hour Meeter addition?

[azirkhan]

I have a year 2001 Challenger 2000, it does not have an hour meeter, does any one know if it is possible to add an hour meter?

 

[RFoster130]

You can add an hour meter to anything. They just hook to a wire that will be hot while the boat is on. I think they actually are counting anytime the battery is on. I am not sure which wire would work if you dont have a battery switch, but probe around behind the dash and I am sure you would find a suitable wire.

If you wanted to be really accurate, you could take it to a dealer first and get the current hours. Then get you an hour meter and hook it up to a battery till it gets to the current hours. Install it in the boat and then you are good.

Of course this is all just generally speaking how I would do it on my boat. Since you have a mercury based boat, there may be some easier way. Hopefully one of the mercury guys chimes in soon.

 

[Scott0321]

Hour meter standard

I'll probably make this mod over the winter. For the life of me I can't understand why they would make this standard on all boats. It would be easy to track from a maintenance interval and just plain ole good information.

I know the dealer and Seadoo wants to drive the service and traffic back their shops to use the software to grab this information. Foolish to keep such simple information so hard to get.

 

[WAJetboating]

I added one last Spring. Go online and search for "Tiny Tach". I bought mine off eBay for about $50. It has an internal battery and needs no power connection at all. One ground wire and one wire to wrap around a spark plug lead. It is both a tach and an hour meter, so anytime it senses plug pulses it counts RPM's and hours. The hourcount is visible when the engine is off, and the RPM's are displayed when the engine is on. Totally noninvasive installation, using velcro to attach. I mounted mine on top of the engine's rev limiter so I can see it anytime the engine hatch is open.

 

[RFoster130]

That actually sounds pretty cool. I might even look into adding one.

 

[huttcraft]

I installed an inductive hour meter this year on my Sportster SCIC.

My unit is from a Chinese ebay seller. It was $13.50 shipped, and installation took about 5 minutes: the transducer wire is wrapped around one of the spark plug coils a few times and zip-tied in place. The unit itself is completely potted and waterproof, and records the engine's operation to a resolution of 0.1 hours. I attached it to the plastic shroud over the motor with some self-adhesive velcro for easy access, reading and removal. So far it's working great and the investment was not terribly significant. Search ebay for "inductive hour meter" and you'll see lots of them, sometimes categorized with motorcycle and ATV accessories.

Dave

 

[RFoster130]

I think im actually gonna try one of these.

 

[timeman]

You sold me, I just had my boat serviced, so I know exactly how many hours I have now, this meter will allow me to keep accurate track of any additional ones...Plus... it's cheap and easy to install...such a deal!

 

[huttcraft]

Attached are pictures of my installation of the cheapo Chinese model described above. For perspective, I'm leaning over the back seats looking straight down into the hull: the top of the picture is aft.

The module is attached to the top of the motor shroud with self-adhesive velcro, and the transducer wire is wrapped around one of the coil wires 3 or 4 times then zip-tied in place. Eventually I plan to mark the motor's baseline hours at the date of install onto the module itself, maybe with a paint marker. I could probably also cut the transducer wire rather than leaving the extra as shown, but that would add another 20 seconds to my 6 minute installation which makes it start to sound like work...!

Dave

 

[kustomkarl]

The easiest way to install a Hour Meter is go to like West Marine and buy one for like $10.00. Be sure it is for marine use. Then either in the engine compartment or under the dash area near the meter installed location, find a "Purple" wire and connect the Positive+ end to that wire, and a suitable Ground-. The purple wire is only energized when the DESS is connected which is accurate for engine run time. If you want it accurate, and you can get the use hours off your engine from a seadoo dealer, just bench run your hour meter( attach it to a 12 volt battery on a bench) to the correct engine hours then install it.

Karl

 

[RFoster130]

The easiest way to install a Hour Meter is go to like West Marine and buy one for like $10.00. Be sure it is for marine use. Then either in the engine compartment or under the dash area near the meter installed location, find a "Purple" wire and connect the Positive+ end to that wire, and a suitable Ground-. The purple wire is only energized when the DESS is connected which is accurate for engine run time. If you want it accurate, and you can get the use hours off your engine from a seadoo dealer, just bench run your hour meter( attach it to a 12 volt battery on a bench) to the correct engine hours then install it.

Karl

The problem with that is I have a bad habit of leaving the lanyard on all the time. There are times where I have the battery on and we are listening to tunes while the boat is anchored and the lanyard is on the entire time for hours. I like the spark plug wire idea.

 

[phatcat]

Another way to do it is to hook it up to the oil pressure sender......this is the standard way they do it in airplanes to get the most accurate time as a good deal of time is spent with the master switch on and the engine not running.....just a thought!