Gas Gauge on new Prostars?

[LoopSki]

Anyone else experiencing a faulty gas gauge reading on the new prostars ?

I've heard around the dock this is a common problem and not worth getting it looked at . First time I noticed it was on a public lake when we were camping . Boat was full when I brought it there. Read emptied the next morning then I thought someone had just siphoned it out from the public dock . Got the boat home and put it in our lake gas gauge went right up to full again . Now it seems to be running on empty right around a quarter tank reading. Last weekend on the Delta I had to be real careful . The labyrinth of sloughs in rivers with the pretty good current . I gave it about a three hour engine time before rushing to fill it up again . Put on about 10 hours on the motor and likely never ran out to empty.

At home it's not a big deal , however a bit worry some out on public water. Anyone know what the actual engine time per tank should be or gph. ?

[kurt]

@LoopSki about 4 hrs on the hr meter

 

[9400]

Mastercraft does seem to be gas gauge challenged.

[ThomasAlive]

We have two Prostars and both of them have gas gauge issues. Our 2017 having this issue is quite frustrating. We keep a journals in the glove box with the # of engine hours from last full tank :/

[keithh2oskier]

Are you able to view the gas tank? On our much older prostars or my nautique I can move one of the carpeted barriers and just peak at the gas tank. Always a nice quick way to check to see if you have fuel.

[ThomasAlive]

I'm not sure what our gallons per hour on the new Prostar is. We get around 3.2 - 3.6 gallons per hour on our older Prostar which has a 32 gallon tank. We slalom and trick, but mostly trick (please don't kick me off this forum).

[LoopSki]

Unfortunately you can't see through the gas tank. The color of the plastic is too dark to see the level. At least with my eyes

[MISkier]

I drove one in a tournament on Tuesday. Gauge read empty.

[Chef23]

I have never had a boat that didn't have gas gauge issues.

[Roger]

@jrs has a 16 that had this issue and I have a 16 that had the issue. It would read fine until somewhere under a half tank, it would show full again. John worked with Mastercraft on this and they changed some material in the pickup which seemed to fix the issue. Mine has been fine since the change and his was for a couple of Months at least. His is now back to showing full when it's not. Mine is still working correctly at this time.

[LoopSki]

Sounds like it common issue and I'll just deal with. Love the boat so much I can overlook it. I'll just keep a mental log to keep track. 5 gals should run close to an hour.

[skinut]

Blows my mind that these are 70K boats and they can't figure out how to make a gas gauge work. Seriously, it's not rocket science.

[ozski]

My 2005 196 gauge works perfectly as did the one on my 2003 LXi so my assumption was that this problem had been buried in the past.. I've been looking at the new Prostar so this is disappointing to hear. I hope there is a simple reliable fix.

[Horton]

Almost every boat I've ever used has some sort of gas gauge malfunction

[joel_fuel_sndr_mfr]

This is Joel, an engineer at Centroid Products. We make fuel senders for Mastercraft. I'll give some background info and them hopefully do some science with y'all to figure out what's up.

 

We make fuel senders that measure capacitance between their two concentric tubes. The more fuel there is between the tubes, as opposed to air, the more capacitance and the higher the reading. There's a microcontroller in the sender's head to convert the capacitance into a Send voltage for the gauge. The selling point is no moving parts in the sender. Plus the microcontroller lets us do averaging of the output to smooth out chop, and MC has us doing 12 seconds of averaging.

 

Ethanol in gasoline complicates things for measuring capacitance, though. Gasoline with 10% ethanol has twice the capacitance(!) of gasoline without ethanol, and the percent can be anywhere between 0-10%. To correct for this there is a Full Detection stinger in the top couple inches of the sender to detect when the sender has been powered up with a newly filled tank and correct the Full cal if needed. A problem John Shealy and Roger 'Crazy Baller' had in the water skiing environment (fast fuel use, frequent power cycling) was the FD stinger not draining quickly enough, so these days we use one with teflon jacket.

 

I dont know what's the best way to get information from y'all. Normally I do tech support by email. But there's something to be said for everybody reading the thread to see each other's details and my answers. Should I start with some generic questions about your installations and problems that folks can post answers to?________

 

Joel

[LoopSki]

Well mine today did this today . Launched boat into our lake. Typical tournament waterski lake. Parked at my dock. Gauge read 1/4 tank. Added about 2 gallons. Upon boat restart , gauge went straight to full . Pulled one set and still reading full.

[joel_fuel_sndr_mfr]

LoopSki:

 

Was the original 1/4 reading believable?________ I ask because it will give me an idea of how close to the FD stinger the fuel was.

 

I remember from John's boat that the sender is viewable by looking under the cushion of one of the bench seats. Are you able to find the label date (mm/yy) or give me a photo of the label?_______. That will let me see whether the sender has the teflon jacket on the FD stinger.

