I stepped my game up last year and bought a used bigger boat with twin engines. It was a great price and I could not pass it up. The boat was a foreclosure sale on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. I found it on the website www.labmarineinc.com. I purchased my Trophy 5 years ago from this company and it was great experience too. I recommend taking a look.
With a new boat you need to figure out how it operates and how much fuel it will burn. On normal rock fishing trips I would motor 30 miles to fish, troll all day and return to my port on around 50 gallons of fuel. The fuel tank holds 200 gallons so I am not too concerned with running out. I like to keep my tanks 1/2 to full of fuel. I quickly found out offshore is very different, you are fighting waves ever 5 – 10 seconds and sometimes very windy conditions. This can throw a curve ball at your fuel calculation. So I purchased a gauge called “Twinscan” from a company called Floscan Instrument. Co. Inc The gauge is very simple with two indicators needles that displays how many gallons per hour each engine is consuming. The gauge will also display total of fuel consumed so you should have a very accurate measurement of fuel in your tank.
The Twinscan unit ships with a gauge and two sensors. Each sensor is installed on the fuel line to each engine. My engine is 2 stroke so I do not have a return fuel line. You need to supply the 3 wires per sensor to connect the sensor to the gauge. I purchased triplex from the boat store so each sensor has one bundle of wires. The colors match up except the red wire is connected to the green inside the triplex.
Installation is very simple install the cables and connect the sensor s with some position requirements. The install kit has all the connectors and heat shrink tubing you need to connect the gauge. Last connect the power wires, ignition wires (2) and a reset switch for your total gallons display.
I did experience a problem not with the installation but inspecting the fuel line I found the inside part of the line was separated and cracking. This looks like a huge fuel delivery problem so I replaced the entire fuel line.
We tested the install and everything worked fine. I want to launch the boat soon so I will post my fuel data.
