Urgent: at sea, need B&G autopilot troubleshooting

[Neptune's Gear]

That fuse is way too small for offshore use. The dd1 can consume 22A at stall. Change the fuse to at least 25. 30a is ok.if the wiring is up to it?
On the ram question, for price. Go to a hydraulics shop, and it is very likely that a custom ram is actually cheaper than one from B&G. :-) sometimes substantially so.
Also, it is possible to fix the ram case to the quadrant on a pivot, and to attach the rod end to a bulkhead or bracket as required. This takes up much less room than the conventional setup the other way around, and is what I have on my own boat. No issues in over 30000 nm.

[CharlesKerr]

Glad to hear that they have found the problem

[ohthetrees]

Originally Posted by Neptune's Gear

That fuse is way too small for offshore use. The dd1 can consume 22A at stall. Change the fuse to at least 25. 30a is ok.if the wiring is up to it?
On the ram question, for price. Go to a hydraulics shop, and it is very likely that a custom ram is actually cheaper than one from B&G. :-) sometimes substantially so.
Also, it is possible to fix the ram case to the quadrant on a pivot, and to attach the rod end to a bulkhead or bracket as required. This takes up much less room than the conventional setup the other way around, and is what I have on my own boat. No issues in over 30000 nm.

Would love to know gauge and run of that wiring, not in a position to check right now. If I could safely run 25 amp I would.

As for attaching ram to quadrant, and rod to bulkhead/bracket, I don't understand why this saves room? Compressed and extended length stay the same! What am I missing?

[Black Diamond]

I cannot believe some of these responses. I’ve had this happen to my B&G H5000. The flashing light does indicate a blown fuse. There are two fuses. One in front of the H5000 CPU and one at the 12V panel. On my boat, a Hanse 575, there is a 50 amp fuse for the auto helm in the cockpit locker near the CPU. Unfortunately, in spectacularly bad design, they have that being fed by a 15 AMP fuse at the 12V panel. In heavy seas the autopilot draws more than 15 AMPs and blows at the12V panel. In other words, there is no way for the 50AMP fuse to ever blow.

You should replace it with a 25AMP fuse (I confirmed it’s ok with HANSE) and a glow-when-blown fuse makes it easy to find.

The error messages on the Zeus and control display are the same as I had.

Good luck and hope he is safe!

Rick

[Neptune's Gear]

Originally Posted by ohthetrees

Would love to know gauge and run of that wiring, not in a position to check right now. If I could safely run 25 amp I would.

As for attaching ram to quadrant, and rod to bulkhead/bracket, I don't understand why this saves room? Compressed and extended length stay the same! What am I missing?

When the ram body is fixed to the boat the rod extends and contracts, so total length = ram body plus length of rod extended.
When the rod is fixed, the body slides up and down the rod, so total length = rod length only.....

[JPA Cate]

Okay,

Supplied fuses are too small. Sail headsail only, to ease loads on a/p.

Ann

[JPA Cate]

The other in question is the gauge of the Hanse's wiring, and it may not be safe to replace the 15 amp fuse with the 29 amp one. I am no expert in Hanse's wiring protocols, and had best leave that discussion to someone better informed than I.

Ann

[SausalitoDave]

This is almost certainly a blown fuse on the Wurth panel.

[SausalitoDave]

Don’t use oversized fuse. Substantial risk of burning out the wiring if the cause was a hard short.

[SausalitoDave]

My 505 was supplied with extra fuses.

[ohthetrees]

A few people seem to have missed that this issue is resolved. It was a burnt out fuse at the panel, as several people have suggested. I'm new, is there a way to edit my first post to mark it solved?. Thanks again for all the great help and suggestions!

Originally Posted by SausalitoDave

Don’t use oversized fuse. Substantial risk of burning out the wiring if the cause was a hard short.

Certainly if the wire is too thin this would absolutely be the case. But one owner has reported to me that those wires are 6mm2 (between a 9 and a 10 awg). If that's true, according to a marine wiring chart I found, those wires could safely support:

20 amp with run of 50+ feet
25 amp with run of 40+ feet
30 amp with run of 30+ feet

Distances not exact because the charts I found were AWG, not metric. For example, 10 gauge AWG is only 5.2612mm2, and 9 gauge is 6.6342 mm2.

[JPA Cate]

Hi, ohthetrees, a moderator can close the thread, or also, if you wish, get into your first post and put a message in it that says, the problem has been solved, if that's what you want, although there is sometimes value in letting the thread run on down on it's own. One way to contact the moderators is to click on the little red outlined white triangle with an exclamation mark inside. A writing box will appear, and you can write your request and some moderator will take care of it after a while.

Ann

[Capt. Mike Maurice]

This is an excellent example of why good communications are a necessity between the boat and technical support ashore. It seems that the boat was equipped with an InReach text messaging system. A sat phone is an order of magnitude improvement, but if one was used there is no mention.
If you are going to take an electronically complicated boat offshore, how do you intend to fix it's problems without a good communications link? Think about it!

[ohthetrees]

Originally Posted by SausalitoDave

Don’t use oversized fuse. Substantial risk of burning out the wiring if the cause was a hard short.

Originally Posted by JPA Cate

Hi, ohthetrees, a moderator can close the thread, or also, if you wish, get into your first post and put a message in it that says, the problem has been solved, if that's what you want, although there is sometimes value in letting the thread run on down on it's own. One way to contact the moderators is to click on the little red outlined white triangle with an exclamation mark inside. A writing box will appear, and you can write your request and some moderator will take care of it after a while.

Ann

Thanks, I'll request they mark it solved, bet let the thread continue.

Originally Posted by Capt. Mike Maurice

This is an excellent example of why good communications are a necessity between the boat and technical support ashore. It seems that the boat was equipped with an InReach text messaging system. A sat phone is an order of magnitude improvement, but if one was used there is no mention.
If you are going to take an electronically complicated boat offshore, how do you intend to fix it's problems without a good communications link? Think about it!

The boat has both an inreach and an irridium go (which is capable of voice calls). We didn't use the voice call as the inreach was working fine, and they were doing OK with the wind vane steering and hand steering.

But I agree, as the owner, I feel better with a good communication link, enjoy tracking them, watching weather closely, and they have me as a resource for technical issues.

[donradcliffe]

Here is what I used to upgrade the autopilot breaker on my last delivery

https://www.amazon.com/Circuit-Break...7735902&sr=8-1

It worked fine on a 70 ft boat.

If the wiring is 6 mm2 it should be fine at 30 amps. Remember that the autopilot loads are not continuous--while they may peak at over 20 amps, the average draw is less than 5.

As far as the thread drift into communications goes, I may be old school, but a good blue water skipper should be able to resolve non-emergency problems without any outside communications. A system like the InReach is a huge improvement over what we had 30 years ago.