Logo
FULL SITE MENU

What analogue data does a 2006 225 send to gauges?

M

metal-chicken

Regular Contributor
One season in with our 2006 BF225 and it seems to be running great after receiving a new O2 sensor and lower unit (ouch!). I'm still waiting to pick up a 17" prop to replace the 21" that is currently fitted but that can wait.

The boat will have to be out of the water from the end of September and my winter project is to look into the possibility of replacing the old Navman fish finder and plotter with a N2k multi-function display to carry out the same tasks while also displaying engine and fuel data amongst other things.

I'm fully aware that the engine is not NMEA2000 compatible and only supplies analogue data to the very expensive Honda digital gauge, but I've been reading about the NoLand RS11 anaolgue/N2K converter which seems to get good reviews and would allow me to display engine data on a MFD.

My question is, just what data does the engine actually supply? What I'm really after is fuel flow/consumption and rpm but if it also supplies temperature and tilt data that would also be good. So what analogue data can you get from a pre-N2K BF225?
 
When my 2007 BF 225 was installed on my boat in the spring of 2008 I was very disappointed that it did not supply NMEA 2000 data to my new Garmin network. So I did a deep dive on the Internet to try to figure out how I could make that happen. I came up blank. I even called a Honda Tech in Atlanta and he stated that there was no way that the Honda signals could be changed to NMEA 2000. Things may have changed since then with third party devices, but before purchasing, I would certainly make sure that it will work on a Honda outboard.

I believe that the signals to the gauges are digital since they are running the funky Honda digital gauges, which are greatly over priced and difficult to read in many situations.
 
Emailed Noland for confirmation of whether it will or won't work.
I'm guessing that at the very least the engine outputs analogue data/voltages for rpm, volts and tilt and the fuel gauge will also be analogue, but the biggy for me is fuel flow.
 
The old style digital gauges used only the analog signals for all of the standard functions. the fuel usage information was fed by pulses from the Green lead. I do not know how they were interpreted. I guess you could say, that it was the only "digital" signal that the digital gauges received.

Your best bet on fuel flow is to put some sort of NMEA 2000 fuel flow device in the fuel line.

Mike
 
The boat came fitted with Navman fish finder and plotter which are fairly old and only NMEA 0183 compatible. If I could afford it, I'd like to pull them out and replace with a single mfd such as the Simrad NSS Eco2.
I do have the Navman fuel flow sensor fitted but most of the time it's not giving a signal and when it does the figures don't seem right, so I'd rather use a signal sent by the engine if possible.
The old style digital gauges used only the analog signals for all of the standard functions. the fuel usage information was fed by pulses from the Green lead.
Click to expand...
That's interesting and promising. So it seems that the 'old' digital gauge may take the voltages from the analogue feeds, which I guess is the same as the standard gauges, and converts that to a 'digital' reading - the same goes for the fuel flow pulses. As far as I can see this is exactly what the RS11 does but the latter then outputs N2K data ........ from the RS11 manual: The pulse inputs, (P1+/P1-, P2+/P2-) can measure either RPM or fuel rate, asdesired.

If the 'old' digital gauge simply converted analogue signals and pulse data the it looks like the RS11 may well be able to do what I/we would like.

If the engine's fuel flow pulses didn't work out, I guess I could also just use an RS11 to handle the true analogue signals and fit an N2K fuel flow sensor and feed that data into the network.

I've not heard back from Noland yet so I'll be back with that information.
The old style digital gauges used only the analog signals for all of the standard functions. the fuel usage information was fed by pulses from the Green lead.
 
Back
Top