 

Joel

[TFIN]

Bad news: yea we have seen more gas gauges be faulty then we'd like.

 

Good news: MasterCraft 5 Year Warranty.

This covers and literally everything. Contact your dealer they will swap it out. Strangely, with the ones I have encountered the swap out has been accurate and seems to be lasting.

[skiinxs]

@joel_fuel_sndr_mfr No offense, but this sounds like a terribly complicated and error prone solution to a really simple problem. If the science (and reliability / repeatability of the components) can't deliver a stable and reliable solution, then it is merely an engineer's wet dream. In today's world customers pay a lot of money and expect (rightfully so) for things to work correctly every time. If a solution is more complicated and costs more, that could be ok if the result is an improvement over a cheaper and less complicated solution. Cost / benefit analysis. It sounds to me like the customers perceived value does not support the complicated, unreliable solution, even if there was no increased cost over a simple float swinging on an arm attached to a mechanical variable resistor.

[LoopSki]

Lol it does sound complex. I thought it was a stick with a float in there.

[gregy]

I'm impressed with quick from Joel. BOS is awesome.

[skibug]

We have a 2015, gas gauge sucks!! As an engineer, I agree with @skiinxs way too complicated. K.I.S.S. should be the applied principle. Also, some feedback to MC (and all the manufacturers) on the gas tanks....make them transparent enough to see the gas level visually or put a clear window in it somewhere.

[9400]

How about a sight tube that can be reasonably accessible?

[Jordan]

And....I've never had a gas guage problem I a car....just sayin'

[joel_fuel_sndr_mfr]

We've been building them since the late 1990s. And as I always say to folks, we sell tens of thousands a year, and are a small company, so if we were having many problems I'd never have time to email (or post).

 

My goal is to work with those having problems. The Shealy/LoopSki symptom would be to power up and get a false Full reading after having gotten a sensible reading of 1/2 or lower on the previous session. That's the false Full Detection, and we can trade you a sender with the modern teflon-jacketed FD wire if I can get a photo of the current sender's label and your address. On John's boat the sender could be accessed by lifting a passenger-side bench seat cushion. The sender's head looks like a hockey puck and there's a connector with red/wht/blk wires. Or if it's easier you can do it through Mastercraft. A surprise I found on John's boat-- when the tank is full the fuel is right up against the sender head, so you'd want to be down to say 3/4 tank or less.

 

Joel

[Jordan]

You could only fill the tank 3/4 full? That sounds like something went wrong in the design stage. Perhaps when Mastercraft had the tank designed or maybe it's just a bad interface between the design of the tank and the design of the sender.

Surely there is a better solution than not being able to fill up .

[joel_fuel_sndr_mfr]

Jordan:

 

This is Joel, the engineer from the sender mfr.

 

I meant that if John and I tried to swap senders with a full tank, fuel would have come out the sender hole because with a full tank fuel was against the head of the sender. So I suggested running down to, say, 3/4 before swapping a sender.

 

Folks with fuel reading problems can email me a joel@centroidproducts unless they prefer to work through Mastercraft. I think email may be easier than corresponding on a forum because a forum includes philosophizing, and that makes it easier for me to accidently miss people's individual reading problems.

 

Float senders are very inexpensive. I think it's safe to say that all manufacturers would use them if they hadnt had problems. And even if there were 10% problems (which would be a lot), 90% of folks would say "always worked for me". Of course the FloatSenderS*ck forum would disagree.

 

Joel

[Texas6]

@joel_fuel_sndr_mfr - Joel e-mail sent. Allow me to say I'm thoroughly impressed by your willingness to speak up here. That takes guts and commitment

[Razorskier1]

They just don't work. I pour six gallons every time I ski. Every few sets I pour 12. Guage is useless

[dave2ball]

I have been in many prostars over the years and every one has had multi has gauge issues. Even just after replacing them. It seems to be MC MO. I have had many Nautique's through out the years and I can't remember have a gas gauge issue.

 

 

 

[Horton]

@dave2ball spoken like an unbiased Nautique owner.

[sodbuster88]

@joel_fuel_sndr_mfr I'm also impressed with your willingness to engage the end user / customer rather than work through MC, your customer. It's pretty brave dude. However, shouldn't MC be doing some fundamental requirements adjustments....might lead them to a different technology? So this is more a question directed right back to MC.....Theoretically, why not remove the variable / unknown that the type of fluid (ethenol levels in gas for example) has on sender capacitance....that also requires signal conditioning and s/w? Why not use two basic, inexpensive but reliable resistive tube senders, one each side of tank and average them at the ECM with some dampening?

