www.iFourWinns.com

You beat me to my next thought. Yeah, I think it's likely I'll have to supplement the house battery. I was curious about how others have done it. You don't have any troubles charging with the parallel wiring? I would have expected that different sizes of batteries would potenetially take a charge at different rates and might result in one set of batteries getting all of the charge. Shows what I know I guess. I'm trying to envision where you put the batteries. Is this aft portion on the centerline or off to port or starboard? One of my hesitations with adding batteries has always been screwing around with weight too much. I don't want to put a bunch of weight in an extreme corner of the boat and screw up how it sits in the water.

Ben

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2001 Cruisers 4450
Volvo TAMD-74P 480hp Diesels

Slightly off to the port side a bit. The boat tended to sit a *little* to the starboard and this seems to have corrected that. As for weight, maybe in a 24' boat it might matter (not that there's anything wrong with a 24' boat, of course), but on a 348 weighing in at 15k it's hardly a blip. I just keep an extra couple of cases of beverages in the cabin. That'll offset it, right? Heh.

At some point I should probably take some pictures of it. One more 'To Do' item...

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-Bill Kearney, 2005 348 Vista

Rberm - I was just looking back over some older posts and just saw this one from you at the bottom of the page - sorry I missed it.

I have the same power package as you - 5.7 IB's. I never ran a SR 340 and it was a big concern of mine that everyone said the 8.1's are perfectly matched to that boat. The history of the decision process that we all went through lives in these posts, but with no basis for comparison, as I said, I was very pleased with the performance in my limited running of the boat. I did not run up the speed much once on plane, but as I said, popping out of the hole exceeded my expectations. It will be interesting to hear your comparison. The boat comes to me by land tomorrow but will probably stay close to the marina as there is a lot of debris on The Hudson this time of year.

As I have touched on briefly in other threads and will detail at greater length once I take delivery, my dealer integrated fuel flow data into the Raymarine ST70 display (and thus, the E80 on the same network). The ST70 is mounted below the auto-pilot. The Fireboy light was lowered a bit and the fume detector alarm was moved the the starboard side of the helm. I'm looking forward to seeing how the functionality came together. There are several other posts about straight fuel flow monitoring. Sounds like Bill K. has had good luck with the Lowrance system he put in which sounds very functional.

Only one more week of waiting for you - try to enjoy the impossible anticipation!

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Previously:
2008 V358/Volvo 5.7 GXi Inboards

Sierra, Thanks for the reply. I am getting really excited about the delivery. I'm hoping for good weather since we have such a long day on the water. It should make for a great shakedown cruise since it will be about 4 hours total cruising time in the open Atlantic ocean. With respect to the additional flat panel tv I want to mount on the bulkhead down in the cabin I think I will hold off as you are for FourWinns to engineer the mounting. My dealer charged me an additional $427.00 for the wiring that he claims Fourwinns charged him and that the wiring is already in place. I'm not quite sure how to verify that but I am going to ask for some documentation or a wiring diagram from Fourwinns.

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2008.Fourwinns V358
1999 SeaRay340 Sundancer
1989 SeaRay 260 Cuddy

What wiring? I'm very familiar with what is or isn't in there. Some options are dealer installed but alot is already wired up. A dealer trying to ding you on that small amount of money is not very bright. You're buying a $200k boat, let them eat the $427. Better yet, make them deliver it with a full tank of gas... you'll definitely come out ahead!

4 hours in the open ocean? For a shakedown? Not sure I'd do that without at least a couple of hours inshore first. Don't want to have something come loose right away and be out in unprotected waters. Also, make sure your insurance coverage specifically allows for open ocean, as some do not.

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-Bill Kearney, 2005 348 Vista

Just wondering, My boat has snaps for the helm cover only on one side top and bottom, the side closest to starboard has no snaps. Is that the way it is done or am I missing something?

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2008 Four Winns V358 (T 6.2L Merc Bravo III's with DTS and SeaCore)
2006 Sea Ray 340DA
2006 Sea Ray 320DA
2005 Maxum 3100 SE

My recollection is - that's the deal. Delivery in three hours (!) so I'll report back if it's any different.

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Previously:
2008 V358/Volvo 5.7 GXi Inboards

Okay, I was aboard my boat yesterday in the dealer's lot. (still waiting for FW to come out to redo my floor) was playing with the stereo system. I found that the CD changer only works with the cockpit system. Is this accurate or am I not doing something when configuring the stereo?

