dual station controls, using yamaha dual binnacle throttles

[panga]

I bought a 2520 this past winter that was in need of some repairs and modifications to bring here back up to snuff, my mechanic has gotten most of the little issues taken care of, but we are still working on one issue with the controls. The boat has a second station on the roof of the pilot house. The previous owner had the boat set up with two sets of morse controls at each helm(boat has dual yami 150s). They were the controls with two levers, one red and one black throttle and gear. The set up was very very stiff and very awkward with the two separate sets of controls, made it difficult to drive. My mechanic wanted to switch to the yamaha binnacle style controls to get the nice controls and the start in gear protection. He mounted one set of yamaha stock controls on each station then ran a set of control cables from each station down into a “junction box” in the pilot house which joined the two controls and sent one set of cables back to the outboards. In theory it should work out, but the set up came out very stiff, making it very hard to throttle up or down easily. I am looking for some suggestions for this set up to make it work out. He worked on adjusting the cables and cant get it any better. I have seen a couple diagrams on other posts showing people using the morse controls and running the cables from two stations back to the outboard with them both tying into the control lever. I mentioned this to the mechanic but he doesn’t think the yamaha controls are intended to work like this? I would like to go with the yamaha controls because we spent about 500 bucks each on the two dual engine binicle controls and I like the factory look and the ease of just using one lever per engine instead of the dual stick morse controls. Please help fishing season is here.

thanks

 

[BradV]

I did a tower from scratch last year. You need a dual station dual control set up. The throttles are all cable. The shift is cable to a junction box then its electric to the shifting unit then a cable back to the motor. When I added my second station the binnacles became a little stiffer. Part of the problem was the cable lengths were not the right size to start with and had more bends then they should have. So i replaced the cables to have the least amount of bends as possible. However, to answer you question it will never be as easy to move the controls no matter what you do because its just physics. You lose the leverage when you add those control boxes into the middle if you go look at it. The Yamaha throttle box has a lever that has the throttle back to the motor clipped on and it is not a straight line but more of an arm so some of the energy is lost in this motion. If you are still unhappy with how stiff the steering is then you can switch everything to electric throttle. Which would make both stations super easy to move and then the only cables in the system would be from the junction box back to the motors which would have no feedback to you at either helm. Right around 5k for the electric set up. if you go with the dual station dual control from yamaha new is like 7k but if you have any high end cc dealers around that do repowers or stuff ask around if anyone has them used. I picked up a 6 month old one from Henley down here who makes the Bahama boatworks.

 

[ReelyNauti]

Can you go for the powered control set up pictured here then you will love em smooth as glass.

Power station by Tech marine
Powerpak by TECH MARINE.....

 

[panga]

Does this electronic setup take the cable in from each station and send electronic signal back to the engine? How much does it cost and where can I get it? Can I still use the brand new twin engine dual stick binnacles from yamaha that I bought for each station? Is this the only way I am going to get satisfactory performance from the yamaha binnacles that I bought?

Thanks for the help,

 

[seabob4]

Panga,
Did a search on the Dual Station Yam kit (pricey), saw the Twin 704 Binnacle listed as P/N 704-48207-21-00, whereas the twin 704 I know is P/N 704-48207-P1-00.

Call a Yam dealer and see what the difference is...

 

[BradV]

no that electric set up takes an electronic signal to another actuator box which then moves a cable that makes the connection at the motor as if you didnt have the boxes at all.

 

[BradV]

I like the one that Reelynauti has never heard of it or saw it when i was looking around but like the fact you can use your existing binnacles where most of the electric systems you have to replace everything. Wonder how hard the calibration is at the beginning. But me personally likes as much mechanical stuff as possible because you can usually do something to make it so you can get home.

 

[panga]

Bradv- yeah the set up that reelnauti has looks like the solution, if it is not to pricey, my mechanic is getting shorter cables and hoping that will help with the problem, but hearing a few others say it will be stiff simply because of the extreme amount of cable makes me wonder if it will work, if the set up mentioned above is affordable and u do in fact use the stock binnacles it would work well I would think.

Does anyone know where to get that set up and what it runs, I did a google search and came up dry?

thanks

 

[ReelyNauti]

I would call parker for info on the Power station controls they r factory, I'd bug Eric Denton, he is kind and seems to be pretty up on info...

 

[BradV]

Looks like they arent around anymore or someone bought them out.

http://www.parkerboats.net/pages/faqs/a ... p?faqid=38

 

[panga]

OK, I will try to contact parker and see what they are currently using, it seems like this is no that uncommon of an issue, and must be encountered on lots of makes of boats with second stations and twin engines, but maybe everyone is just using the factory twin engine twin station yamaha set up which runs about 5grand?

Let me know if anyone has any other ideas, in the mean time I will contact parker.

thanks

 

[BradV]

The recent 28' parker that i saw with dual station from the factory was using the KE 4 electronic shift and throttle package.

 

[BradV]

some guy on the hull truth has exactly what you need for 950 go get it now!!!

http://www.thehulltruth.com/boats-sale/ ... mahas.html

 

[boat25]

I used the Vetus sliding cable control unit, with the Yamaha 704 controls. It works pretty good, took some time adjusting cables. Two cables run back to a sliding unit and one cable exits out of it to throttle or shifter. It takes 2 sliding units, around $60-70 each.

 

[Bryan 2530]

Would love to see some pics of that setup.

 

[panga]

As would I... I ended up just going to new cables and 2 sets of dual stick morse at each station, mounted them directly side by side, not to big of deal to operate and they function well. The yamaha dual binnacles would have been cool, nice to have all functions in one place that can be controlled with one hand and have trim tilt all right there, but this works well.