Winter Work

We started going through the electrical system on the boat in March. Further is on her cradle and wrapped for winter but there is a small zippered access door. Once inside and zipped I was able to work in a sweatshirt and glove liners. The project began by just mapping out everything that was powered on the boat and then tracing each wire back to the panel.

It was a mess.

I made some copies of the blueprints and started mapping out the routes on the copies. To start making sense of it all in my head I started labeling wires and making close up sketches in a notebook of each device connection block.

The original idea was to just get it all mapped and rewire this fall. This soon changed when I started to find multiple runs that were duplicated or not needed at all. I decided to take these out, while doing this I started to find wiring that was burnt.

Above was the main lead from the battery charger back into the DC system. It was 3 strand AC wire and pretty undersized as you can see.

There was a variable resistor device wired into the alternators feed back into the DC system. This was wired on green boat ground wire and included in the run from the alternator to the ignition switch and then to the starter.

More burnt wire on charger output. Looks like it melted. So someone taped it to fix it. Not good.

I just took out the whole charging system since it was all so screwy. The alternator looks pretty new and has the regulator built in so it stayed.

This left us with some ugly holes in the panel.

I also removed all wiring that was routed through the bilge and then through the engine compartment.  Everything was black with oil and some was sitting in water.
All wiring was labelled, disconnected pulled back and cleaned with simple green.


Below is all removed wiring that was in place but either duplicates or unused. There is also the line used to mark the conduit distances in this shot.

I then rerouted everything in some clear PVC tubing from home depot.

The engine compartment is much cleaner now.

Over the weeks I've been researching in a few books and reading online about how to properly design/build the charging system. I'll post the results of all that next.