Broken Positive Battery Terminal Question

[Hollywood]

I'm with bobchris on this one, my cable is getting pounded all the time.

Who's got 0 or 2 gauge battery wires in their boat?

[MHayes]

LOL Hollywood!

BTW, the cables in our Air are 2 gauge.

[clayk]

the cheap one will work for years with no problems , just be sure when you cut the old one off there is no green corrosion on the wire , and if there is just strip it back a little father and then clamp it down. if you are worried about future corrosion put some copper based anti-sieze on it .

[lukeduke95]

I just finished replacing all the wiring in my boat with 1/0. Figured we would go a little bigger this time. They didn't have any 2ga in stock, so I upped it to the 1/0. It looks cool, I am guessing I am getting an extra 25 horsepower from it.


I'll take some photos in a bit and put them up. I even did a little better than the boys at CC did. All my positive wire is RED, not black. And all negative is black. Sometimes I wonder......

[patoloco]

So I hooked up the cheapo so I can get on the water this weekend...but I have a couple more questions...

New and old battery both showed ~12.5 - 12.7 ish with a volt meter at the battery with boat off.

Wth boat off, KEY ON, which also turns on depth finder and PP...the volt meter and PP read 10.2v...as the pp tries to turn on the servo motor, it pins down to about 8v...beeps, resets, 10.2, 8v, repeat etc.

It was this way with the old battery before..but...is this normal? Should these items draw the volts down to 10.2...then to 8? I was kind of hoping the new battery would be enough to keep the PP on so its not constantly beeping and turning off and on while I'm trying to start the boat.

[jonbassham]

Thats not normal... somewhere in your electrical system is a weak link. Check cables, connectors, etc from the battery to the console.

Do you have one or two batteries? If two, check the perko switch or combiner.

Also, check the battery ground at the engine block... make sure it is tight.

[patoloco]

One battery for now...although I'd like to keep the old optima in the boat as a backup somehow,but I'll save that for another day.

Engine block ground is tight. When the boat is running, the voltmeter runs up around 13+ which seems right...depth finder is wired straight to the ignition and PP is wired to the Tach per the instructions.

Note that the 10-8v bounce thing only happened after install of perfect pass..before that it still only read 10v at the dash.

[jonbassham]

So basically the dash gets a limited amount of power when the boat is off...

For reference, my SAN gets at least 12.4ish when i have the motor off but dash on.

Sounds like the power or ground from the battery to the dash is not providing enough voltage. Just barrely enough with no perfect pass and now not enough period.

Where exactly is your PP, tach and dash instrument's power coming from... i have a fuse box in the kicker panel... i assume you have something similiar... what size wire is run to that from the battery?

I think that might be your problem... too small wire size.

I get 12.4ish when engine off and then 14.1ish when engine on and regular electrical load.

[patoloco]

Thanks!

I broke out the tester and it shows full voltage, 12.4 at the ignition switch on the dash with everything off....anything else to check?

[Brad_K]

I think it makes more of a difference if you use the boat in salt water.

[Onthewater]

i am an a$$

so very true,

marine wiring has a thicker covering of insulation and a different type of material to withstand the vibration and pounding that a car doesn't see but a boat does.

And If you like replacing stuff twice then knock your self out and use the cheapist *** you can, but then you really won't be saving much when you have to redo the job when it fails prematurely, then maybe your used to that, now you have doubled your cost when you could have done right the first time and saved yourself time and money.

spittin wisdom left and right,

what you wrote makes no sense. where did i ever say i bought the cheapest sh*t i could? it is actually opposite of that.

pounding away

[bobchris]

I said use the cheapist stuff you want, not that you did,

It's funning reading this post and the guy chasing his tail and all of the great advice about cheking these doing that when the problem is the battery, 12.5V on a new battery or old battery means it's bad or needs charged. If you do not have 13.5-14.0V at the battery posts then the battery is bad or needs charged.