My V20 wiring project - Need Help!

C

chrisrub

Member
So I would like to tackle the wiring on the boat this year. I just want everything to work correctly for once. As of now, half of the switches do not work, my tilt/trim gauge does not work, and I have too many (10+) leads going to the pos/neg battery posts. Any suggestions on where to start would be great.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/48525149@N02/

That's the link to some photos I took yesterday. In there are some pics of the current wiring (It's a mess but not as bad as some I've seen). Everything seems really simple, and I think if I take the "one wire at a time" approach it could be an easy job. The part I'm not satisfied with is the multiple leads going to the battery. It seems every time someone has worked on the wiring for the boat and added a device/light/pump, they ran the wiring straight to the battery.

How can I fix this? Is it a busbar or fusebox that I need? I can read a schematic and know what I need as far as gauge size and materials (adhesive lined shrink tubing, proper terminals and crimpers, etc)

These are the things I am going to need wired:

- Running and Anchor lights
- One or two small deck lights
- Compass light
- Garmin 500 series ff/gps
- Auto/On/Off bilge pump switch (this i want hard-wired to the battery)
- Horn
- VHF Radio
- Basic AM/FM/IPOD ready Jensen Marine Radio with two speakers
- Power Tilt/Trim switch
- Live Well Pump switch
- Gauges (fuel, tach, voltage, etc)
- Potentially the windshield wiper.. haven't decided

Other than cleaning up and replacing some terminals on the engine feed, I don't plan on doing much with that. I do have new analog gauges I'm planning to install as well. My plan is as such: once I figure out how to eliminate the numerous feeds going battery direct, I will draw up a schematic and take my time to do it right. If I can do one wire at a time, I will. If not, I'll take lots of pictures and tear everything out to start over.

But then I think to myself that my OMC Sea Drive is probably not long for this world. Is it worth redoing everything or should I just patch it up and deal with it until she croaks and then redo everything with a newer powerplant in a year or so.

I'm open to any suggestions!
 
First thing i would do is take ALL those positives out of the battery and connect them to a Blue Seas 12 gang fusable box. If they are any fuses on the wires(+) going to the battery, throw them away and cut the wire before the fuse and connect to the Blue seas terminals. Get self some red gauge wire and black 8 gauge wire and connect the negative from your battery to the Blue seas negative post and the red wire from your battery switch(if you have) to the positive post of the Blue seas. Now you can check if your horn and other stuff work. If they don't, shut down the battery and check for continuity on your switches. If you have continuity on ON and no continuity on OFF, your swithes work. Problem is your accesories. When you install the radio, make sure the memory wire(usually orange) is connected to the battery all the time so you don't loose time and station pre sets.
This is the Blue seas fuse block http://bluesea.com/category/5/21/productline/126

This is the battery switch
http://bluesea.com/category/1/productline/2
 
Your boat looks like mine a couple of years ago. I finally got tired of having the birds nest under the helm and redid the wiring and gauges. Once i got into the project it wasn't that bad. I pulled about a mile of wires that went to nowhere out of the boat. I tried to keep it simple with my new install and eliminate a few circuits and tie a few together that would be used together. Good luck, you'll have peace of mind when it's finished.
 
Thanks for the quick replies. I'm going to pick up that fuse box for now and start drawing up a diagram of what I will have as part of the system. I'll keep you posted as I progress!
 
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