www.iFourWinns.com

Hi guys. First time poster. Long time lurking reading all the posts. I have a 2000 Horizon 180LS. The boat had the VDO dash until today.

I installed the new dash from FW. Plug and play. Not so much. Plug and nothing. I spent $1000 on the new dash. I checked the safety toggle. Not the problem.

Please. Any help would be great.

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2000 Four Winns Horizon 180 LS
2005 Toyota Tundra
Riding Mountain National Park

Sorry your first post has to be for this, but welcome anyway. Can you be more specific about what works and what doesn't?

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Mike
2005 Four Winns 230/240
VP 5.7GXi/DP
1998 F-150 XLT
Boat Pic

Hi Mike. Thanks for responding. I am at the lake with the boat until tomorrow. Would love to get it solved if its minor.
I had battery out of the boat while I connected new dash. When I turned the key on, the first time only I saw the fuel gauge go to full then down to nothing. I quickly turned key to start to see if it was going to turn over. I did hear the same beeping noises when I had they key on before I started the boat.

A minute later when I had the muffs ready, I started the boat. It fired right up. This time nothing on any gauge. With the VDO panel I could see oil pressure, fuel, volts when I turned key to on.

The new dash backlight seems to work on every gauge. Again I pulled on my safety toggle and it stalled the engine. I put the safety back in place and it fired up again. Still no joy.

I'm sorry I'm not the handiest guy in the world. I don't have or know how to use a multimeter. I also don't know how to test with jumper wires etc. Sorry. That stuff is over my head.

One thing I did not try was checking all the connections on the back of the new dash. Should I pull the dash and pull off, then re attach every connection?

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2000 Four Winns Horizon 180 LS
2005 Toyota Tundra
Riding Mountain National Park

What you need, is a wiring schematic, to find out how the gauges get powered through the instrument panel harness. The gauges need both power and input from the sending unit to work. FW used to have them on their website under customer service and owners manuals. See if they are still there. I bet that the power lead for the gauges is not hooked up, the lights work but you are not getting any readings.
I have one for my old boat but its too small to read easily, but I can see that the lighting, and power to the gauges, is from a connector that plugs into the engine harness. Sorry I can't be more helpful, your boat is a lot newer and might be wired totally differently. You need an instrument wiring schematic to see where it ties into the engine harness. You sure you plugged everything in?

Found it, take a look, see if you can figure it out......
page 133

http://www.fourwinns.com/upload/Documen ... orizon.pdf

I learned how to read one of these many years ago (1973/4 to be exact) when had to re-wire my VW powered Dune Buggy (first car). It was a little confusing at first but I figured it out. Boy those cars were REALLY simple.

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88 Four Winns 200 Horizon
4.3 OMC Cobra-4bbl
2002 Walker Bay 10/2012 Suzuki 2.5
2008 Walker Bay 8

1998 Jeep Grand Cherokee 4.0/Selectrac
2007 Jeep Grand Cherokee 5.7 Hemi/Quadradrive II

Nothing on the new dash works? If the connector is OK, then probably an earth ( ground, negative) issue

Graham is probably on the right track. All power circuits need and in and an out (positive and ground). Sometimes people forget this. On a boat most of the grounds all come together at a few points on a strip with many connections. It's typically about an inch wide and several inches long, typically brown and there will be several bolts sticking up from it. The ground wires (typically green) will all come to those bolts. It's necessary to check them periodically to make sure they're tight and corrosion free. If one of them gets corroded or loose then anything that's getting it's ground through it will have problems.

A volt meter is one of THE most basic tools you can use for testing electrical circuits. A cheapie from Radio Shack would work fine. You'd just need to set it to DC 20V and you'd be good to go. Then it's just a matter of using the black wire connected to a ground and poking the red positive line into the circuit you want to check. It's really just simple step-by-step.

Just what made you think replacing a whole dash was going to solve it? That's pretty drastic without knowing what caused the problem in the first place.

Electrical work can be VERY labor intensive. This is one place where it really pays to learn how to do the basic troubleshooting yourself. Otherwise you're paying a boat mechanic a LOT of money during a very busy time of the year. You lose valuable boating time too.

If you hunt down the problem yourself you can save quite a lot of money. Even if the actual repair job is beyond your skill level at least you've pinpointed what's wrong. Then you're just paying the mechanic for the hard parts of the job.

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-Bill Kearney, 2005 348 Vista

Well - with all that's been said about the VDO dashes on all the boating forums over all the years - I'd probably replace it too. But I agree with Graham, if the whole dash is dead, It's either got to be a common connector, common ground, or something simple like that. Unfortunately sometimes the "simplest" things are the hardest ones to find.

