Mercury Vessel View Connection Problem / Issue With Tracker Engine Harness / No Data Connection /

Nitro Owners Forum

Help Support Nitro Owners Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Reelslow

Member
Joined
Oct 3, 2017
Messages
8
Reaction score
1
Location
Phoenix, Az
Sorry for the long title, wanted to make sure it could be searched online for others that have the problem as it caused a few hours of headache.

Long story short, I had purchased vessel view mobile for my 2018 tracker V165 WT.
The problem was:
- Unit was connected up properly under the engine cowl
- Bluetooth would connect but no data from engine

After digging in and troubleshooting - my findings and the resolution are as follows:
- Tracker used a generic old engine harness which is NOT properly designed for an EFI engine. Mercury confirmed this after reviewing the info I sent them. Mercury is sending the info to tracker since whitewater marine puts up a virtual brick wall between basic customer service and any engineering departments.

Here is where the problem is. And this may affect many others looking to do vessel view or other NMEA devices on tracker boats (depending on the harness you received)

On the general harness that comes from the engine as shown in this diagram, the data lines are on blue and white (pins F&G) on the engine side. They travel to the helm. At the helm, Tracker cut off the blue wire and ran the white wire to the ignition switch. The white wire ends in a yellow / black wire which is disconnected via a bullet as shown in the photo. This wire was designed for electric choke use HA! In short, this is WRONG. If someone accidentally connects the bullet thinking it came loose, it is possible the ECM would be damaged or engine may not start (Still have to verify this to see how the wire behaves off the switch, if it goes high or low)

F&G.PNG


And the photo of where the white data line goes to (yellow with black stripe / disconnected by a bullet)
20171102_175235.jpg


The fix is as follows:

- At the helm where the engine harness comes out of the side panel, you need to carefully strip back the jacket where the blue wire is cut off to expose more of the blue wire
- De-pin or cut off the white wire at the connector (all white / pin 9 per the above diagram)
- Slide 1/4" expanded heatshrink / about 1.5" long over the white wire
- Solder in a 120ohm resistor so that it connects the blue and white wire together (this is a terminating resistor)
- Slide the previously placed heat shrink over the solder joints and the resistor and shrink with a HEAT GUN. Not an open flame

Once you add the resistor, the network will be functional and smart craft gauges, vessel view and similar will function. Do verify you have a connection issue of course before going through this trouble.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top