Never, ever use those if you want your wiring to last.

ANY time you are doing wiring on a salt water boat remember the simple rule "S&S".. Solder and seal. Solder your connections and then seal them with the kind of heat shrink tubing that has a sealant inside of it so that it shrinks and seals at the same time. :head:

It’s been to damn cold to work on the boat
 

Well the cold up here has really slowed down the work.
I’ve been inside soldering wiring harnesses for the new deck lights.
This week was the first time I’ve been able to get outside.

So I went a little over kill on the wiring. The lights and bilge are soldered, two coats of liquid electrical tape, heat shrink tubing, then electrical tape over top. I pretested every connection to make sure I only ran the wires once.
Today I soldered the new led lights on. Four white deck lights, two on each side. And four blue lights hidden in the rod boxes. I’ll get photos of the blue ones when I put in the rod boxes.

Finished the new control panel, the large wooden space will get a flush mount 7 inch fish finder once I order one.


Stay warm

Hey guys quick question.

I just finished rewiring the dash and had one question The purple wire that is the "accessory" wire. Is that the wire you connect to the gauges to have them light up?

I think that gives u power downstream of the key switch for whatever you want to be energized when the key is in the on position. The gauges themselves will have different inputs for illumination. Usually you only want them lit up at night, so i run mine with my running lights, others put a seperate toggle for that, not dependent on the key switch.

I seem to remember that the original gauges had purple wire daisy chaining the illumination power from one to another.
That diagram would indicate that it was powered by the key switch and so the gauges were illuminated whenever the key was on. I remember that my old Merc tach was only lit if the motor was running.

Phat is right that it doesn't necessarily need to be on the key. You could power the gauge light from the Nav/Anchor switch.
However, that would mean your gauges are lit even if you are anchored with the motor off or drifting with the motor off. So you would be drawing power for no good reason while your motor is off.

I would say that its up to you as to which gauges you want lit and when.

Update
 

So it’s been a long time since I’ve had a min to take pictures and write an update. Thangs have taken way longer then I would have liked but I’m still meeting the time line to get the boat out in two weeks.so the wiring is all done except for the new bow lights need to be mounted and sealed. Tons of new teak cup holders and phone, key, junk boxes. The doors to the batteries are on I just need to clean them up and make them look better.

Few more. I***8217;m working on a anchor pulpit, will mount a kicker engine bracket, and clean her up there is fiberglass dust EVERYWHERE!


The last thing I did was go way out of my comfort zone and removed and replaced all the zippers for the encloser. I found out I***8217;m not good at sewing! But I should work I just have to test them on the boat.

Looks awesome. Lots of well thought storage and love the battery boxes. Will be interested to hear how you feel about the new weight distribution when running..

What are the batteries sitting on?