Sorry we aren't being much help; this is one of those things that's pretty hard to diagnose without being there.

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Mike
2005 Four Winns 230/240
VP 5.7GXi/DP
1998 F-150 XLT
Boat Pic

Thanks guys!! I appreciate the responses. I was for sure naive to think that the new dash would magically fix everything.

That said, I did the research on here and iboats. I did know the VDO was a bit of a lemon. Looks wise, I prefer the new design with the Faria gauges.

Shame on FW, or whomever is getting rich off the cost of new dash. Not cool in my book. But, I didn't get into boating to save money.

I am taking the boat to a marine mechanic that was recommended by a friend i trust.

I will get these items taken care of.
-new dash electrical troubleshoot.
-new trim sending unit.
-new speedo transducer.
-trim spacers to protect my aftermarket swim platform.
--need to limit the raise of my drive.

Thanks again fellas. I will keep u posted on my story and how much lighter my wallet wil be.

Cheers!

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2000 Four Winns Horizon 180 LS
2005 Toyota Tundra
Riding Mountain National Park

Shame on who? Boats are small production run items, there's no economy of scale like you'd have with road-going vehicles. They make only hundreds of a given model each year, some only in the dozens. So it's not like there's a lot of profit to be gouged here.

Trouble with mechanics, no matter how good their recommendation, is scheduling. ESPECIALLY at the start of the season. Any of them worth a damn will likely already be booked solid. And anyone that's not should be look upon with skepticism. Then you run into the "we'll try to fit it in" situation. Which means they won't and you'll lose several weekends waiting for work to get done. But I get absolutely no sense of satisfaction saying "I told you so."

So if you value being able to get out on the boat you'll start learning how to do stuff like this. Save the mechanics for the really hard work like yanking engines or drives.

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-Bill Kearney, 2005 348 Vista

Well if you are at the beginning of your boat owning career, the way you have to think of it is that you are at the beginning of your learning curve. If you choose to you can make this an opportunity to learn a lot (if you have the time, desire, etc). I didn't get into boat ownership till about 11 years ago with my present boat. I maintained all my vehicles and yard equipment for at least 30 years prior to that. I knew Chevy small blocks but that was it. The boat taught me about wood rot, fiberglass work, how dog clutch outdrives shift, and galvanic corrosion. I learned how to make things work and last in a salt water environment.
Modifications are never just plug n play on boats. It always takes longer than you think. Custom work and sometimes un-doing the bad past work of previous owners.

The thing no one can take away is the knowledge you gained. Yes you will spend money along the way. But thats the price of being on the water and learning these skills.

My latest acquired skill was learning how to adjust the tricky shift linkage of the OMC Cobra. Many marine mechanics won't even work on them. When you study it for a few days and round up the special tools OMC sold to adjust them, it is not hard. And it is very satisfying to do it yourself.

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88 Four Winns 200 Horizon
4.3 OMC Cobra-4bbl
2002 Walker Bay 10/2012 Suzuki 2.5
2008 Walker Bay 8

1998 Jeep Grand Cherokee 4.0/Selectrac
2007 Jeep Grand Cherokee 5.7 Hemi/Quadradrive II

You say you had oil,volts , fuel etc with the old cluster so I would say check the connector on the back that it's all the way in and or you did not (god forbid) bend the pins when you put the new one in. Pull the connector completely off and check the connector for bent pins, if none then reseat and make sure it's all the way in , it may be very tight going in so use use gentle pressure while putting in .

Hi guys!

An update for you. I had the new dash installed at a marine mechanic. It works fine. The speedo needs to be calibrated.

I set the engine setting to 8 cylinder before the dash was installed. I did not set anything else for calibration prior to install.

The speedo is reading low. It reads 10mph at 25mph GPS. It reads 25mph at 4mph GPS.
The coarse adjustment was set at 5. I sent my mechanic a photo and he thought it was pointing at 2.
I believe he made an error evaluating my picture.

He told me to turn to up one position. Which actually went from 5 to 6.
I tried this and ran the boat to check. This made the speedo dial go past 60mph and it was not responsive to changes in speed.

I learned this evening by researching Faria electronic speedo calibration. It said to start the coarse adjustment at 3 or 4.

My question is...how to i turn that dial?

Man I couldn't budge it at all with my fingers. I ended up using needle nose vice grips. They of course damaged the nice "arrow" shape of the dial. I was trying to adjust while speedo and dash were still installed. I was lying on the floor reaching up.

Thanks in advance for suggestions.

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2000 Four Winns Horizon 180 LS
2005 Toyota Tundra
Riding Mountain National Park