Official 390 E.C. Thread

Dr MicroChip said:
It goes the entire length of the engine room. I removed as much foam as I could via the hatch and the 6" port. I then made a long drill out of a 1.5" spade bit and bored a hole through the foam under the generator so I could get flow through it. Luckily I am in salt water and nothing in the engine room rotted. Everything forward of the engine room did rot because it was filled with fresh water from leaking windows, A/C condensate, shower drain, chain locker and leaking water tank.
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Wow. Thanks for the quick responses, pics, and old posts. What a great forum!! I'll have to get the foam out as soon as possible. Did you end up installing ribbing after removing the foam, if you have any pics that would be great. Looks like this project has moved to the top of the list for me.
 
I'm planning on getting the foam/water out from under the deck in the engine room this weekend. I have never cut a hole the decking of my boat before. Im a little nervous about it.... I have a couple more questions I was hoping to get all your expert advise on. First, is it safe for me to do this work while the boat is in the water. Second from the pics it looks like the hull is not to far below the deck, what did you use to cut the access panel under the battery box and the 6" hole by the aft bilge pump.

Thanks for the guidance.
Scott
 
scotter12 said:
I'm planning on getting the foam/water out from under the deck in the engine room this weekend. I have never cut a hole the decking of my boat before. Im a little nervous about it.... I have a couple more questions I was hoping to get all your expert advise on. First, is it safe for me to do this work while the boat is in the water. Second from the pics it looks like the hull is not to far below the deck, what did you use to cut the access panel under the battery box and the 6" hole by the aft bilge pump.

Thanks for the guidance.
Scott
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If you do have a hole in the hull you will sink the boat so first drill a 1/4" hole to discover how much water comes out. If it is a lot - haul the boat. There is very little room down there and since you will have the batteries out now would be a good time to remove the generator and get it checked out, heat exchanger cleaned, maybe a valve job, etc. I cannot imagine doing this with the gen in place!! It is real easy to remove. The floor may be leaking where the floor meets the stringers. On mine there were big gaps covered with only 1/16" of glass and when the glass cracked it leaked. I had to grind and re glass. Use glass and epoxy for all repairs. A tiny bit more expensive but no smell and lots stronger. With the gen out and lots of room to work you will do a MUCH better job! Use a circular saw to cut the hatch and a sabre saw to cut the round hole. Pre plan how you will recover the hatch and make it waterproof. I am here to guide you anytime.

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Here is how I made my hatch and the repair job to the hull.
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Dr Microchip
 
Hey folks! As some of you may have been seen in the good Doctor's thread, I have become very inspired by his dash update. One thing I would like to resolve before further research into gauge replacements are the poorly functioning tachometers/sync that we have now. I've done a LOT of research trying to figure this out and now cannot for the life of me remember what I saw where, so apologies if this information is readily available here or in Al's or Pietro's restoration threads.

My best guess is that the 390s have a mechanical as opposed to magnetic pickup... is this right? My only experience with tachometers is with an early 1980s motorcycle restoration, so I'm not sure any of my knowledge is transferable. Basically, one tach never works, the other tach sporadically works and the sync recently also became unreliable, even though it worked relatively recently. Does anyone have any guides or feedback on how I can trouble shoot this issue? I don't know if it's a gauge problem, a cable problem (do these tachs run off mechanical cables or is it an electrical signal from the cable port?) or some other issue I am not considering.

Any advice and feedback welcomed and thanks again for being such a great community. :smt038
 
The tachs on my CAT diesels run off electro mechanical senders mounted on the front of the engine. On gas engines they are usually connected to a wire on the distributor to pick up the dwell pulse. I discovered that the original senders put our 4 pulses per rev and are not compatible with my new Faria tachs which need 8 pulses per rev - so I had to order new Faria senders. Regardless if you have gas or diesel buy new tachs and a new sync. Not prudent to fool with 30 year old technology. Faria is a great company and have super support. If you have questions call them!!

Dr Microchip
 
Dr MicroChip said:
The tachs on my CAT diesels run off electro mechanical senders mounted on the front of the engine. On gas engines they are usually connected to a wire on the distributor to pick up the dwell pulse. I discovered that the original senders put our 4 pulses per rev and are not compatible with my new Faria tachs which need 8 pulses per rev - so I had to order new Faria senders. Regardless if you have gas or diesel buy new tachs and a new sync. Not prudent to fool with 30 year old technology. Faria is a great company and have super support. If you have questions call them!!

