Pontoon Boat & Deck Boat Forum

Geez , every time I mess with my pontoon boat I find wiring that is no longer in use or ether done wrong . So far Ive pulled 250-300 feet of unused wiring out of her and at lest a box of wiring nuts ..... yes wiring nuts on a boat . In one section a foot long they had 4 wire nuts on the same wire . The ground wiring was a joke and the in some cases switches were wired to themselves . The lights were fun , at first I noticed that the lead coming in was on the wrong terminal making a 3 pos switch a 2 pos switch, swapped that and tryed it. With the switch set to anchor the bow lights came on , switch to nav and the anchor light came on , so swapped them to the correct position but then noticed the dash lights came on with the anchor light so I figured something else was going on , sure enough wire nuts right below the deck where the wires were reversed , cut them out used soldered heat shrink butt splices and swapped the wires now all is good again . One day Ill get it all One day .

Sounds like somene who owned in the past should have taken a basic wiring course . At least you are getting it corrected for safety and piece of mind.

Thanks
The sad thing is the previous owner paid some one 800 bucks to make this mess after a rodent chewed through the console harness. I feel bad for the PO after going through all of wiring so far which reenforced why I never hire anyone to work on anything for me.Iwas talking to my friend that is in the middle of his forth boat resto and thinks it should be a law stating you are allowed to beat who ever is found using wire nuts on anything that is automotive or boat related with all the wire nuts off of it in a sock or pillow case.

Thats the very reason when i did my rebuild a few years ago. I stripped out all of the old wiring and started fresh With 6 gage wire to a new 14 circuit ATC fuse block and over time i added the instrument I actually needed. While not matching it gets the job done. The compass was the last touch.