My oil guage freaks out when I turn on the navigation lights. ?

[SoldTheBayliner]

It's a 2000 Super Air, I've owned it 5 days...

The oil guage appears to be working great when no lights are on, but when I turn on the Nav lights, the guage itself does not light up like the others...instead, it stays dark and the needle launches to fully pinned, beyond the realm of normal oil guage behavior. When I shut the lights off, it goes back to normal. It does this even if the engine isn't running and I hit the Nav light button. Everybody else lights up, oil guage goes fully pinned. Any ideas?

This boat has the digital guages (broken), and I am planning on ordering the Faria kit and replacing them soon...anything I can look for on the oil guage while I'm in there to correct this?

Also...maybe unrelated, but the anchor light isn't working. could be a bulb or something, but I couldn't get it to come on either.

Thanks for the help!!

[SoldTheBayliner]

That would be gAUge. How many times can you misspell that in one sitting?

[DanielC]

There might also be a bad ground on the oil pressure gauge. With the lights off, the gauge grounds through the lights. Turn the lights on, and the gauge loses that ground, and because the oil gauge is not grounded, the oil pressure gauge light cannot ground either, so it does not work.

I would look a lot less smart, if Firefox did not correct my spelling errors.

[SoldTheBayliner]

That makes good sense. Will I find an obvious ground wire/terminal on the back of the gauge?

[SeanNaPiob]

Each gauge should have an obvious ground, a connection for lights, and a connection for the input from the sending unit. I can almost guarantee it is a bad ground. I've worked on 12v wiring for 20+ years, cars, trucks, motorcycles, boats, emergency vehicles, etc..., and a bad ground will cause exactly what DanielC described. I had the same issue with 3 gauges on an old boat of mine, and once I went through all the wiring on the dash, cleaned up and secured all the grounds, everything worked perfectly.

[SoldTheBayliner]

Awesome, thanks. I will see if I can live with it until the new guages come and I'll do it all at once. Any risk of messing up the guage by running the nav lights in the meantime? Should I avoid using them until I get it sorted out?

[SeanNaPiob]

It shouldn't hurt the gauge. It's designed to handle the voltage.