Electronic Controls

[Alan Wheeler]

Interestingly, they have done plenty of "man made" lightening tests to vehicles with electronics galore. And all electronics have survived. I think I would have greater respect for the God bolt than that Man bolt though.:-)

[Thanna5]

I've got Morse controls on 2 helm 42' powercat. At 2 years of service (450 hrs), I had a failure on 1 side.....hence no engine. I discovered that the CPU is very easy to trouble shoot and/or reprogram, and that Morse tells users not to return the actuator units because the have essentially zero failures. The problems are almost always related to binding in the cable(old school) portion, and almost always binding or obstructed cables. The beauty of the system, I discovered after a single engine return from the Bahamas, is that you can operate the actuator by hand with a wrench(supplied at each actuator) and get home. Having an operators manual would help. This can be downloaded from the Teleflex website. Maybe this helps?

[cat man do]

Thanks for that Thanna5, still doesn't really help me greatly as it's really the $$$ that are scaring me off at the moment.

The Prowler Cub....... Is that a Schionning design, and how does it go.

Dave

[NoTies]

I've had some bad experience with morse electronic controls due to moisture ingress into the wiring loom. This was on a 100' work catamaran and was well protected from to worst of the elements. They behaved a little unpredictably and the fault diagnosis code that came up was always useless ("fault in wiring loom" or something).
As an aside, the $2.5 million gin palace I mentioned in another thread here wouldn't have gone on the bricks if it had cable control instead of electronic. It was an operator error that caused the mishap but manual control of the engines would have enabled him to keep out of trouble.

[cat man do]

Originally Posted by pwederell

I've had some bad experience with morse electronic controls due to moisture ingress into the wiring loom. This was on a 100' work catamaran and was well protected from to worst of the elements. They behaved a little unpredictably and the fault diagnosis code that came up was always useless ("fault in wiring loom" or something).
As an aside, the $2.5 million gin palace I mentioned in another thread here wouldn't have gone on the bricks if it had cable control instead of electronic. It was an operator error that caused the mishap but manual control of the engines would have enabled him to keep out of trouble.

And seeing as my control's are going to be on the flybridge and exposed, they will get wet and could well suffer worse moisture ingress than the ones mentioned above.

Sound's like "Old Faithfull" cables are winning on this one.


Dave

[Alan Wheeler]

Maunual hydraulic controll would be the way to go for long runs. Cable gets to hard to move if it is a very long run.
As for electronics, I can't see how they could or would not be totaly water poof. It seems that a seriouse design flaw must be evident if moisture can get into sensitive areas. The ability to totaly exclude moisture is available, so I am surprised it isn't done on something so seriouse as controll of a vessel. Especially when in the US, a failure could mean a Lawsuit.

[hellosailor]

Wheels-
"The ability to totaly exclude moisture is available, so I am surprised it isn't done on something so seriouse as controll of a vessel."
Our telcos in the US are the masters of that, keeping cable bundles dry even when they are submerged in the ground. BUT. Even with their best technology, things fail. So far the only real way they've found is to run a pressurized sleeve with positive air pressure (actually they use tanks of liquid nitrogen) to force out moisture and dry out the bundles, but I don't think many boat owners would want to go that route.<G>
Anything else just means the "waterproofing" will keep moisture IN as well as it keeps it out, and everything else has some failure mode. Even the insulation on wires may be subject to a pinprick or rub that leaves an opportunity.
I agree that serious efforts can be made, but I think "no wires, no wiring problems" is an attractive concept.<G>

[cat man do]

Originally Posted by hellosailor

Wheels-
Anything else just means the "waterproofing" will keep moisture IN as well as it keeps it out, and everything else has some failure mode. <G>

Now this I have seen on lots of gear.

[Amgine]

I'm about the only person I've ever known who has had a Morse cable "failure". Approaching the lift to haul out, I went to shift into reverse, mostly to use the prop walk to get lined up just right, and it wouldn't shift back from neutral. So I gave it a yank, and the lever went back but no reverse, just neutral. So I eased it gently forward and I felt it catch, just barely, and into forward at dead slow, and then it slipped and was clearly no longer attached to anything.

I flipped open the cockpit locker and saw the cable had caught on the sail bag, and my yank had bent the copper clip detaching it from the cable. Not having time to do anything else, I managed the engine by pulling/pushing on the cable itself. Once in the lift I bent the clip back into shape, reattached the cable, and removed two useless sailbags from the boat never to return again.

And both my inboard boats have had hand cranks. I just about killed myself proving I *could* start the 4hp Petter AC1W. I'm not even thinking about trying it on the Yanmar 1GM. (Yah, obviously I'm a power-hungry motorsailor...)

