1990 Dash Wiring

TX Foilhead wrote: Duplex wire is just 2 wires that have a cover around both, it's handy because you only have to pull 1 thing. Like Eric said, it's like plumbing so I did both sides. After some discussion on other boards I decided to get my hot from the 50 amp breaker. Never saw a good explanation, but the general consensus was the 50 amp breaker protects the wiring to the dash should something go wrong with the alternator or the battery.

I second this. And at $3 a foot for wire, it saved me an extra $15 since the battery is under the rear seat in the sport. If you ran to the battery, I would add a fuse there but this means more connections.

Dave, if you do a google search for duplex at west marine, it comes up right away. Like I said earlier, I used 8ga, but if I did it again, I would use 10ga. 8ga connectors are hard to find and it's thick wire to work with. If you are ambitious or running high power amps or accessories, maybe 8 ga would make you feel better though.

Daveinater wrote: confirm exactly where you ran that duplex from and to,

Load side of the main breaker for the + feed and engine block for the -.

Then, I prefer up to added terminal strips under the dash so you csn branch off from them instead of trying to tap into the existing daisy chains. The terminal strips also give you more room for future add-ons.

Solderless ring terminals for 8ga are not hard to find but I suggest getting the ones with the heat shrink insulation on them. Good old McMaster has them.

8ga, by # 10 stud ring terminals

OK. I have been putting off fixing my weak ground on my SAN for long enough. I have been stalling for 6 years.
I have a 2 ga. power and ground cable from my batteries to terminal blocks, and then they branch to my amplifiers. Is there any reason I cannot simply tag an 8 ga. ground wire from the ground block to my ignition, rather than going all the way back to the batteries? If I elect to run an additional power wire, I would come off the perko.

Sorry, still 12V challenged for the most part.

thanks

I went and got some 10ga wire and a couple appropriate ring terminals at lunch. I am just going to do the ground first and see how that works. If that is not the complete solution, then I will run a wire from the perko, and definitely fuse it. I am 12v challenged, but not that much so.

thanks

Mike

I don't see a problem with the ground wire if all you batteries are grounded to that spot and it's grounded to the motor. I do try and make my wiring easy for someone else to figure out so you might want to do the same for a future owner or someone working on it. The problem with wiring to the Perko switch would be that wire is connected straight to the battery and might not be fused. I've burnt up a couple of wiring harnesses on other things and it's a PITA to have to clean up and redo. I'm also not real clear how the newer boats are wired, so you might want to look over the diagrams before you start. I spent a few nights looking at the diagrams, and searching online before I decided what to do. Then I ran it buy a couple of engineers at work just to make sure my thinking was right. It's not that hard once you look at it a spend a little time figuring it out.   

Mike,

That was my lame attempt at humor. Don't listen to a word I say.

(When you're done, you can do my boat).

Have a good weekend,

Dave

All,

Just wanted to give a quick updated on MY dash wiring project.

First off, special thanks to Nick for his awesome wiring diagram. I'm especially impressed that he took the time to figure it out after my personal look under the dash.

I didn't take any photos but just a few things to note:

My 1992 Sport did not have a "daisy chain" like was noted in Nick's post. Instead, it had the engine ground to a butt splice (it looked factory) which then went to two one large grouping of wires, each into a very large butt splice (again, it was factory). The first butt splice had all the grounds for the dash switch "ON" indicator lights (next to each C/B switch). Off of that splice, there was one jumper wire which went to the second large butt splice which had all the grounds for most of the instrument cluster.

Additionally, the ground wires for a couple smaller harnesses were tapped in to the instrument cluster grounds via butt splices.

A mechanic buddy of mine made a very nice buss bar and soldered some heavy duty jumpers between all the contacts on one side and made a 10 gauge "feeder wire" into that side, with a butt splice, where I attached the new ground wire from the engine (just like Nick did). I screwed the buss bar to the side panel under the dash to keep it secured. I then took the few odd rogue ground wires, snipped each, installed a ring terminal and fed it direct to that buss bar. I snipped the jumper between the two large butt splice junctions and fed each butt splice to the buss bar as well.

I started the boat and viola! No weird indications, no "jumps" when the lights were turned on and my voltmeter reads a steady 14 volts! (It never read above 10 v but I knew the alternator was doing it's job since I tested it with a voltmeter). Additionally, after running the boat all weekend, I discovered that my "warm operating temperature" issues were ground-related as well. Instead of running 160-180 (and close to 190-200 at times), it ran 140-160 (and never above) all weekend.

Lesson learned: These boats seem prone to bad ground issues. If you're chasing down some weird indications, start there first!

Again, thanks to Nick for his hard work, diagrams and post which inspired me to (finally) attack this, and to the rest of you who added in valuable information.

Dave that's great!

Threadjack...

Nick, lets see some pics of that jump boat!!!

Nick,

Are these drawings had drawn on paper ?

Old thread, but was informative - I finally added the extra hot-feed to the ignition breaker today. I gained about 1/2 volt per the dash voltmeter.

I pretty much followed what was discussed here but I also added a fuse for the new 10 gage wire - my thought was that if the main wire ever was somehow taken out of the circuit, the 10 gage wire would only be protected by the 50 amp breaker (do you smell something burning?)

The fuse is tie-wrapped to the breaker bracket:

the top sides of the breakers are all daisy chained together, so you can attach your 12v ig wire from the stereo to the bottom part of the breaker. The preferred method for adding the ground is to use a negative bus bar, but you can just pigtail the stereo ground with the others. Not sure if i have seen much discussion on the 96, but a lot of people have run new power to the ig breaker and a new ground, both increasing the size from 14 gauge to 10 gauge.

Not familiar with the yellow wire, so I can't comment on that without looking at a diagram.

-Spiral

UPDATE: I just looked at the diagram on the first page. You shouldn't have to do anything with the yellow wire. Seems odd they even wired the stereo off the clock to begin with. In a car, the ignition acts as the switch for the stereo, but when using the acc switch, that will do the same thing, so you don't need to wire the stereo to the ignition key.

The logic for the 93 is basically the same as the diagram for the 89 that you'll find under reference > miscellaneous on this site.

thanks much. I read through your thread..and will be adding the extra ground and hot runs from the engine to the dash.