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  1. #1
    Member
    Join Date
    May 2019
    Location
    Central KY
    Posts
    2

    New Ranger VS1782WT with ME 150 ProXS 4S

    I was thrilled to find this boat 150 miles away two months ago. My first aluminum deep-V after several fiberglass bass boats. I bought new primarily to get the new model Pro XS motor of 150 hp and Mercury’s Smartcraft capability. I really like this boat! It came with a Tempest Plus 21” prop. Trimmed for top speed I see 25psi water pressure at 5800 rpm and GPS speed of 49 mph. Faria reads 53 but GPS is truth! Maybe I’ll try for more speed at the top?

    However, I had a few nonsensical issues to deal with so let me share the info just in case you are in the market or you want to add things like this to your boat.

    1). My boat came with nice Faria analog gauges. Fine and my plan was to augment them with Mercury’s VesselView 903 and their Active Trim. DIY as I enjoy this sort of work.

    2). I saw the 14-pin throttle harness at the motor and figured that was a standard Mercury harness that would give me the CAN signal for Smartcraft at the helm.

    3). Not so fast! Ranger specs out a proprietary cable from engine to helm. It sends analog info up to the helm but no Smartcraft data. When I queried Ranger their response was that they don’t offer this on the aluminum deep-v models. Apparently, other major manufacturers do similar. This really surprised me as a negative. Why dumb down what Mercury provides?

    4). For me to have Smartcraft capability I had to run a dedicated Smartcraft (Mercury OEM part #
    84-879982T20 Harness Assy.) cable from the engine to the helm. This cable has a resistor built-in at each end. You remove the yellow resistor plug covering the Smartcraft 10-pin diagnostic jack at the engine -see photos- then plug this cable in its place. You have to finesse routing it through the exterior shielding leading from the transom to the engine, but it’s doable. Get that all routed neatly, then run the other end up along the gunwale to the helm. I had to unscrew various carpeted trim pieces to do it.

    5). The cable feeds a 4-way junction box. The three remaining jacks are filled by my VesselView Link (comes with the 903 kit), VesselView Mobile (for viewing engine data on an iPhone), and the Active Trim module. If I want to add some Smartcraft gauges, there’s a three-wire harness supplied at the helm from the Mercury cable that I used. Just daisy-chain the small 2” gauges so I’m told. However, if you want the Smartcraft Speedo or Tach, you’ll need more jacks on your J-box. They make 6 and 8-way j-boxes if you need that. I like having the analog stuff along with digital as good back-up. The Active Trim has its own GPS module which I installed just behind the console, out of sight but secure.

    6). Luckily, the proprietary Ranger harness had a male and female 3-pin trim connector joined up at the throttle. That’s how the throttle trim switch sends its signal back to the engine - analog. Unplug that and each end mates with the same connectors coming from the active trim module. This engine came with the Mercury Trim Limiter module and that still works fine. Oh, I also installed the Mercury water pressure sender that is an option for my engine.

    7). The 903’s display is made by Simrad. It accepts the transducer cable from the stern just fine. It wants a 9-pin lowrance cable but with the appropriate adapter cable, my basic 7-pin Skimmer transducer works fine. I also added a CMAP card because the basic map display was useless. Showed my lake as a series of rectangles, primitive!

    8). I moved the Factory-installed Lowrance Elite 9 Ti from the console to the bow using a Ram mount and the factory wiring already present at the bow. Then I added on a TotalScan transducer by strapping it onto my Terrova head. Impossible you say? So did I, but Russell Marine Products makes and sells these mounts: RMP-TMM-TSCAN.






    Last edited by djcwardog; 05-29-2019 at 12:26 PM.

  2. Banned
    Join Date
    Mar 2018
    Location
    Oklahoma
    Posts
    12,180
    #2
    Nice boat! I have the 7" version of that vesselview, I also have it connected to a totalscan transducer and use it as a 2nd graph at the dash.

  3. Member
    Join Date
    May 2019
    Location
    Central KY
    Posts
    2
    #3
    Thanks! Great quote from TJ also.
    Sincerely,

    djcwardog
    Ranger VS1782WT deep-v with a Mercury 150 Pro XS 4S

  4. Member
    Join Date
    Nov 2013
    Location
    Norway
    Posts
    3,673
    #4
    Good read, and more or less the same as with my own Starweld that I to rigged myself.