jpwhit

5 hours ago, LeonL said:

Torque sequence.   Failing any other source of info, start at inner most bolt and proceed in a semi circular pattern outward.

The tightening sequence is in the link I posted in the initial post of the thread.  

20 hours ago, chrislandy said:

I'm on holiday at the moment and the head gasket just went on the prostar (water/oil mix and cloudy exhaust, plus one cylinder is down to 110psi (no.3) when rest are at 150-160psi.

 

I've got a gasket set coming from MC belgium, (I'm in France)but wanted to check with someone with experience of these engines... its a 2014 mv8 570 (red) with 1500hrs ( 1400 at ski school so 36mph and short line)

 

Do you know if the head bolts need changing or can they be reused, plus what is the torque sequence and stages? And if there is anything to look out for?

 

I've rebuilt dozens of engines but never the ilmor and can't find an engine manual anywhere specific to this one.

Responding to this PM on the open forum because it seems like info that others may need at some point. 

Ilmor doesn't provide specs or any info on head bolt tighten sequence in the official service manual.  They are very clear in the official service manual that dealers should just order a new bobtail engine from them for any internal engine issues. 

There are 2 generations of head bolts for the vortec LS engine series. The later generation can be identified by having a captive washer on the bolt. GM specifies not to re-use the 2nd generation head bolts because they are torque to yield. To always replace them. They are less clear about the first generation bolts. 

You're suppose to follow the tightening torque sequence as specified by the bolt OEM. 

This is the procedure for the GM OEM 2nd Gen Torque to Yield head bolts. 

https://help.summitracing.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/5187/~/how-do-i-install-my-ls-cylinder-heads%3F

You also typically need new intake, exhaust, and valve cover gaskets in addition to the head gasket. You can likely get away without a new valve cover gasket. I'd say 50% of the time the exhaust gasket doesn't come apart on disassembly. I've never been able to save and re-use the intake manifold gasket. 

John

The head unit provides power to the puck. I think it's possible the puck is shorted out and trying to draw too much power from the head unit. 

I would offer more input, but this is the kind of issue that's nearly impossible to be of much help remotely. There could be a lot of things that would cause this, but I wouldn't rule out water in the tank. Especially if you always run non-ethanol gas. We had a similar issue with our 2012 Nautique 200 club boat building up water in the bottom of the tank when we ran non-ethanol gas. It happened twice actually. Now we run ethanol gas except over any winter storage and haven't had any more problems. Our club boat doesn't get much time off, so there's not a lot of winter storage. FCC will separate out some water, but not if there is standing water in the bottom of the tank, when it gets up to the level of the fuel pickup, you start getting a steady stream of water mixed in the fuel that causes random misfires. Fuel additives won't get out that much water either. 

The misfire detection in the ECM won't detect this either. It really can only detect a consistent misfire in one cylinder that happens in a consistent pattern. It looks for patterns of inconsistencies in the rotational velocity data from the CPS. 

I have a separate outboard motor style gas tank I use to help diagnose issues like this. It even has its own electric fuel pump, adjustable pressure regulator, and pressure gauge to make it pretty universal. But you actually don't need all that on a Nautique since it doesn't have an in-tank fuel pump and pressure regulator. Just connect an auxiliary tank to the input of the low-pressure fuel pump. 

I also have Rhinda Diacom, and I've recorded a lot of reference files for most of the key sensors for the boats I work on regularly. That way I have something to compare against when something starts acting up. It can be useful to just look at the sensor reading w/o having references, but it just makes it even easier having them.  

When things get really deep, I also have a digital storage scope for all my electronics work. I have HV clamp on probes for that that can monitor each spark plug to look for misses. And I have fuel and cylinder pressure transducers I can hook up as well. 

Not sure this will be all that useful for you....good luck, this is the type of problem that can be pretty challenging to diagnose. 

ZR4 doesn't have a distributor

I assume you've checked for Engine Codes via the LINC screen. 

MasterCraft introduced power Surf and Wakeboard racks. 

7 hours ago, mlange said:

IIRC there is different LINC firmware for Clarion vs. whatever other brand they used.  

That's right. Clarion, then Fusion starting in 2014, and then Kilpisch in the latest Mastercraft's. Fusion was by far the best. Everyone hates Kilpisch in the newest boats. 

