the U.S. I called (armed with my case number assigned in the second e-mail.) The wait time was about 12 minutes, not bad for a major company.

After a quick chat (really nice guy!) we both came to the same conclusion that the sensor was probably at fault. Rather than have me return the entire unit, Lowrance mailed a new sensor and also issued a MRA should the new sensor not fix the problem. If uncorrected with the new part I was to ship main unit, old part and replacement part back to Lowrance.

The telephone tech said estimated repair time was two weeks if I had to ship the units.

I keep my boat berthed so I haven't been able to put on the new unit to see if it's the fix but I was appreciative that Lowrance was willing to ship the part as a fix rather than require me to return the whole unit.

I'd rate their service at least equal to most of the marine parts dealers. None of which seem to give blistering quick service.

By the way, I now have almost 2000 miles on the boat and over 160 hours on the engine since my delivery date, May 27. The fuel management system to me is a MUST!

The boat and engine have performed flawlessly with the exception of the pure gasoline in Mexico being much richer than the gasahol we pump here in California, causing the engine to run rough on start up. I would have thought that the computer chips in the the engine would have corrected the fuel/air mixture to accomodate the pure gasoline.

[Putershark]

Originally Posted by jergofish

The boat and engine have performed flawlessly with the exception of the pure gasoline in Mexico being much richer than the gasahol we pump here in California, causing the engine to run rough on start up. I would have thought that the computer chips in the the engine would have corrected the fuel/air mixture to accomodate the pure gasoline.

That is a classic description of a "cold" start problem... Cold you say? yes... Here is the possible cause. You are starting to get deposits building up on the back side of the intake valves. These carbon deposits when cold soak up fuel. So when you turn the key on and it reads the warmer air temps from being further south, the ECU (like a choke of days past) does not dump in very much fuel for starting and some of what is dumped, is soaked up by the those carbon deposits. The problem goes away as the engine warms up and the carbon becomes as hard as a rock, but I have seen cases of the engines starting and stalling out many times till that temperature was reached from all the carbon build up... How to fix such well you have several options

1. Move to Canada since the ECU will pretty much always dump in enough fuel for starting in such conditions (too funny I know)
2. Remove the slowly building carbon deposits through the use of fuel additives. I recommend using Techron in clean up version bottle dumped right into the fuel. http://www.chevron.com/products/prod...ate_plus.shtml and have always had good success with using this product. Yamaha markets the same product, but calls it "Ring Free" and works well on both 2 (though in different areas) and 4 stroke engines.

Carbon though builds up inside your engine that have been using lower quality detergent fuels. When you shut the engine down, fuel "boils" away it leaves these deposits behind... This is why I only use high grade detergent fuels in both my truck and will only run Chevron fuel in my boat engine with it many times being 93 octane just because it is so hot outside. Engine Octane requirements is a different subject matter altogether

One other thing you can have checked, is the operation of the fuel injection system by the dealer to make sure all the sensors are working per design spec... The ECU though does NOT have the ability to compensate for carbon build up since no sensor to date can measure such... The EPA regulates engine builders to meet certain emission levels after so many seconds of start up, and usually the builders will set them even a little leaner just to make sure it will past those test... So even smaller amounts of carbon build up on the valves can have such effects even on marginal days. Also remember that the more intake valves you have on your engine, the more surface area you have to "grow" such carbon. This so a 8 valve 4 cylinder engine, may not show the same effects as fast, as say 16 valve 4 cylinder might

Hope this helps?

[jergofish]

Putershark, I read your post and I don't think that was the problem although the symptoms match with the exception of:

1. I went to Mexico with only ten gallons in the tank and filled it up (60 gallons more) when down there. Up until that time the engine would idle forever and smoothly even at start up when running on California gasohol.

2. The problem occureed immediatly on the first start up in Mexico. I had about a 20 minute run in very shallow water to get out of the bay and it had to be done at idle. The engine died repeatedly as soon as the new fuel reached the engine, about five minutes into the run. It also smoked heavily until warm. It did so the entire month and a half I was down there, running fine after warm up including idle (although sometimes smokey).

3. Upon return to the U.S. and back on gasohol the problem went immediatly away!

4. My top end in Mexico was 5400RPM on straight gasoline while I can hit 5900RPM in California on gasohol.

I thought it might be an octane thing but neither my truck or my marine engine seemed to ping because of the Mexican gasoline although both had less power and higher fuel consumption per RPM. My truck did not have idling problems and didn't appear to be smoking at idle.

[Putershark]

Your chances of hearing it knock would be slim for a soon as it does (many times well below what you would hear) the ECU backs off the timing about 5 degrees (pending on the computer program mapping) and then tries to bring it up a 10th of a degree till it starts to knock again.

Gashol by nature though, is a higher octane level of fuel due to the blend of the 2 liquids so no shock to me that you burn less of it. Just put a little alcohol on your hand and you can feel the cooling effect... The higher the octane number though, the more stable the fuel, thus the ECU can give the engine more timing which quite simply... Equates to more power

You also have to remember that modern engines are making adjustments to timing about 10 times a second. So even little changes in fuel quality, air temp, humidity, altitude and air fuel mixture are all being taken into play when those adjustments are being made... Cool stuff (programming I would like to learn) and why we can ring out so much power out of such little displacement engines

[jergofish]

Cool, so putting everything you told me into my overhead mixer, what's coming out is that the Mexican gas was probably just not refined to U.S. standards, (i.e. almost like it had some #2 diesel mixed in) and that it was more evident in the small high performance Suzuki rather than the V8 in my Ford truck.

That poor quality resulted in poor performance, lower gas mileage and rough running on a cold engine along with smoking.

It sounds like I should stock up on Techron when I'm heading to Mexico so that I at least increase the cleaning qualities of the gas I'm running through the engine and maybe experiement with octane booster additives as well. I burned about 400 gallons of gas while down there so that's a significant amount of additives I'll have to stock up on before venturing south next summer.