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2008 Four Winns V358 (T 6.2L Merc Bravo III's with DTS and SeaCore)
2006 Sea Ray 340DA
2006 Sea Ray 320DA
2005 Maxum 3100 SE

That's a good question but most likely going to have to be answered by somebody else with an '08 boat. Prior to '08 we had to "make do" (;-)) with a single system with seperate power amps for cockpit and cabin.

Ben

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2001 Cruisers 4450
Volvo TAMD-74P 480hp Diesels

Bill, I am refering to wiring that I requested fourwinns add so I could mount a flat panel tv to the bulkhead left of the companion way stairs. They were supposed to run all the wiring back there so My dealer could mount and connect a 22" Flatpanel tv there.

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2008.Fourwinns V358
1999 SeaRay340 Sundancer
1989 SeaRay 260 Cuddy

Nope, that wiring is not part of what appears as regular wires installed in all boats.

But given that boats are all, essentially, hand-made there's not going to be a whole lot of things that are wired but not installed. When building 100k automobiles where half will have an optional feature from the factory and others get it at the dealer it might be reasonable to have wiring in there that isn't being used. But on a boat, where they measure a given model year's production in the dozens it's less likely.

Seeing as how it's a specific change for an otherwise non-standard install I wouldn't raise too much of a fuss over it. I always follow the rule "if you don't ask, you don't get". Quite a lot of time asking for a break on the price gets it. But for this? Hard to make the case with a straight face. But hey, nothing ventured, nothing gained...

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-Bill Kearney, 2005 348 Vista

Unfortunately, you got it right. As we've discussed before elsewhere on the forum, the two-head system is not without its flaws, the most significant being the need for two Sirius subscriptions as each unit has its own SID (identification) number. I'm preparing to bridge the two systems so the output of the cockpit system will feed the aux input of the cabin system. That will make it a true two zone system. Additional redundancy - each head unit also has a built-in CD player. For anyone who still plays CD's that's a lot of options. I'm guessing FW will be rethinking this audio setup for '09.

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Previously:
2008 V358/Volvo 5.7 GXi Inboards

Yeah, just doesn't make much sense to me. Especially the sirius issue. But you can usually negotiate some pretty significant discounts with Sirius. It never ends up being full retail for each radio if you push even slightly with them on it. I think I've got free radio in the car for, like, four years when I haggled with them over adding the weather package. But that doesn't solve the separate head unit control hassles. You could use the AUX input on one of them and use the line-out from the other. That way what's going out of one head unit could be played on the other. You wouldn't be able to control the source head unit, of course, but at least you'd have shared audio. Given our usage I'd probably leave the control of the sat radio up on the cockpit. Either that or you could add another remote for it. The clarion gear supports adding up to three. You'd need a Y-splitter, a remote and the necessary length of cabling.

You can't split the output from the sirius box as it's carried inside the clarion CE-Net cabling. I can't recall for sure, but I don't remember there being any plain audio outputs on the sat radio box. There is one on the raymarine weather box but that's a whole other issue...

Also, the factory setup (on ours anyway) did not use the cabin speakers for the DVD. I ran the line-out from the DVD player into the AUX input on the radio. Now we can listen to movies using the cabin speakers. I also ran the iPod input into the AUX input of the DVD player, as it passes this whenever it's not playing DVDs. It's a bit of a two-step dance but it works reasonably well.

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-Bill Kearney, 2005 348 Vista

Bill, I wasn't questioning the amount but rather how do I confirm that Fourwinns actually did the pre wiring. I have decided to wait on the mounting of the flat panel as is Sierra is doing. So my question is how do I know that the wiring is actually there? Does Fourwinns provide wire diagrams with the documentation that you get with the boat?

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2008.Fourwinns V358
1999 SeaRay340 Sundancer
1989 SeaRay 260 Cuddy

Ah, I missed that point. Unless it's a factory option I wouldn't imagine they have official diagrams for it. Some of the wiring is done by subcontractors so you might not be able to tell based on how it looks. (It's not unusual for an outside company to be used to make wiring harnesses). One would like to assume they'd do a superior looking job of it, using the same sort of fasteners as regular wiring.

One thought would be to ask FW customer service. They're pretty helpful. And with your Hull ID Number (HIN) they can track down exactly what's been done to it at the factory. I believe their e-mail account is boating at fourwinns (put it together with dot com). That and ours came with various pieces of paperwork from the various construction departments, quality assurance, etc.

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-Bill Kearney, 2005 348 Vista