A 2010 will be the original LINC and there is no firmware for the original LINC to support anything but Clarion. Matter of fact, the original LINC is no longer available as a repair part, if you need to replace the LINC screen in an early 200, there is an upgrade kit to install a LINC 2.0 screen. But it's about $5k.

My 200 has the original LINC and the Clarion stereo, and I was at the ski club today and turned it on to see if it even worked. We never use it at the ski club. It did actually work, and I could control it from the LINC screen. I didn't have time to look at the connection between the LINC screen and the Clarion head unit. But I'll look at it later this week or early next week. 

What do you mean by "Nautique driver display/control bus"? Do you mean the LINC screen in the 200?

The audio interface between the LINC screens and Clarion stereo's is something fairly proprietary. I'm not sure if the same interface as the Clarion remotes. 

What year 200? Is it the original LINC screen, LINC 2.0, or LINC Panoray?

It's really worth getting a more modern ski. I'd recommend a Radar Senate. You can find them used for very reasonable prices. 

@SiPitts is correct about how these gauges work. And a pretty typical failure is the stepper motor (clockwork) fails in the gauges themselves. They aren't that hard to fix, but it's a little tedious. The MDC provides the signals to drive the gauges and they also seem to fail somewhat consistently at a certain age. I suspect they have the type of electrolytic capacitors in them that dry out and fail after a certain age. I've never taken an MDC apart to investigate the cause of the failures. 

Fixing it depends on whether the problem is in the gauge or in the MDC itself. Often the gauges are daisy chained together. So, if one gauge on the same daisy chain isn't working, and you move its position in the daisy chain and it still doesn't work, then that's almost always a problem with that gauge. If the gauges after a certain gauge on the same daisy chain do not work, then the gauge before isn't properly passing the signals through. I think some MDC have more than one output so they can be multiple chains, or certain gauges may have a dedicated output. If all the gauge suddenly quit working, that's almost always the MDC itself has failed. 

Given all the tests you've done, it's pretty likely failing components in the MDC. And if it's not the MDC failing now, it will be in the not so far off future. If it were my boat, I'd go ahead and start the conversion away from the MDC to gauges that don't depend on the MDC. Since your speedo is broken now, I'd just go ahead and replace it with a GPS based speedo. You could go ahead and buy a full conversion kit now, and just install the speedo until you start to have other gauge issues. Or you could just buy the speedo now, but it would be worth it IMO, to try and get a speedo that will match later if you have to replace the other gauges. 

Does the boat have speed control? If so, is that working? Is that also getting it's speed input from the paddlewheel or is it GPS based such a Perfect Pass Stargazer?

Having the same course mapped twice can cause the type of issue you've described unless you disable the feature where Zero Off tries to automatically select the course. 

I'm assuming this is the single GPS puck Zero Off? If it happens to be the older dual GPS puck then there could be other issues. 

When I looked at your picture, I realized that it looked familiar. Then I figured out it's Seven Lakes. You're not far from me, I live in Cary and my lake house is at Kerr Lake. The ski club I ski at is in Willow Springs. Like you, I've skied since I was very young, but I got into course skiing in a serious way when my twin daughters started college and skied for the UNC ski team back in 2010. That's also when we joined the ski club in Willow Springs. 

I've owned both a 2011 and a 2012 200 that were both non-cat. I've also worked on 2012 5.7L that did have cats. And all the 2013 and newer boats that I've worked on have all had cat's.  So that's what my comment was based on. 

I'm not really sure exactly what determined if you got one with or without cats around the 2012 timeframe. Maybe it was just luck of the draw or maybe PCM was ramping up productions of the catalytic converter assemblies, so it just depended on if they had those parts available or not. And by 2013, they have enough to build all engines with cats. That's a pretty common in the auto industry. When California requires something, they start producing a version of the car sold in California. Then because it cost money to have different variations, as they ramp up production they simplify and sell the same version in all 50 states when the supply chain is ramped up to support it. 

