1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Installing the Custom Instrument Panel

While I was making my custom instrument panel for the Turbocator and marine gear oil pressure gauges, I also installed the senders on the transmissions and ran the wiring for the gauge circuits and tubing for the boost gauge.

VDO 360 406 oil pressure sender has the 0-400 psi range my Stewart Warner gauge needs

I initially thought I’d use VDO gauges, but they don’t make anything that looks even remotely period correct for this boat. Stewart Warner was an OEM supplier to Chris Craft, and their 82136 gauge looks right on the dashboard, but SW doesn’t seem to make a sender for it. So I ended up going with VDO senders.

The sender goes in the 1/8″ NPT hole toward the rear of the ZF gear top plate

I used a long combination wrench to add leverage to the allen wrench to remove the plug

A dab of Gasoila sealant on the threads

Next I ran the wires from the helm to the gears

I wish I’d been thinking this far ahead when I installed Throttle Cables & Accusync Engine Synchronizer. I organized and cleaned up the wiring that runs in the chase from the engine room to the helm, replacing the original wire looms with new. That was the perfect time to install these cables. Ah well, too late now. I’ll just wire-tie them to the new looms.

Senders installed

One downside of the VDO sender is that, unlike Stewart Warner and Isspro, they don’t mark their terminals. These senders are ‘floating ground,’ which means ground comes through one of the wires rather than through the 1/8″ NPT threaded connection to the gear. But they don’t mark which terminal is ground or signal.

After doing some searching around, I believe I got it right

The only distinct feature of these otherwise round senders is that raised section you can see in the picture above. If my source was right, the terminal to the left is ground and signal is to the right. If the gauge doesn’t work when I next test-fire the engines, swapping the connections at the senders is simple.

Since I was already in there, I next added labels to the 12v wires on the helm chase terminal blocks. I still haven’t identified all of the wires. There are a few that simply dead-end in the engine room or are cut off where they exited or entered the OEM wire looms. It was very time consuming tracing the wires, but having intuitive labels on them is a lot better than Chris Craft’s numbering scheme.

OEM label (white number wrap) was coming off and not intuitive at all (8 = engine temp gauge/sender)

After applying the label and re-coiling the OEM one, I covered them with clear shrink tube

Then I hit it with the heat gun and repeated the process for all circuits I’d identified

Port side done

Starboard side done

Wires for the new gauges got labeled next

I mentioned in my last article about Chris Craft’s use of red instrument lighting on this boat, and my decision to go with red LEDs instead.

OEM red-painted incandescent bulbs on the left, LEDs on the right

Each incandescent bulb consumes .23 amps

There are 16 instrument and dashboard bulbs, for a total of 3.7 amps.

Each LED consumes .017 amps

So swapping out all of the original bulbs to LEDs reduces energy consumption for dash lights to the equivalent of roughly one incandescent bulb. And for $7 on ebay for a bag of 20, that’s hard to beat.

So with all of the wiring done and connections made, I went to the helm and turned the keys on.

With the port ignition switch turned to the RUN position, the ZF gear oil pressure needle returned to zero

That’s exactly what it should do, so I believe I got the sender connections right.

Starboard key on, with fwd and aft bilge pumps turned on manually

The starboard gear oil gauge needle also dropped to zero, and both bilge pump telltale LEDs worked as I’d hoped they would.

I didn’t test fire the engines yet because I’ve got some leaks I need to deal with first.

OH! And for those wondering why I welded the instrument panel myself, when I’m clearly not a pro…I present for your consideration the work of a typical, local $150/hr TIG welder in my neck of the woods:

$150/hr…the welds were so ugly, he hit them with a die grinder

That said, my work in the helm chase and dashboard is done for now. Time to button it up.

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Bottom Paint