lighting woes!

F

FL Bill

New member
Went out Saturday for a sunset cruise and dinner. After dinner we went to leave the docks and my running lights were not working.

Now I had not been out at night in a couple of months, but I had not had issues before.

I tried to dig into it at the dock but could not resolve my issue. I did find 2 broken wires (corroded) at the 9 pin connector in the back of the hull near the battery. I quick spliced them, but still no lights. (one red wire, which I now know is power to my fuse block, and a brown, which I think is for my bilge pump, manual on) so I ran home in the dark with no lights. ( I did have my nav system and a bunch of flashlights, but wife was scared we would get ran over.)

So the next day I dug in and found the main power feed to my fuse block was open, and after fixing that I found the wire going from the fuse block to the light switch was also open....!! WHAT! So I cut the ends off it and put new connector on it and still no go! Funny thing is that it was lighting up my test light, and my anchor light, but not my bow lights. So I made a new wire from my block to switch and I had light!


I would love to rewire the whole boat, but do not know where to start. Can I get a new boat harness? I called wellcraft and the guy kind of laughed at me. :cautious:
IMG20250517225918.jpg
you can see how bad all the wires look. I need to cut them all out...
 

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I had to rewire mine also. Just ripped it all out and started all over. still ended up with a birds nest, but at least its MY birds nest. I have an OB, so i did not touch the engine wiring harness.

Use marine tinned wire
 
Yeah, I my engine harness is also separate. And so was my nav electronics.

I see a whole rewire in my future, but prob not until winter. Too darn hot right now in central FL.
 
Been there done that. We all have been I bet. The best thing to do is take it all out. And start from scratch.
Use tinned wire. Get a fuse block and run all your power off of that.
Get different color wires so you can identify what is going to
Get heat shrink connections
Get heat shrink ends
Have a heat gun
And two heavy wires from the battery to the fuse block. Maybe 8 or 10 awg
Do one at a time.
It’s easy and fun when you get it done. Also make sure all your switches are working.
 
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