[Alan Wheeler]

Yeah I have had a morse cable failure. Two infact with a third potential that wasn't mine. First failure was in a power boat I used to have. The stearing cable broke. Thats the actual cable it's self. The second was on my present yacht. Coming into a difficult navigation area, I lost the throttle. The engine went to idle and I was loosing ground due to the strong current. I quickly found the clevis pin had dropped out. A quick re-attachment which always proves to be twice as time consuming when in a rush, and I was back out of danger.
The last one was just a week ago. a friend just brought a Launch. They had just come back in from his first "new owner" test run. I was looking over the engine for him and spyed the gear linkage had come out. He had already had an "interesting" trial at birthing the boat for the first time, but had managed to get it in. The very last use of the cable, placing it in neutral, had caused the linkage to part company. If it was a couple of use points earlier, it could have been a very "interesting" birthage indeed. Yikes! So I guess the little mechanical gremlin was sleeping that day. Either that, or he is working on a even bigger and better surprise for later on.:-(

[AnchorageGuy]

Installing the latest and greatest is my existence. Just finished installing twin CAT's with all electronic controls and yes the engines are all electronically controlled from the shifter to the fuel adjustments. The install was a nightmare since CAT did not even know how they should be installed. The issues are still ongoing with the customer and CAT regarding problems. I have installed Micro Commanders when they were the newest thing going. Forget lightening, if you loose battery power or a connection corrodes or you get a power surge or short in the system you are dead in the water. We install a separate battery bank at thye bridge to do nothing but run the engine electronics just for this reason and that is still no guarantee. as long as the bank account is stuffed, the sellers are handy and the towing insurance is paid up then it is a great product. But then what is wrong with the mechanical option that costs soooo much less and yes might break but probably won't and then what are the odds of the throttle AND shift cable going at the same time?

[Amgine]

And notice, too, when the rare failure of a morse cable *does* happen, you can probably reach down and manage the cable or the linkage manually. No fuss, no muss, because you *can* do it. Not always possible with electric systems.

Of course, it does help to avoid doing anything fast which will rely on the engine anyway. (and a reminder to self, if it isn't operating the way it should, don't apply more force! find out why!)

[Alan Wheeler]

Yeah but electronic controll is done in many other mission critical machines these days. You don't see aircraft dropping out of the sky............much. cars are all electronic controlled now and with the millions out there, have an electronic fault is actually rare.
As long as it is all installed correctly, the electronics of today are leaps ahead from stuff even only 5yrs ago. And now CAT NMEA2000 is out, I think we will see a reasonably robust system. Although in saying that, the plugs for CAT are rated as only splash proof. I would be going for an emersion proof one if it was me designing it.

[hellosailor]

Wheels-
"Yeah but electronic controll is done in many other mission critical machines these days. You don't see aircraft dropping out of the sky............much. cars are all electronic controlled now and with the millions out there, have an electronic fault is actually rare."

Well, the basic car computer systems designs in the US came from folks like Delco and Motorola while they were looking for ways to use the technology they'd just finished using for the moon landings. That kind of development and testing--and attitude--just isn't common THESE days. Aircraft? Same same, the systems are designed as "mission critical" with multiple redundancies, nothing like your single-lowest-parts-count in a boat. In fact, today many consumer electronics are engineered and then DE-engineered by a second team who are told to "remove as much as you can to lower the production costs, until it breaks."

Neither our car computers or or aircraft are built that way. I suspect marine electronics might be.

And, IIRC we do sometimes see aircraft dropping out of the sky. What was that one that splashed about five years ago off Newfoundland? Final cause of the crash was an electrical overload in the ENTERTAINMENT SYSTEMS which resulted in a smoke condition. That's the current state of the art in mission critical engineering.

Electronics in cars? Yeah, been promised for a long time. Not a lot that's been implemented in the critical systems, aside from electronic transmission controls (hoo boy, have they created failures) and what is it, a Lexus that self-parks now? I figure that one will be in production until the first tyke gets run over and someone blames it on the car. Audi practically lost their US market for 5-10 years after "pedal confusion" got laid off on mystery acceleration. Ford-Lincoln-Mercury has bought a lot of recalls over simple ignition and cruise control systems that made the news here several times--after setting cars, trucks, and homes on fire.

I'm surprised the remaining engineers haven't figured out a way to make all the #2 pencils explode on the same day, removing those damned accountants from the equation. (Hey, we can always hope.<G>)

[Alan Wheeler]

We have some very sophisticated electronic controlled vehicles here in NZ that are very robust. Holden from Oz, several top names from europe and many from Japan. Car computers do everything now and are very robust.
Machinery in industry is all computer controlled and runs flawlessly. I think you guy's are being too hard on electronics in boats. Especially modern stuff. How many GPS units go legs up these days. Sure you will always get a few, but the way the stuff is made is way in advance of only a few years back. When it comes to controlling a boat, electronic is no worse than mechanical in every aspect of build quality, installation quality and longevity. You get good and bad in all three. The makers that do it right build the reputation of being such. I doubt many are going to want a mega dollar vessel run up on rocks because they dumbed down a design to make it cheap. Plus, the real big craft today, the big commercial shipping vessels all use electronics to controll every aspect of movement these days. Long gone are the days of "ringing on" a ships speed and direction. Long gone are the big ships wheel. It's just a console with a joy stick now.