Engine hours via rev counter

[Neil Spooner]

Hi Guys/Girls,
I have a Yanmar 3GM30 in my Hunter 356. The rev' counter does not have the LCD display for engine hours, but I have seen in the past yacht rental companies get the engine hours from the rev' counter needle.....any ideas how to do this please?
Best wishes,
Neil

 

[Bob 04 H260]

We use a standard hour meter, it was mounted in the engine room. It is not a convenient location I'm considering moving it to the nav desk or cockpit,
http://www.defender.com/product3.jsp?path=-1|311|2349076|2349080&id=94599

 

[Jerry Clark H356 SV Persi]

My 356 has the hobbs hour meter mounted in the Nav station. It is not digital, but the old rotating dial type. I did have a problem with my generator Hobbs when it hit 2000 hours, it got hung up. I bought a new one to replace it, but by the time it came in and I was ready to replace it, it started working again. I just add a little over 7 hours to the number on the Hobbs and it is correct. Both of these Hobbs meters seem to agree. The photo below is the Hobbs meter for the Northern Lights generator. The Yanmar is just below in the same panel. You can barely see the top edge just below and to the right.

 

[Ken13559]

I got a standard diesel engine hour meter. Mount it at the nav table. Ran a wire from its positive terminal to the Yanmar panel key switch and negative to neg bus at nav station. So whenever i switch engine key to "on" the hour meter started counting.

 

[Rich Stidger]

The LCD hour displays in the tach are nice, but they seem to be problematic. There are many posts here that describe the LCD display gong blank. I have personally had this happen to me with several replacements. I now use a mechanical counter in my engine compartment. I would stay away from the combo tach-LCD hour units.

 

[Benny17441]

A " rev counter " or tachometer only indicates the number of revolutions per minute (RPM) the engine is being ran at and it offers no cumulative readings. Some tachs have an hour meter built in into the casing but their functions remain separate. The hour meter can be mechanical or digital and are powered from the key switch. The assumption is that every time the key switch is On is that the engine will be running. The control panel buzzer will make it very hard to accidentally leave the engine Off with the key switch On. I have a feeling your charter boat had a mechanical hour meter and the staff just took a reading to enter into a log. Subtracting the previous reading from the current they determined how many hours you ran the engine and by applying the burn rate (GPH) were probably able to determine how much fuel was approximately left onboard.

 

[Slow lane]

Google tiny-tach they work