Ok, another silly newbie question

[mobbs]

I recently bought an 88' 20' toon with an evinrude 28 spl. I'm more familiar with cars than I am with boats, and even with cars my electrical knowledge is lacking. Do these outboards come with an alternator or some way to charge the battery while it is running? And as far as supplying power to the various components on the boat, in my case only lights and a livewell pump, does the motor need to be running, or does the key just need to be in the "On" position? I am trying to track down some no-power gremlins or at least some reason why my nav/anchor lights don't work but I was curious as to how these batts stay charged up, or do they just need to be recharged every so often?

Thanks

[Bamaman]

Boats will often have stators under the flywheel--essentially built in alternators--to charge the battery.

Light systems are separate issues from the engines, and are usually driven off a fuse protected circuit wired to the battery with small wires.

[mobbs]

Thanks for the quick reply! Now I need to chase down where the wires are frayed, because none of the lights are receiving power, however the ignition and killswitch do.

[mrlouis]

couple things you can check, see if you have a master switch that cuts all power to anything other than the motor, also master fuses around the battery or at the fuse panel, if the motor turns over you have power for lights etc. otherwise as suggested battery is DEAD

[PlaynDoc]

I'm no electrical expert either.... but, check the ground wires. I've heard that's a common overlooked issue.

[mobbs]

Battery is new, like I said ignition works and killswitch works, both are located on the console and the motor does turn over. I did pull apart the console the other day and saw the fuse panel back there but all of the fuses, although old, look to be intact. Whoever wired it up didn't leave me enough slack in the wiring for me to mess around or manipulate the fuse panel so I kinda gave up (can't catch fish if I'm working on the boat!) but I did test the leads to the anchor light and the wires are not pushing any power, at least close to the anchor light or the nav lights.

[BobG]

I'm no electrical expert either.... but, check the ground wires. I've heard that's a common overlooked issue.

My boat is just like a Suzuki Samurai. Every time something stops working, the first thing you check is the ground connections.

Fuel gauge quit - bad ground.
Anchor light quit - bad ground.
Nav lights and docking lights quit - Bad Ground.

Grrrrrrr...

[mobbs]

Weirdest thing happened...tore apart the console and took off the light fixtures to test if they were getting power and nothing was working. Put everything back together because I got frustrated and went inside. Fast forward to a few days later when I go out back and start up the boat to warm it up and surprise! The lights have been on! I have no idea what or how that happened, but the nav lights and anchor light works now. Interesting...I suppose my next step is to equip it with a little better, more high vis lights now that they actually work!

[NonHyphenAmerican]

On my toon, the console has a rocker switch that turns all the "Extra's" on.

If that switch is "Off", the Nav/Anchor Lights, Courtesy Lights, Livewell, Radio and GPS/Depth/Fishfinder/Water Temp Unit do not work. But I can turn the key on and start the motor independently of those items.

So have you checked the position of all the switches to ensure that you're turned on and off for the "Accessories"?

[mobbs]

On my console, there are two switches. One for the Nav lights/anchor lights (up/down switch) and one for the livewell, also an up/down switch and those are the only 2 electrical components on the boat separate from the starter. Those are the only two switches. Perhaps there is something on the fuse box that is in the console, but when I took that out I didn't see any switches nor did I do anything other than spread some dielectric grease on the connections. Even after I did that they wouldn't work, so I gave up. It wasn't until a few days later when I came out that I noticed the lights were on and they all of a sudden worked. Maybe my lake community has a boat electric ninja that comes by at night and fixes all of your boat's electrical needs?