Marine switch technical issue.

[Aaron1987]

Hey guys. Have a question for the techies. I have a 5 gang switch panel and it's giving me hell. It has the positive and negative bays linked, to fuses I take it.. then it has 5 red wires coming out ( for device positives ), 1 black wire for negative to DC and then it has directions saying to connect a positive DC wire to the solid bar connecting all the switches together. I've connected everything up. All device positives to switch positive wires, all negatives to the battery then a DC positive to switch positive and DC negative to switch negative. Everything works and turns on when I flick the switch, but the problem I have is that when I turn say, Navigation lights on, the stern light will come on, when I turn the cabin lights on, the navigation lights come on... but they're in no way connected. AND..out of the 5 switches, I've left 1 not connected to anything but when I flick it.. it turns random lights on... it's not even connected to anything I have checked and nothing is touching anywhere that it shouldn't be, all seems to be connected right but yeah, I just went out and turned on my sounder, and my navigation lights came on.. they are 2 switches apart and in no way connected to each other... how is this possible.

In a bad spot here fellas and could really use some help. It's very much appreciated.

Cheers Aaron.

 

[alldodge]

Hey guys. Have a question for the techies. I have a 5 gang switch panel and it's giving me hell. It has the positive and negative bays linked, to fuses I take it.. then it has 5 red wires coming out ( for device positives ), 1 black wire for negative to DC and then it has directions saying to connect a positive DC wire to the solid bar connecting all the switches together. I've connected everything up. All device positives to switch positive wires, all negatives to the battery then a DC positive to switch positive and DC negative to switch negative. Everything works and turns on when I flick the switch, but the problem I have is that when I turn say, Navigation lights on, the stern light will come on, when I turn the cabin lights on, the navigation lights come on... but they're in no way connected. AND..out of the 5 switches, I've left 1 not connected to anything but when I flick it.. it turns random lights on... it's not even connected to anything I have checked and nothing is touching anywhere that it shouldn't be, all seems to be connected right but yeah, I just went out and turned on my sounder, and my navigation lights came on.. they are 2 switches apart and in no way connected to each other... how is this possible.

In a bad spot here fellas and could really use some help. It's very much appreciated.

Cheers Aaron.

:welcome: to iboats Aaron

Some how you have one circuit back feeding another. To keep it simple the best way to wire things up is using buss bars feed by a large wire about 10 gage. Pos and Neg then feeds your switch panels. If your switch panel has lighted switches then all switches do need a Pos and Neg connection, but do not need switches to supply the feeds to the panel.

Below notice that all switches are feed with one line thru a fuse, and a small feed back to Neg for the lighted switches. Maybe provide a pic of what you have

 

[Grandad]

Almost surely, you have an "open" negative feeding this group. I know it appears that they are not interconnected, but they are unavoidably connected common at the negative. You can get a back-feed between different devices as electrons in a pathway that's blocked, search for an alternate path, particularly if these are switches with light indicators on them. I'd start by making absolutely certain that the negatives are correctly wired and that there's no poor connections. - Grandad

 

[Aaron1987]

Hey guys and thanks for the warm welcome.

I have basically the same switch as displayed in that diagram except mine has the "ciggy lighter" incorporated into it. The negative for the switch board seems to be the negative wire coming off the ciggy lighter and the positive DC is the brass bar that connects all the fuses together. It's a bar that runs the length of the board and in the instructions it labels that as "DC 12V"..... seemed odd to me but I just followed what it said.

I have gone and bought an 8 gang buss bar for all the negatives and am going to run an 8g negative from the battery to the bar, then all the device and switch negatives to the bar as well.