No, I didn't actually work directly in the boating industry. Before I retired last year, I did work as a hardware and software design engineer in a company that was closely associated with automotive, aerospace, and really anybody the built stuff that involved mechanical, electronics, and software systems. I also grew up working in my grandfathers auto repair garage in the summers. And to my father's great dissatisfaction, I took apart almost anything mechanical around the house about the time I was old enough to hold a screwdriver and a wrench.  

So now I'm just someone with an insatiable curiosity about how anything works, with too much time on my hands, and I find that it actually seems like more work to manage having someone fix something for myself, or my family, or my friends rather than doing it myself. 

I know for the EX343 5.7L, 2012 was the crossover year for Catalytic converters. I'm seen 2012's with and without. I would tend to thing the same would apply for the ZR6. 

We sink our course on the public lake at times and I use a leader rope, like you, to make it easy to find and pull up the mainline. I actually have 2 leader ropes just in case one gets damaged. My leaders are attached to the front of the diamond for the pre-gate PVC and the course is close enough to shore that we attach the other ends to distinctive trees on the shoreline. I installed D-rings at the front of pre-gate diamonds that connect the diamond to the anchor lines. I attach my leader to the same d-ring to have a firm attachment point. We never move the anchors.

I guess your challenge may be the lack of no-wake buoys near those locations. Another reason we have two leaders, is we often have multiple people so we can work from both ends of the course at once to attach the balls. That makes it go very quickly. 

Fortunately for us, we've only been sinking our course a couple of times a year now. But we use to sink it a lot, so I understand the work you're having to put into this. 

If you can tolerate being towed at idle before being pulled up, that also makes quite a bit of difference. The two step start. Step 1 - "in gear". Step 2 - after your moving pretty good - "hit it"

When being towed while "in gear", don't try to keep the ski straight, let it tilt in the direction of your front foot some. Then when the boat pulls, it's pretty natural for the ski to straighten up. 

As has been mentioned, stay completely crouched. I ride the ski up almost like a knee board and then stand up once the ski is completely planned out. 

@Horton that's good to know because I actually have a 6L engine I could put in my ProStar but I wasn't sure it was worth the effort. And my other choice is to put the 6L in my 98 Nautique bubble butt, I'm fixing up so it would be a ZO boat. As opposed to putting the 6L in the ProStar and the 5.7L in the 98, which would be a lot more work. 

Hmm, I use different settings between my Nautique at the ski club lake, and my ProStar at the lake house because the Nautique has a firmer pull by default and using the different settings makes things feel more similar. Both boats are 5.7L. I've always wished my ProStar had the 6.0 or 6.2 as a result. 

But last year I also bought both medium and low-stretch s-lines ropes to try out. And I did the rope comparisons at the ski club lake behind the Nautique and liked the medium stretch. Now I'm wondering if I should try the low-stretch rope behind the ProStar with the same Zero Off settings I use behind the Nautique to see if I like that better. 

I think there are two files because one is for the older chip and one is for the newer chip which won't work with Zero Off. I don't remember having to choose, I think the updater makes the choice automatically by reading info from the puck. 

I remember having a problem with the very latest firmware not getting along with Zero Off and having to use an intermediate version of firmware. But unfortunately, I did a poor job of taking notes on what I actually ended up using. But, I'll be at the ski lake today or tomorrow and I can take my computer and check which firmware is on the pucks. I did this quite a while back and I think the latest firmware at the time was 4.30. So, I likely haven't tried 4.4 or 4.5. I also want to know what version is on my pucks, because I may update to version 4.5 if that works fine with Zero Off. 

@paul do you know which version of firmware you're running on your pucks?

The cable I made to update my pucks is actually pretty simple, works with USB which more computers have, and is also TTL level RS232 which is actually what the Garmin pucks use. Technically the Garmin pucks do not meet the voltage levels specified by the TIA232F standard which is at least -5v for a zero and +5v for a one. Some serial ports on some computers won't work with the Garmin pucks using a true RS232 port depending on how picky the driver chip is about the voltage levels. 