[MISkier]

I did have a gauge issue on my 2000 MC 205, but none on my 2009 Malibu LX. The MC with the issue on Tuesday night was the first I have experienced other than my own boat. That applies to several 197s and several of the new Prostar, plus a few mid 90s Prostars. Don't recall any Nautique issues, but I don't drive many. No Malibu issues across several LX and TXi models/years.

[UWSkier]

Malibu gauges tend to work, they're just wildly inaccurate historically. @mlange wrote up a great fix for this years ago. Wonder if something similar would work on the MC units.

 

Replace an inaccurate fuel sender

[dave2ball]

@Horton that is really the only thing I can say negative about the prostars.

[Horton]

@dave2ball fair enough.

[markchilcutt]

Bought our 14 used and had problems with the gauge. MC dealer replaced it no questions asked. I have however noticed it is tempormental at times seems like it goes to empty after getting below a half tank. Guess I haven't worried about it much. Guess I also haven't paid much attention to it. Put 5 gallons in and pull six sets then repeat.

[Bulldog]

I wonder if the 100K+ wake/surf boats have the same issues? Out on an open lake the gas gauge seems way more important than on a private ski site... for the price we pay for any boat they should ALWAYS work!

[mlange]

My '16 TXi sucks, too. I've been considering replacing it w/ a regular old float sender like what @UWSkier referenced above. When I did that and calibrated it... it was dead on. So relieving to have a fuel gauge that actually works.

 

Like others... I'm blown away by the lack of accurate gauges in boats. Is the tech in cars where it's within what I'm guessing is a gallon or two really that difficult to bring to boats?

 

[oldjeep]

@Bulldog - while not a 100k boat, my vtx fuel gauge is very accurate. Tank size, shape and location is different in a v Drive and we tend to fill them rather than running 1/4 tank. Mine is 38 gallons, the big boats can get as big as 100.

[swc5150]

Are these reading correctly from hour 1, or does an issue develop? Mine seems to be reading fine (typical boat anyway), but we only have 13 hours on it.

[jjackkrash]

So I can add this to my long list of problems easily solved by simply not adding ethanol to gasoline?

 

On a side note, I am still waiting for my first entry on my "problems solved by adding ethanol to gasoline" list.

[oldjeep]

If someone is actually building senders that don't work with e10 in 2017 the issue isn't ethanol, it is a lack of understanding of what most lake boats run on.

 

[swc5150]

Maybe that's why mine works? I don't use ethanol fuel.

[LoopSki]

@swc5150 plus you only have 13 hours !

[swc5150]

@LoopSki True! I'm starting to feel guilty about that.

[vtjc]

@joel_fuel_sndr_mfr thanks for engaging directly with skiers.

 

Could part of the problem be that many of these boats are partially filled using gas cans while they remain on the water? For example, If the boat was last fully filled with E10 or ethanol free gas, then run empty and filled from gas cans containing fuel with the other concentration of ethanol (E10 to ethanol free or ethanol free to E10) which would change the capacitance of the fuel and how the gauge reads. These partial fills would not be large enough to activate the Full Detection stinger, to trigger a recalibration for the change in fuel capacitance. I live on a small public lake; the ski boats live on lifts all season. They only time they are fully filled with fuel is when they are on a trailer for another reason.

[joel_fuel_sndr_mfr]

RazorSkier1, Dave2Ball:

 

This is Joel, the engineer at Centroid Products, the sender manufacturer.

 

No need to suffer. Email me at joel@centroidproducts.com and I'll have you check a few things. The good thing is it's easy to figure out a fuel reading problem. 90% of the time, anyway.

 

It's helpful if you can include with the email a photo of the sender's head (sender mounted in cavity under the passenger rear bench cushion? looks like a hockey puck) so I can see the label and make sure it's ours. And the best complaint describes the current reading in the form of "I am currently expecting a reading of __________ but the needle is actually pointing to ____________".

 

Joel

 

[LoopSki]

I'm confused on location of hockey puck. I haven't checked yet but I'm pretty sure there is nothing under the rear seat on the passenger side. Are you referring to a new prostar?

[Zman]

Joel's efforts and openness are to be commended. Capacitance level sensors have been around a long, long time in industry, and in the right applications work excellent.

If MC has a history of level gauge issues, I can't say, or if the issues are getting fewer since they started using capacitance sensors, or not. But, I get the feeling Joel will make improvements.

As for Malibu, I have only had two - 2007 Lxi, 2016 Txi - both have worked great. Not sure what type of sensor they use, but I have always been able to trust it to where I often run my tank pretty low, and never run out.

As for floats, no thanks! Never had any clue what was in the tank once the tank was below 1/4 or 3/8 full - right when you need it most.

All said, I am with the comments regarding gauges on autos seeming to work excellent for decades. So, what's up with the boats that don't work so well, and not just ski boats?