Pontoon Boat & Deck Boat Forum

Hi all.

Had a problem with my brand new boat today. I plugged in the pump to blow up my tube and all of a sudden it stopped working. I blamed the pump at first, but later in the day I went to charge my phone and even though the light on the charger was lit....the phone would not charge.

Now keep in mind.....my boat is on a mooring. It's a royal pain in the butt to bring my truck (at 10mpg) up to the lake, pull the boat out of the water at a public dock and drive it 30 miles to the dealer and then repeat the process to put it back in so I'm hoping to avoid bringing it back to the dealer. I'm going to call him Monday morning, but I was hoping someone on here could give me an idea of what could be wrong.

Thanks.

Dave

Fuse I bet

I discovered on my Bennington that both of the 12v lighter type jacks on the helm were wired backwards from the factory. I blew up a couple things just like you did before I discovered it. I'd measure the polarity coming out of there with a meter to see if positive and negative are reversed.

Did the pump run for a while then quit or quit right off the bat? Either way I would be more than willing to bet that nothing more than a fuse as blown due to overload. When you check to see if the fuse is blown make note of its amperage and then take a look at the amp draw of your pump is the rated amperage more or less than what your power outlet is rated at?

I'll wager the pump overloaded the circuit, especially if it is the helm cig. lighter plug. I had to install a couple of specially wired ones at the back to blow up toys - heavy duty each with 30 amp fuses.

Yump I wired a power outlet as close to the battery as I could with 12 gauge wire and while a fuse is indeed prudent I skipped that step for the time being as I did not have a heavy duty one within sight....

tms0425 wrote:I discovered on my Bennington that both of the 12v lighter type jacks on the helm were wired backwards from the factory. I blew up a couple things just like you did before I discovered it. I'd measure the polarity coming out of there with a meter to see if positive and negative are reversed.

Hmm, I had the same thing on my helm 12v socket, my phone would never charge while hooked up, but no fuses blew (my phone has protection build in to keep this from damaging the phone, nice of them to do this). I verified 12v at the socket so I was stumped (did not verify polarity). So, I had to take it back to the dealer because my horn never worked from day one. I asked them to look at the socket also. Picked it up the next day, service manager said they did not find anything and the horn works, Hmmmmmm. I see the salesman that sold me the boat, told him I forgot to ask the service manager what they found, he said, "ahh, the factory wired the horn and socket backwards, no big deal."

With it being new you probably have a breaker. It is usually a little white button. Just reset it by pushing it back in. As other said your load may be too much for the breaker that is installed.

If its an iPhone you are trying to charge be sure you are using good (approved) cables and chargers. Some of the generic brands will show connected but will not charge. Check the cable and 12v plug.

I just put this in in place of the 12v in the helm.

http://www.amazon.com/Blue-Sea-Systems- ... B0082CXEI8

Thanks for all the replies! I'll check the fuses today. I took the cover off briefly yesterday, but since I had company on the boat I didn't want to take much time checking it out. I'm hoping there's a fuse diagram on the cover?


thanks again

dmn8 wrote:If its an iPhone you are trying to charge be sure you are using good (approved) cables and chargers. Some of the generic brands will show connected but will not charge.

This is very true for the iPhones for some reason; we have both iPhone and Droid in the house and it's the iPhone that's most fussy about off brand cables whereas my LG phone will accept any old cord with the only issue noted is slow charging on small diameter cords...

Those air pumps pull big amps. I'd say at least 15 amps. Most power outlets only have like 5-10 amp fuses on them. I wired a quick 2 prong hook up direct to the battery (with a 30 amp inline fuse at the battery).

teecro wrote:Yump I wired a power outlet as close to the battery as I could with 12 gauge wire and while a fuse is indeed prudent I skipped that step for the time being as I did not have a heavy duty one within sight....

I would use a auto resetting circuit breaker

Not sure if it is still the same, but we had a similar problem on our 2008 Premier. The first time we tried to blow up our tube, the pump quit, and so did the courtesy lights and run lights and radio. I ended up crawling in under the console and found an inline fuse that had blown. It was only a 10 amp fuse, and ran the courtesy lights, radio, and the run lights and the accessory plug. I replaced it with a 15 amp. But still didn't use it again for the pump, I cut the plug off the pump, and installed alligator clips along with an inline fuse and now I connect it directly to the battery.

My cigarette lighter plug at the helm died, so I just installed one of these on my battery.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0041C ... UTF8&psc=1 and this


http://www.amazon.com/Battery-Tender-08 ... auto_img_y