Fuel flow meter

R

Roy

Member
Joined
Jan 1, 2000
RO Number
114
Messages
186
Anyone ever use the US Marine fuel flow meter to measure gal per hour? Good - bad - otherwise?

Thanks.....Roy
 
I have had great results with Floscan.

Can't comment on any other brands.

RWS
 
I have a Garmin, very good +/- 0.2%
 
I had one on a single engine Bayliner 265 and it worked fine. There are some engines on which they will not work. I think they are fuel injected engines where some fuel is returned to the tank but still counted as "burned". Its surprising how a little tweaking of the throttle and trim tabs can significantly affect fuel use and range.
 
quote:
Originally posted by RWS

I have had great results with Floscan.

Can't comment on any other brands.

RWS

Click to expand...


Same here. My Floscan is great!
 
quote:
Originally posted by rbmitchell

I had one on a single engine Bayliner 265 and it worked fine. There are some engines on which they will not work. I think they are fuel injected engines where some fuel is returned to the tank but still counted as "burned". Its surprising how a little tweaking of the throttle and trim tabs can significantly affect fuel use and range.

Click to expand...


You can install a sensor on the return line and the units are programmed to subtract the fuel that is returned from the total. You simply need to need to buy the correct system for your setup.
 
I use the Floscan Twinscan. One of the best devices I ever installed on the boat...
 
Don't know about us marine. Flo scan is the leader in this category.
 
The US Marine brochure for the flowmeter says accuracy is spec'd at +/- 10% which means a 20 gallon leeway on a 100 gallon tank.
And it apparently doesn't have any accommodation for the important feature of subsequent calibration to increase accuracy after comparing readout to actual gallons pumped to refill.

This budget flowmeter/totalizer doesn't appear to me to be the best choice for boaters .

(My boat has redundant systems of FloScan 9000's and B&G NetEngineSystem. Both user-calibratable.)
 
Sandy - Thanks for pointing out the +/- 10 %. I saw that but I didn't think of the impact. Thanks again.

Roy
 
My new to me trawler has old tech on it, but is well known to only burn around 2 gph. But my current boat was re-powered 2 years ago with new Hondas. I spend the extra $60 on each outboard to tie them into the NMEA2000 network. It is incredible to see so much real time information on the chart plotter (so much so I have two plotters going). Knowing the gph in real time has me backed off a bit as half a knot less speed saves me over 20% in fuel usage.
 
I have Garmins tied in to my NMEA 2000 network, and love them. But we have a Flo-Scan on the smaller boat and it is far superior in construction and durability.
The Garmins work well, but the part the fuel flows through is plastic, and I've had a failure one where it stopped working, and Garmin was of little help. I had another that was developing a very small crack. Luckily I cought it while winterizing and avoided a problem.
So although both the Garmin senders and Flo-Scan work very well, if I had nothing at all and was looking to install something, it would be Flo-Scan because of durability.
 
John, are you referring to the Garmin fuel flow meters? I have seen them but my 30' cat doesn't burn enough fuel to use them (yeah, that's a jerk statement to make, but it is true :-). The NMEA2000 info I get on my plotter is directly from the Honda outboards I have. I can pull up fuel burn, oil temp, engine temp, all kinds of information. I will miss that with nearly 40 year old Perkins diesels, but it is what it is I suppose...dang...
 
Kurt you could always add flow meters to the old boat. But again I don't think you will burn enough to recoup the investment.
 
Heh, Dave, the Gulfstar only burns 2gph :-)
 
i have installed quite a few faria fuelflow analyzers they work better than floscan and are dead accurate and very easy to install
 
Kevin - Not sure, but I believe Faria discontinued their Fuel Flow Manager at least a couple years ago, if that is what you are referring to . They don't list any kind of flow meter system on their site as far as I can see.
 
I would need a system with two sensors since I have a diesel and it returns unused fuel back to the tanks. I priced this out one time and it was close to $1,000. There's no way the potential fuel savings would amount to that in my lifetime so I gave up on the idea.
 
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