Dr Microchip
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I have the Aetna digital and thy supply the senders too. Support was lazy, but it's a good product.
 
Dr MicroChip said:
The tachs on my CAT diesels run off electro mechanical senders mounted on the front of the engine. On gas engines they are usually connected to a wire on the distributor to pick up the dwell pulse. I discovered that the original senders put our 4 pulses per rev and are not compatible with my new Faria tachs which need 8 pulses per rev - so I had to order new Faria senders. Regardless if you have gas or diesel buy new tachs and a new sync. Not prudent to fool with 30 year old technology. Faria is a great company and have super support. If you have questions call them!!

Dr Microchip
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Thanks for the reply! I'm such a doofus; I had intended to mention in my original post that I have the 3208 Cats. I love the way your gauges turned out (especially the use of the 4 in 1 combo gauge - it really minimizes the clutter) and I had priced them out myself across a large variety of vendors (prices swing dramatically on the internet for these items for some reason). However, I had not considered the need to replace the senders so this is very helpful information. Being at the front of the engine, I can't imagine the senders are very easy to access right? I will try and get down there this weekend to locate them.

The need to replace the senders may not be a bad thing... if I replace both the gauges and the senders, there is really no reason that the sync and tachs should not be accurate, right? Less troubleshooting the better.
 
Pietro said:
I have the Aetna digital and thy supply the senders too. Support was lazy, but it's a good product.
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Those look great too, Pietro. If I didn't have fogging starting to occur in my other gauges and I needed to replace just the tachs, those would be a great option.
 
JC80 said:
Thanks for the reply! I'm such a doofus; I had intended to mention in my original post that I have the 3208 Cats. I love the way your gauges turned out (especially the use of the 4 in 1 combo gauge - it really minimizes the clutter) and I had priced them out myself across a large variety of vendors (prices swing dramatically on the internet for these items for some reason). However, I had not considered the need to replace the senders so this is very helpful information. Being at the front of the engine, I can't imagine the senders are very easy to access right? I will try and get down there this weekend to locate them.

The need to replace the senders may not be a bad thing... if I replace both the gauges and the senders, there is really no reason that the sync and tachs should not be accurate, right? Less troubleshooting the better.
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What could go wrong? GROUNDING!!! If the engine wiring harness has bad grounding all kinds of things can go wrong!!! Especially in an old boat. The senders are right under the coolant tank and may not be to hard to remove depending on RUST! Like an idiot - I should have tested the gauges while the engines were running out of the boat.

Dr. M
 
Dr MicroChip said:
What could go wrong? GROUNDING!!! If the engine wiring harness has bad grounding all kinds of things can go wrong!!! Especially in an old boat. The senders are right under the coolant tank and may not be to hard to remove depending on RUST! Like an idiot - I should have tested the gauges while the engines were running out of the boat.

Dr. M
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Ugh; let's hope that bad grounding isn't the case! I'm probably at the limit of my electrical knowledge just replacing gauges/senders - if I need to pull the multimeter back out to chase grounds in that rats nest it might be years before I have working tachs :)

Thank you for the information on the senders. I'm going to crawl down there on Sunday to take a look around.
 
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Nice pic of you and your lady in the back of your 390 Saverio. I just cannot hold it back any longer Buddy ... don't take this the wrong way, but it sure looks like you have your hands full there. :grin: :smt021 :huh:
 
The pump in my shower sump is not running. Before I go digging into it I would like to make sure there is power to the circuit. Does anyone know what breaker it is on or where the wire run is?
 
Airboss said:
The pump in my shower sump is not running. Before I go digging into it I would like to make sure there is power to the circuit. Does anyone know what breaker it is on or where the wire run is?
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Hey Boss:
Logically the shower sump is actuated by the shower so it must be on the Water System breaker. My new Jabsco V-Flo 5 pump is defective and on its way back to the mfg so I can't test. Open the cover and actuate the float. Check the voltage feeding the float switch. Check for hair in the pump. Don't worry about where the wires run - I doubt if the issue is in the concealed wiring.
Dr Microchip
 
+1 on check the wires

the PO on mine used a butt connector and let it sit on the bottom of sump. when I open it opened up the connector and wire were serperated and all corroded
 
I believe the shower sump is originally always on, loke the bilge pumps.

BTW, listen to me, get rid of that sump using a tiny bilge pump and get a diaphragm pump system from Whale :wink:
 
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