1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Making a Custom Instrument Panel

So…I made an instrument panel for the helm dashboard.

I like the look of the original Chris Craft helm gauges, which is why I had them all restored to like-new condition. But I also bought some ISSPRO turbocator gauges, which display boost and exhaust temperature, one for each engine. These come highly recommended by Tony Athens over at Seaboard Marine. I had a grand plan to make housings for the turbocators similar to my original tachometer housings. But then I decided I wanted drive gear oil pressure gauges, too. So I had to come up with something that would look right on the boat and could house four new gauges.

What I finally came up with will probably seem absolutely nuts at first. But I think it turned out pretty nice.

So, there’s this big rectangular hole somebody cut in the boat’s dashboard

I have no idea what went there. Pictures of the helm from when we first started this refit don’t show this area in detail, but what pictures there are make it look like this was just an open hole. So covering this rectangular eyesore would be a good thing.

Step One for the new instrument panel: I cut a rectangular piece of 1/8″ aluminum plate I had laying around

Way back at the beginning of this refit, I went to the Dania, Florida, marine flea market and bought a bunch of stuff on the cheap, including three new aluminum fuel and holding tanks. I ended up installing one tank under the galley floor, and that’s my forward 125 gallon fuel tank. I use another 65 gallon tank to schlep off-road diesel back home for our boiler and also to fuel up the boat. The third tank was in my way and I was keen on learning how to TIG weld, so one day I took a Skilsaw to it and turned it back into flat plates. Even after I was done learnig the basics for how to TIG weld aluminum, I still had a lot of 1/8″ plate left over.

My plan is to turn some flat aluminum plates into a nifty little instrument cluster.

After squaring the plate up on the track saw, I split it in half on the table saw

The plate made it crystal clear that it didn’t appreciate being demoted from tank status

Back at the garage, I jury rigged a pipe bender into a plate bender

That’s a 1″ bronze TEE pipe fitting sitting on top of the hydraulic ram. I want nice, smooth curves on this plate.

This isn’t how this machine is supposed to be used, by the way

The plate is too wide to fit in the bender in the normal orientation, 90° off of how I did it.

It works!

I pumped the ram up until the bronze TEE put a bend in the plate, then backed it off and moved the plate forward a bit. Then repeat, repeat, and repeat.

You can see the curved plate on the far side of the bender

Once I got the curve done on one end of the plate, I flipped it around and put a curve on the other end.

Once that was done, I traced the curve on another plate

Which I then cut on my Harbor Freight 4×6 bandsaw

Nice!

Turbocator fits just inside this roll of tape

So I traced two circles with it

Stewart Warner gauges were also commonly found on Chris Crafts

SW 82136 has the range needed for the ZF gears that came with my Cummins 6CTAs. I traced two circles for the gear drive gauges, then drilled pilot holes and cut the circles with my jigsaw. I find with aluminum it’s best to use a 14 tooth hardwood blade than any of the finer toothed metal-cutting blades. The metal-cutting blades just load up with aluminum and stop cutting.

The face plate and top are close to being ready to weld

First, I sanded the face plate and hit it with the buffing wheel.

That holding tank scrap aluminum cleaned up nice!

Next, I fired up my AlphaTIG, turned on my new TIG torch liquid cooler, and did my best not to screw up the parts too badly while welding them.

My signature pile o’ dimes, nickels, and quarters TIG bead

In retrospect, I should have waited to cut the holes until after all the welding was done. Where the plate was narrowest between the edge and the holes, it was getting heat soaked really fast.

Test fit on the boat…I think that looks marvelous

But it’s a bit too upright. I want to remove some material so the top is at an angle similar to the tachometer housings.

The dashboard isn’t flat; the right side of the panel  was floating entirely free above the grey dashboard

I marked a line with a fine Sharpie and used a grinder with a 120 grit flap disk to slowly remove material

Nice!

Back at the garage, I traced and cut the back panel

That’ll do

I also cut two small panels that tie the face plate to the back panel. I drilled and tapped holes in them so I can firmly attach the instrument panel to the dashboard. After welding it all together, I got an idea.

The SW gear pressure gauge kit is excellent, but I’ll use red LEDs instead of incandescent bulbs

This Roamer came with red dash lighting. Chris Craft used incandescent bulbs coated with transparent red paint that flakes off over time. I like the red lighting effect but not the cumulative amps consumed by conventional bulbs. So I bought a bag of 20 BA9S red LEDs for $7 on ebay.

So there I was, with my instrument panel nearly done and a bag of LEDs…and I started thinking…

I’ve mentioned before that my first big boat was a 1967 Chris Craft Constellation 52, a big mahogany boat that I really enjoyed. One of the upgrades I did on that boat was to install bilge pump telltale lights, so I could see from the helm if pumps were coming on while we were under way. On a wooden boat, that’s very useful information to have. And even though this Roamer is a metal boat with zero chance of a seam or plank coming loose while cruising about, I have a preference for knowing.

I measured the LEDs

25/64″ drill bit will just about do it

That’s a perfect friction fit.

Drilling more holes in my pretty, new instrument panel

I LIKE IT!!!

Next, I soldered wires to the LED bases

Positive to the center pin, negative to the round base.

Then I applied several coats of Liquid Tape to insulate the bases

Four coats of Liquid Tape should suffice

Next, I sanded the housing with 400 grit wet sandpaper

A coarse buffing wheel with brown emery rouge brought out a shine

Fine buffing wheel with Diamond White rouge made it sparkle

Final assembly begins

I realized the housing is too tight for easy installation of gauges if it’s attached to the dashboard. So I decided to make it a plug & play component, with all of the wiring and boost tubing attached inside the housing, with a terminal block and boost tubing adapters under the dashboard to attach to.

