Help me..I am buing a "new" old boat

[maharg]

I am picking up my 87 Glassport today or tomorrow. It has the 3.0 Merc. There is no VHF or stereo. I want to add these items for safety and entertainment. What do I need to do and where would I tap into the power supply? Do I need a new alternator or a 2nd battery? I plan on buying a hard mount VHF and a kenwood cd deck with 4 6.5in speakers.

 

[ziggy]

Re: Help me..I am buing a "new" old boat

the additions you want are what i did to my boat too.

i got power right from the batt. i used a #8 or maybe #6 (can't remember which) awg wire and ran it all the way fwd. to the helm. there i installed a small 6 circuit fuse box i got from iboats. both my stereo and vhf get their power from that fuse box. i also fused the heavy wire run from the batt, right at the battery on the (+) side.
only possible bad ramification of this is both items are always powered. (not switched) so if ya forget to turn everything off it'll run the batt. dead. good side of it is, ya don't have to turn on the key to power up the stereo or vhf. which is how i wanted it to operate.

i didn't do anything to my alt. just whatever my engine came with.

for speaker wire i just used what came with the stereo.

 

[chrclo]

Re: Help me..I am buing a "new" old boat

I would run all the wire from scratch as well. It is always a good idea to have a second battery as you can listen to tunes floating and not worry about having a dead starting battery. I think your alt is 55 amps? not sure, but you should be fine to charge 2 batteries with that little of draw.