Seeking friendly advice

[sparticus]

I find myself in a good position with my boat. I have taken the first steps in a restoration of my 1966 Hydroswift. I plan on doing floor, seats AND the electrical. If you were redoing a fairly simple electrical installation what would you do if it was your boat? I have basic stuff right now, nav/anchor lights, horn and fish finder. I would like to add tilt to the motor, a cig lighter type power source, courtesy lights and maybe some sort of audio/stereo (will be simple). Right now it doesnt have any kind of fuse block, none, zip, zero. All the wires run to the battery. I don't like this at all because its a mess and not marked what so ever (I bought it this way). I have drawn up a fairly simple schematic for the wiring using a fuse box but then it dawned on me that curcuit breakers could be just as good so now I am going to do one for that as well, just in case. You guys (and gals) have any preferences in your systems? If you re-did yours what would you do different? I might add that I have 30+ years in the Aerospace Technical Training field so the wiring aspect doesnt intimidate me, just like to learn from others experiences. Thanks for your consideration!

Mark

 

[flargin]

Re: Seeking friendly advice

I just re-did mine. I had a house and a starting battery. and a wiring mess. installed a line from the house battery, this now runs all accessories, exclusively(through a fuse box in the engine compartment). Starting motor only supports motor/engine (EFI, Starter, trim)

the starting battery has an A/b/All switch which will jumper in the house batt if needed.

I have an isolation diode (or ACR if you prefer) to isolate the Accessory battery from the starting battery. now I can turn on the A/B switch to A, and never touch them until I leave the water (which is 1 week at a time in some situations). I hate the need to keep switching batteries... I am too stupid to remember and usually is left with a less than optimal situation... now I never worry.

I re-wired all of my courtesy lights with LED, and I will replace my gauge lights with LED's one day soon.

Installed a new Alpine stereo, that does not have a CD player. I went with one that will control an Ipod or a Thumb drive. I love having 32GB of my music on the boat for $30, not my Ipod for $300! plus no CD player to die.

Next I will install some Engine lights so I can ensure I can see, if needed, plus it's cool!.

I have a fuse panel under the captains console with 4 spare fuses, so when I want to add additional elements, I am ready.

Additionally, re-wire to similar colors of OEM, don't run everything Red and Black, I did that on a previous boat and it was always a pain to determine what was what after the labels fell off.

I also limit the number of wires going to the terminals to two... but I am looking at reducing that down to one each... this way I never will worry about anything loosening up. the starting motor has the Starter and trim motors

 

[Silvertip]

Re: Seeking friendly advice

Switch panels are availabel with breakers directly adjacent to the switch which eliminates the need for a separate fuse panel. However, there are a bunch of boat accessories that don't require a separate switch because they have one built-in so my preference is still a fuse panel. There are a number of those available with a built-in +12V and ground buss. Check the generic boat wiring diagram in the "sticky" at the very top of this forum. It is the way the vast majority of boats are wired.

 

[sparticus]

Re: Seeking friendly advice

Thanks for the suggestions gents! The schematic drawing that I have is very similar to the one that you pointed out Silvertip. Boat wiring is very simple compared to jets that fly twice the speed of sound. There is almost no comparison! All good things to ponder. Anyone else have any shouldadones?