Wiring labels are handy

All of the original Chris Craft wiring labels are falling off, so I came up with a method (as, it turns out, have many thousands of other people) for making labels more permanent.

After applying the label, cover it with clear, adhesive-backed shrink tubing

And hit it with a heat gun

That label will still be there in 50 years, guaranteed.

Gauges secured, wires labeled, and connections shrunk

Confirm lighting, bilge pump telltales, and electric gauges work

The Turbocators don’t require 12vdc because they get their power from the pyrometers that convert heat to electricity at the turbo outlets. I tested the boost gauges with compressed air. And the gear pressure gauges cycled properly when I applied 12vdc and ground/no ground to the sender wire.

Booyah.

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Installing the Custom Instrument Panel

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: The Fuel System

With the raw water exhaust showerheads finally hooked up, I got busy on the next mission-critical system: fuel.

I had new tanks built back in 2013, and I made some custom stainless steel fill tubes in 2016 connecting the pretty OEM chromed bronze Chris Craft fuel fills to the new 420-gallon tank (two 210-gal tanks welded into one unit) in the aft stateroom. Diesel was cheap back then, so I filled the tanks, and in 2014 I partially installed some 1/2″ and 3/8″ stainless tubing from the fuel tank to the engine room bulkhead.

The last bit of work I did on the fuel system was installing the wiring and cutting a hole in that gorgeous helm radio box for the fuel gauge. I had to install the wiring because once the Whisper Wall headliner was installed on the aft deck, wiring would become much more challenging. And I bought a brand new Sunpro classic fuel gauge because…well…Sunpro is an old school American company, and the gauge kinda looks like a classic gauge.

So a lot of the groundwork has been done. I just need to connect lots of bits and pieces together. How long could that take?

On Day One working on the fuel system, I finished wiring the fuel level senders then hooked up the brand new (4 years ago) Sunpro fuel gauge.

12vdc negative wired to both fuel tank senders

I’m being very careful to use isolated grounds everywhere on this boat. I’ve eliminated all “chassis ground” systems on this boat, like the ones you might see on older cars. I want no electric currents flowing through the metal hull.

Fuel sender wiring that’s connected to the Sunpro gauge in the helm radio box came next

Once the wires were connected, I flipped the fuel gauge switch in the helm radio box first to the port tank, then to starboard, but the needle only wiggled a bit on the port side. It didn’t move at all on the starboard. When I tried it the second time, it didn’t even wiggle on the port side.

I checked resistance at the fuel level senders, but they had very different values. This was very strange. Everything was new/unused, but it wasn’t working.

A while back I was listening in on a conversation two diesel mechanics were having about fuel tanks. One of them said that, unlike gas, diesel fuel tanks should have submerged fuel returns so the fuel in the tank doesn’t get aerated by returning fuel. I told the manufacturer in 2013 that my tanks were for diesels (120hp Ford Lehmans, AKA The Wrong Ones), so I assumed they made them properly. But since I was having trouble with my fuel gauge I decided to pull the port return fitting from the tank and see what I’ve got.

I found two things: 1) the port return line bung ended at the top of the tank. There was no tube going to the bottom. And 2) somebody had stolen around 180 gallons of diesel from my port tank.

sonova….

That’s about a grand worth of go-juice at current FJB prices.

3/8″ main propulsion return fitting removed from the port fuel tank…no tube goes to the bottom

On the up-side, I had two spare pickup tubes that fit the 3/8″ NPT return bungs in the tank. Unfortunately, they had 1/4″ NPT ports, and all of the fuel system plumbing fittings I bought were either 3/8″ NPT or 1/2″.

It’s always something.

Spare pickup tubes will work as submerged returns

Main propulsion submerged return fuel lines trimmed for these tanks

I’m waiting for some 1/4″ NPT to 3/8″ NPT adapters to show up so I can finish connecting the fuel return lines to the tank. Meanwhile, I ordered a New Old Stock Stewart Warner fuel gauge to replace the Chinese junk Sunpro gauge that was new but also Dead On Arrival. When the new SW gauge arrived, I was surprised by its heft.

Treacherous “Made in China” Sunpro gauge weighs in at a measley 2.6 oz

Hefty “Made in America” NOS Stewart Warner fuel gauge weighs in at 4.8 oz

Once installed, it was clear that the fuel gauge problem was “Made in China.”

SW fuel gauge installed in the helm radio box, with the selector switch in the neutral (off) position

Switched to the starboard side, gauge accurately reads nearly full

Switched to the port tank, the gauge accurately reflects that rat bastard thieves stole ~180 gallons of fuel

I should note that the bottom of the fuel tank is angled to match the hull, so it’s deeper at the forward end where the pickups and fuel level senders are located. So that ‘slightly less than half a tank’ reading should be interpreted as ‘less than 1/4 tank.’

With the fuel gauge finally reading properly, I stuffed the sender wires into the wire loom under the aft stateroom floor and called it a day.

Should have run the fuel sender wires in the aft stateroom loom before securing it all with cable clamps

Running the sender wire in the aft stateroom cable loom

“Order of operations” is a term I’ve learned a lot about on this refit. I don’t think I did a bad job of it, given that this is my first and only major refit. But in retrospect, I wish I’d run all of the wiring and fuel distribution lines before I installed the engines and floors. Still…it’s better to retrofit while the refit is ongoing than to try and retrofit after the refit is done.

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: On-Engine Fuel Hoses

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