1969 Chris Craft Roamer Refit: Shiny Gauges Installed in the Dashboard

It’s been 2~3 years since I pulled the gauges from the helm dashboard. Kocian Instruments* did a good job making them nearly like new, and they’ve been sitting in a padded box in my basement ever since. With the starboard engine installed and the port engine up next, I need to get the gauges back in the boat and start figuring out the wiring–getting 1960s vintage SAE gauges to work with my Cummins 6CTAs (which I believe use non-SAE senders) will take some work.

• 2016 Update: Dale Kucian sold Kucian Instruments in 2014, and the company under new management is not one I can recommend. The full story from July 2016 is here: Trim Tabs & Gauges

Back in 2007, the dashboard was in rough shape but all original

2015 update: we sprayed the textured dashboard a lighter grey than the original

Wires roughly indicate position on the gauges

Nice!

Like-new Chris Craft Oil pressure, Temp, and Amp gauges

Tach pods painted with metallic black Awlgrip, to match the windshield frame

Test fit the OE tachometer

I had Kocian Instruments recalibrate the tachs from 0-5,000rpm to 4,000rpm, since the boat was originally gas powered but now has Cummins 6CTA diesels. By coincidence, the engines came with mechanical tachometer drives, so I decided to keep the tachs old school cable driven.

What a bear it was hooking up the drive cables!

Next connect the light and install the bracket

Attach the ground and tighten the bracket bolts

Then slide the tach home and tighten the screw at the back of the pod

Viewed from under the dash, it’s a mess o’ spaghetti

I now know what every single wire in there does. 🙂

Binnacle light wiring needs replacing

For such a low powered circuit, the compass light wiring sure took a beating. But the rest of the wiring looks surprisingly good, and the copper is bright.

Throttle and shifter control cables will need replacing

Three of the old Morse control cables had very smooth operation, which was surprising given their age, but one of them was pretty sticky. I could have just replaced the one, but the throttles on the injector pumps of my Cummins 6CTAs and ZF280 gear shift levers are in different locations than the old Super SeaMaster 534ci turbocharged and intercooled gas engines that were in the boat when I got it. So I’ll order a full set of new cables that are the proper length for this application.

For now, the dashboard is looking good!

Next up on our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer Refit: The Curse of the #&*%^)! Helm Windshield

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Shiny Gauges

Since we’re going through all of the effort to make this Roamer a nice boat it seemed reasonable to do something about the gauges. The boat hadn’t been used since the mid-1980s, so I was pretty sure the OE gauges weren’t worn out. But with Cummins 430 Diamonds going in as part of this refit, a few folks suggested that new gauges were the way to go. Cummins engines use oil pressure and temperature senders with a different output range than the Stewart Warner gauges that Chris Craft used. The OE tachometers are cable-driven “clickers,” and since the boat originally came with 427 Ford gas engines the RPM range was 0-5,000. The Cummins engines are wide open at 2600, so 5,000RPM gauges would be kind of goofy. There was also pitting in the chrome bezels for the OE gauges. New Cummins gauge panels are ~$800, and would plug right in to the wiring harness on the engines. But they wouldn’t look right, to my eye anyway.

All of the OE gauges appeared to be functional, with the exception of the Roamer Cruise Control (trim tab) gauge. New senders that are compatible with Stewart Warner are commonly available and relatively cheap. And this set of Cummins engines just happened to have a pretty rare factory option: cable drive outputs for tachometers. The OE wiring harness to the engine room was still in very good shape, though I’ll probably cut back the wires 2~3 inches and replace the connectors with modern ones with shrink & glue terminals. So connecting the OE wiring to the Cummins harness shouldn’t be terribly complicated. It will almost certainly be easier than rebuilding the helm station so it works with a Cummins panel or new gauges that are compatible.

Back in January 2013, I asked around about gauge restoration and heard very good things about Dale at Kocian Instruments.*  So I sent the sent the original Chris Craft gauges off to Dale for refurbishing. Not surprisingly, the instrument shop was busy and my gauges fell into the queue; they’d be done sometime in June-July.  Not a problem, I thought, since by then the mechanic would have the engines in.

It turns out that the mechanic made lots of promises he didn’t keep. The engines were originally contracted to be installed by September 2012, then November 2012. In March, he even promised he would take a plasma cutter to his nutsack if he didn’t get them installed by April 2013.  In spite of the nutsack promise, the engines weren’t in by April or even by July 2013 when I finally fired him. Near as I can tell, the plasma cutter never went near the mechanic’s nutsack, but I heard recently that he’s been hit with a devastating case of hemorrhoids or something like it. The goddess of the seas once again demonstrates that she loves old Chris Crafts and turns her vengeance on those who do them wrong…

Anyway, last weekend a box arrived from Kocian — right on schedule. Cost-wise, the restoration was more than new Cummins panels would have been. But since everything fits into existing holes in the helm station, I won’t spend time or money adapting new bits to an old boat. And the OE gauges are just so darned pretty…

• 2016 Update: Dale Kucian sold Kucian Instruments in 2014, and the company under new management is not one I can recommend. The full story from July 2016 is here: Trim Tabs & Gauges

SHA-WING!!! 🙂

OE tachometers recalibrated to 4,000 RPM

Chris Craft used the same basic tachometer for their diesel and gas-powered motoryachts. The mechanisms inside just have a different gear ratio. I knew this from my experience with the Detroit Diesel 6-71n-powered 1967 Chris Craft Constellation with 2350RPM WOT that I used to own. So after talking it over with Dale, he just swapped out my mechanisms for a set from a diesel boat, yielding a set of 4,000RPM tachs. 🙂

I’ll need to adapt the engine harness to accommodate a shunt, which is required for the Stewart Warner Amperes gauges. But I’ve still got the old ones.

OK…enough staring at the shiny bits. I took the week off work because we got a bit of a weather window, with temps less than 90* all week. Back to the boat.

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Aft enclosure windows