I made my adapter using this board, which I already had a bunch of for other uses. And this board also provides the +5V from the computer's usb port to power the Garmin puck. So no extra power supply required. 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0068QKQEA/ref=ox_sc_saved_image_1?smid=AM0JQO74J587C&psc=1

wired directly to 

a DTM04-4P connector

https://www.amazon.com/MUYI-Connector-Waterproof-DTM04-4P-DTM06-4S/dp/B09V9TJX15/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?crid=2UEBLED9TTRJS&keywords=DTM04-4P&qid=1687346687&sprefix=dtm04-4p%2Caps%2C82&sr=8-1-spons&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9hdGY&psc=1

And if you don't have header strips and connectors laying around, this will make connecting between the two cleaner and easier. 

https://www.amazon.com/Hilitchi-2-54mm-Headers-Connector-Housing/dp/B014YTPFT8/ref=sr_1_13?crid=2J8I2EDE0U5C2&keywords=single+row+header+strip&qid=1687346837&s=electronics&sprefix=single+row+header+strip%2Celectronics%2C78&sr=1-13

You will need to download the USB drivers from sparkfun.com for the FTDI serial board

Nothing in the Zero Off head unit. You just have to send the right configuration sentences to the pucks and you have to set the baud rate to 38.4 kbps as Zero Off expects. I'm sure you've done that since yours is working. It's actually kinda ridiculous IMO, that the Zero Off head unit doesn't check and set the appropriate puck configuration parameter on each power up. 

14 hours ago, cottage9 said:

It's the original 3-event with 2 pucks. I put the system into recreational mode and it shows 7 or 8 satellites. I tried running the system with each puck independently, however, there was still the surging. It's not major but it does seem the boat is slowing down and then catches up.  24.2 km/h is speed I'm testing with. The boat will fluctuate 24.1-24.5 but sometimes drops to 23.9 and then surges to 24.5/24.6 then back to 24.2.  

These are the numbers on my unit:

P/N E1887016A S/N 011122

SW: E1886102R

00 ACTIVE 00 HISTORIC

I'm pretty sure that's the part number, serial number, software version of the head unit. The serial number of the pucks is on the back side of the puck. You can't see it without pulling it off the boat. And as far as I know, you can only get the Garmin puck software version is by connecting the puck to a computer and use the Garmin utilities.

This is likely more details than you care to know, but maybe not.  

The Garmin GPS pucks used with the original dual puck Zero Off, are no longer made because the GPS chip that was used was discontinued by the manufacturer. Garmin still sells a puck with the same model number, but it uses a different chip that works in most applications but unfortunately doesn't provide updates fast enough for Zero Off.  Last I knew, Zero Off and Perfect Pass did still have some old stock of the GPS pucks that's work from a hardware perspective, but they are pretty expensive. This prompted Zero off to switch to a new GPS single puck made by ECI.

To make matters even more convoluted, the working vintage Garmin pucks have a software bug where they don't handle the GPS Week Rollover that happened on April 7th, 2019. The bug doesn't render the pucks completely inoperable, but it causes them to lose sync with the satellites at random times. When that happens Zero off starts surging badly until you shut off the main power switch to the boat and reboot the whole zero off system.

Zero Off's recommendation to solve this problem is to upgrade your Zero Off system to the latest single puck GPS and Zero Off software. I'm pretty sure even if you order one of the older pucks from Zero Off, they still ship you a puck that has the GPS Week Rollover software bug. I assume that's because they've never validated the whole zero software system with any newer versions of Garmin GPS puck firmware. 

It is possible to upgrade the firmware on working older pucks to a version that doesn't have the GPS Week Rollover, but it's pretty tricky to do. You have to take the pucks out of the boat and wire them up to a computer. In addition to putting on the right older version of firmware, you also have to re-setup the configuration of the puck as Zero Off expects. On my 2012 Nautique 200, I started having issues pretty shortly after the 2019 GPS Week Rollover. I ended up having to replace one of the pucks because it had actually failed. I found a puck in the correct serial number range on eBay for cheap. I updated firmware on both the working pucks and reconfigured them boat as Zero Off expects. So, like @paul, I have the older dual puck system working great again. 

27 minutes ago, Mastercrafter said:

Can software be updated on a 2015 to include fuel management? 

Hmm, I didn't know it wasn't included in 2015. Are you sure it's not just turned off in the setup screens. If it's really not there, then yes I think updating to later firmware on the screen would enable it for you. 

I use Fuel Management on my 2019 ProStar and I have to drive a couple of miles to get the course. It works perfectly.