I need ballast puppy switch wiring help...

[bchesley]

Well, I am extremely frustrated. I figured out that the guys that assembled the switches for my ballast puppy pumps did it on friday afternoon after a few beers at lunch.

I had the entire system wired, switches mounted, wires all zip tied up nice and clean and was ready to figure out which wires to hook up at the pump for the correct orientation of the switch. Put the first fuse in the block and connected the orange to orange and black to yellow from switch. Hit the switch to the fill position and nothing but a lit up switch. Confused I switched it to the empty side and popped the fuse. Check my connections and switched the pump wires orange on black and yellow on orange, and the same thing happened.

Next I thougt well maybe one of the wires on the back of the switch was in the wrong slot. So I went to the next pump. Next pump I installed the fuse and the switch instantly lit up, but when switched either direction popped the fuse.

Last I though surely one of the three will be wired right, but to no avail the last one was just like the first.

I then decided to see what it would do disconnected from the pump all together and they all still popped the fuse so I know its in the switch configuration.

I decided to go ahead and pull the installed switches to take a look. Each switch is wired different in some way. I have searched the internet and can not find any definative wiring diagrams.

Please can someone with a working pump tell me where the wires are supposed to be on the back of the switch. I am using like the instructions say, red positive from battery, black to ground, yellow and orange to the pump for the reversing polarity.

Mucho Mucho Mucho Gracias in advance............

Brad

[WakeSlayer]

RE: I need ballast puppy switch wiring help...

You are not alone, my friend. I think all these ****ed things come like that. Both of mine were Mickey Mouse too.
I suspect the switch assemblers ONLY work Friday afternoons after a trip to the LQ.
I cannot go look at mine today cause it is below zero out. I can call a buddy, he may remember, and his boat is in a heated garage. He was the one who had to figure out his,. and mine.
I will post here if he can help you.

Sorry. You would think they would get it right.

Mike

[WakeSlayer]

RE: I need ballast puppy switch wiring help...

Brad,

I talked to Z and he has a loose switch that he thinks he corrected before he put it in his boat parts box. He said he can go look at the actual installed ones later tonight if this doesn't fix it for you.
Look at the back of the switch with the front side oriented "Fill" on top, "Empty" on the bottom.
There should be four terminals on the right, and 3 on left. His loose switch is wired as below.

Left side ____ Right Side

XXX ______ Red
Orange ____ Black
Yellow ____ Red
Black ____ Orange

If yours are wired like that, then we will need to look at the installed ones. If yours are different, try this and then go by the instructions. It sounds like you have two differently wired switches, which was the case with him, except it was 4 out of five. He had one that was correctly wired. My two were indentically wrong.
Again, no promises, but he is pretty sure he corrected this one.

Mike

[bchesley]

RE: I need ballast puppy switch wiring help...

You have no idea how much I appreciate this. I read your post and ran to the lake as fast as I could. I was dissapointed in what I found. Below is the way mine are setup. I went back and checked each one and they all pop the fuse in the empty position but 1 and 3 light up but do nothing to the pumps.

#1 XXX Red
Black Black
Orange Red
Yellow Orange

#2 XXX Red
Orange Black
Yellow Red
Black Orange

#3 XXX Red
Orange Black
Black Red
Yellow Orange

None of them are the same. If he could look at the installed ones that would be awesome. Thanks.........

[bchesley]

RE: I need ballast puppy switch wiring help...

Ok. How about a big ole freakin DOH! I just figured it out. I made an assumption that the wiring coming onff of the switch was that the black wires on the switch were actually supposed to be ground wires and the red were positives. The yellow and orange were the trigger wires for the pumps. Nowing better I should never assume anything. I have been studying double pole double throw switches on the internet all day adn finally found an article that explained it better.

Here is how it supposed to work. Black wires go to the black wire of the pump. Orange wire goes to the orange on pump. Red is positve from the battery, but the one that got me was the yellow is actually ground. Big mistake on my part. The other issue is all the pumps were different configurations and that was killing me.

It should be connected as follows, and I have labeled what the pin number is.

XXX Red
Orange-1 Black-4
Yellow-2 Red-5
Black-3 Orange-6

The way it works is the middle supply the power and ground and then power to the top right pin to illuminate the switch when on. When the switch is in the up position the black wire on 4 gets a positive charge and the Orange on 1 gets the negative connection. When the switch in in the down position the orange wire gets the positive charge and the black gets the negative connection. That is how it reverses the polarity. I really wish that I would have known what the wires did before I completely ran all the wires thinking red positive and black negative because I have to change them all on the back of the switch now to match my harness I built. Oh well at least I thin I can make it work now.

Brad

[WakeSlayer]

RE: I need ballast puppy switch wiring help...

Sweet dude. Glad to hear you got it worked out. It makes no sense whatsoever that they do that. We have both complained about it to no avail, obviously.

[WakeSlayer]

RE: I need ballast puppy switch wiring help...

This thread is almost worth making a sticky out of it as a lot of people are going to run into this.

[bchesley]

RE: I need ballast puppy switch wiring help...

That would be a great idea. I am definately going to add this info to my ballast thread so if someone does search for in install it will come up. I am going this afternoon to fix it and will post results. Thanks for your help.

Brad

[bchesley]

RE: I need ballast puppy switch wiring help...

Well..... It works. Whoo Hoo. The above wire locations and colors are correct and work well. I decided to keep it like the switch diagram you posted. I am super pumped. No pun intended.

Brad

[WakeSlayer]

RE: I need ballast puppy switch wiring help...

Great to hear !!!