Getting Wired - Done

Last weekends visit to the boat didn't go as planned. I ended up leaving my cordless drill AND the drill bits at the house. Still, I didn't waste the day. I decided to look at one of the two light fixtures by the galley. This one I looked at has a rocker switch that goes one way for white light, and the other way.... didn't work.

Took it apart to see little compact fluorescent lights. One, on the side that wasn't working, with a red cover over the light for night time viewing. When I took down the fixture, I saw on the circuit board what looked like a diode had burned up and melted part of the fixture housing. Now, this side of the light has not worked since I bought the boat, so someone somewhere was probably very lucky to not have an electrical fire on board.

I thought of replacing the whole fixture but then talking with someone about that possibility, it was suggested I do something with LED strips... then remembered I still had some left over from lighting up the head. So, I got right to work taking out the circuit board out, and putting in a couple strips of LEDs. So, like it was originally intended, one side is white, and the other side is red.

So that was last weekend. For this weekend, so far, I finished the last bit of wiring today. Since I had a breaker panel made for the nav desk, I still needed to get power to it. I took 4 gauge wire and with some drilled holes, routed it halfway down the boat to the nav desk.

So now, I have a working VHF radio. I still need to route new RF cable between the radio and the bottom of the compression post where the cable going up to the masthead antenna will be connected.

Progress is good. :-)

Getting Wired Part 3

Got some wire supplies the other day. Had some additional wire I needed to replace/clean up. Mainly, I wanted to move the wires that cross in front of the engine out of the way. Along the way of planning this part of my refit, I saw one wire that wasn't even tinned (went to the starter), and most of the connectors didn't have any sort of heat-shrink. I felt it was a good idea to remedy those items.

I saw a lot of the wires went to a single-stud bus bar... not really a bus bar since there's only one post, but I wanted to install an actual bus bar to spread things out and have things better organized. The positive also has a cover. It was a little tight installing that one since there was so many other wires in the way but I got it where it would work out.

I found special connectors to use on this project. You'll see in the pictures below, they are 90 degree lug terminals. I mainly bought to come straight out from the selector switch to keep the wire from sharp bends. I previously had connectors touching at the battery switch so I wanted to prevent that. Now, when the switch is set to off, it's really off. The terminals are made by Panduit. The battery switch has 5/16" studs on the back so I got three of them (LCB2-56F-Q), and I bought one 3/8" (LCB2-56F-Q) that worked out well going from a fuse connected to the house battery and goes to the selector switch. (note: the description says pack of five, but the price is for individual connectors).

cleaning up these wires in the way

supplies laid out

old POS side

Old NEG side

 

Cover base

Bus Bar installed

Covered

first wire to the selector switch, going to the bus bar

The wire supplies didn't stay organized for very long, but still somewhat grouped together. The large tool with red handles are not bolt cutters, but actually a crimping tool for heavy duty lug terminals (for wire larger than 6ga). The yellow handled tool is a wire/cable cutter. Makes some nice clean cuts. The blue handled tool is a ratcheting type for crimping smaller gauge heat shrink (not insulated) terminals (the red, blue and yellow terminals in the bags).

It's pretty time consuming to take old wires out, run the new one's in, set the terminals, crimp, heat shrink, then install. While it doesn't look like much, I'm just getting started. Plenty more to follow on this project.

Getting Wired Part 2

It has been a good weekend. In an update to the previous post, I did some more wiring on the boat.

Spent a few hours today working on actually mounting/installing the Pronautic 1230P charger I bought TWO years ago. I recently ordered a couple of Firefly batteries for my new house bank. Since I want to make sure the batteries are taken care of, I had to get the charger set up. I ordered some 10/2 wire and some ring terminals from Genuinedealz to connect the charger to the batteries. While time consuming, it wasn't too difficult. I mounted the charger to a couple pieces of oak I had laying around and went head first into the starboard quarterberth to mount the setup to the bulkhead. A little tight but manageable.

I routed the new wires the same way they were with the old charger directly to the battery bank. When I flipped the breaker on the panel to turn on the charger, a fan started and in a moment, a click started charging to the batteries. Very happy this worked out. I don't have a starting battery yet and will run wires for one when the time comes. When I left the boat today, I turned on the vent fan that came with the Airhead for ventilation. The Airhead website said the fan draws .08 amp. So I figured even leaving it on for the week, or even two weeks, it wouldn't drain the battery too much, too fast. And now the charger is in place, I can top off the batteries during my visit.

In my last post, I mentioned ordering a panel from Front Panel Express using their software. Well, it came in and I'm pleased with how it turned out. Black anodized aluminum with engraved letters filled in with yellow, 7"w x 3.25"h. Everything lined up nicely for the toggle breakers. I'd say this was a good test panel for the possibility of changing the main breaker panel by the companionway. Changing the main panel isn't a near-term project but something I can play around with in the design in the meantime.

First look in the box. Vacuum sealed on cardboard.

only have two breakers at the moment

got a bus bar made for attaching the main positive line

This panel will be mounted just under the front of the nav desk where an old cassette car stereo was mounted. This will be used to wire the VHF in its new location, just above the nav desk. Later, perhaps other items. At least it won't require multiple wires to be sent back the main panel, keeping the wiring clutter to a minimum.

Lastly, the mast. The shop I'm having do a paint job is also doing a few modifications. They changed the setup by the masthead. This will help keep wires and halyards from interfering with each other. They're changing the location of the conduit for running wires up. Instead of being on the back side where the track is, they installed a new one on the front side of the mast.

The anchor/tri-color light was in the middle of the masthead and now on its own pedestal on the side. The wires will run up the middle of the tube instead of being external. They also patched up a lot of holes, the largest being the hole from the baby forestay that I didn't intend on using and also a hole used for a box sheave. They patched up a few smaller holes around the mast and boom that were mostly unused. A new location for the VHF antenna is also installed. Soon, it will be sent for painting and then the hardware will be reinstalled.

The guy at the rigging shop suggested connections shouldn't be outside of the boat. So he's talking about putting a short tube on the mast step that will go down a bit (maybe 1") into the deck. Then connections would be made inside the boat at the bottom of the compression post. I'll still have to see how big the holes are at the bottom of the compression post to see how feasible it would be for any connectors to pass through. Below is a picture of a tube on the mast step at the shop I used to visualize what it might look like. The final product certainly wouldn't be as high as in the picture. Should be shorter that would still allow the mast to be stepped/unstepped by an owner.

 At this time, not much to update in regards to the insurance claim on the fallen tree hitting the boat. I've been told I need to contact workshops to get detailed quotes for getting the damages fixed.

Lately, I've been side tracked, or maybe distracted, from a couple projects due to focusing on the mast and the tree damaging the boat. I hope to get back on track and tackle the major projects I've been working on over the summer that still isn't quite done yet.