Sort the comments below by OLDEST to see a chronological timeline of the work we have completed.
A client from Tennessee recently sent in the dash from his 2000 Ski Nautique 196 for gauge replacement. I love working on these dashboards. We can make them so much more reliable than they were from the factory.
This one had the dreaded Teleflex digital gauges, which had, of course, failed. Follow along below to see how we fixed this dash up. Here's the starting point, and the finished product:
And here's the finished product. All new gauges, new dash overlay panel, and new PerfectPass Stargazer upgrade!
Today, we drilled out the PerfectPass hole, removed the gauges again, installed the new overlay, and remounted the gauges. The PerfectPass system just got delivered, so we haven't installed that display yet, but I'll update this blog with pictures of that once complete.
This client decided to have us complete a couple more things on this dash, so we're not done yet after all!
Due to the cracking of the overlay behind the gauges, he opted to have us replace that. He also decided to have us upgrade his PerfectPass to Stargazer Three-Event, which will be a very nice update!
We'll pull the dash apart again tomorrow and install this new overlay (after drilling out the hole for the PerfectPass display), and then reinstall everything, including the new PerfectPass display, which should be here tomorrow.
Here's the finished product, all ready to be plugged back in on our client's 2000 Ski Nautique 196. [Or, maybe not. See the next post!]
Here's an interesting thing: We always test our gauge replacements on an actual boat, and it is a good thing we did with this one! It turned out that there was an internal malfunction on the voltmeter. When the ignition was activated, there was no voltage reading on the voltmeter, but the gauge lighting was on. That's really weird. I rechecked my wiring and found no issues, so I swapped out the gauge with another one, and that one worked fine. Everything else checked out perfectly, and this dash is ready to go bac…
The daisey-chained wiring harness from the factory was still used, but instead of jamming three wires into a single connector like the factory did, each wire got its own ring terminal, and those were all connected to the correct locations on the gauges. It gets a little busy, but this is a much more secure and reliable method than jamming three wires into a single connector!!
You'll notice that the light circuit is still using the factory blade terminal connections. That's because even new gauges require a blade terminal connection for the light circuit for some reason.