newbee wiring question

[sanjoman]

First off I am not an electrician by any means, I have never rewired a boat and dont really know what I am doing, so please bear with me. I have a 16 foot aluminum boat that was in dire need of having the floor boards pulled replaced and recarpeted, all which I had never done but it came out sweet :D. In the process I decided to redo all of the nasty broken wire that was in the bottom of the boat. Here is my problem (at least one of them LOL) I havent got a clue. At the back of the boat is a power strip with jumpers in it. it is a strip with pairs of screws going down. I understand I can by pass this, and just run off the battery. I have switches (Lights etc). My thought was I could run a 14 gauge wire straight from the battery, to the top of the switch, then run a line from the bottom of the switch to the fuse box (buss side) another line from the non buss side of the fuse box directly to the light and walah I would have lights on when needed off when not. WRONG not dice no lights. Again I am not learned in this trade.
Can anyone help me on this project?
and I thought this was going to be easy :rolleyes:
thanks gang,
Dave

[Fast Fred]

well not sure what your wirein, but got some DC tips for you,
you got to make a loop, no mater what, the pos comes from the batt, to the on, off swich, then to your what ever, lights , gauges, ect,... from your what ever, it goes back to ground on the batt. flip the swich loop is compleat.. light or what ever turns on. you follow?:cool:

[Fish]

hey sanjoman, welcome to scream and fly. Here is a wiring color chart that might help too. It is basically the color codes for what goes to what on boats and trailers.

[ShorePounder]

I think Fred's on target. You've got the hot side run, now you need to get grounded. If you can run plumbing, you can run wire. Wire is basically a hose or pipe that electricity runs through. If the electricity has no flow path, lights don't work and stereos don't thump.

If I read right, you originally had a line running from the battery, to a terminal strip set up as a main buss and then one of the runs off of the buss went to the fuse panel. You then bypassed the terminal strip and went straight from the battery to the fuse panel. That's all fine and well. No harm done there. Find the wires that go to your lights and trace them back through whatever switch they're on and then to the fuse panel. The wire that runs from the fuse panel to the switch is the hot wire (typically, but not always red). That's your 12 volts. Thinking back to the water analogy, we've found the main line (wire from the fuse panel) and the spigot (switch) now we have to make sure there's a drain (ground). Each light should have two wires, one is the hot wire (the wire that feeds the 12V) and a ground (the one that drains back to the battery so to speak). You know that the hot wire came from the switch, so any wire on the lights that is attached to that switch is the hot wire. The ground is the other one (typically black). It should be tied to a wire path that runs back to the negative terminal on the battery. You have to have both sides, hot and ground to complete the circuit.

I hope this helps, if I'm not clear or you don't understand something, let me know and I'll try to explain it better. I do some of this junk for a living and I either over simplify it, or complicate it when I try to explain things. I can't seem to find middle ground :)

It's not difficult, once you've got the basics down and know what is what, you've got it licked.

[sanjoman]

thank you for your help. Brian, you have me on the way. I am going to get rid of alot of the wireing mess and basiclly start over. I wont touch the ignition, but I will be replacing the rest of the wiring. the last owner had all of the wire on the floor and when I pulled the floors they were submerged in water. (I found and sealed the leaks, they werent bad)
expains why some of the equipment had failed. Thanks again for the help. I truly appreciate it.
Dave

[BUSHWACKER]

Check out Greg's post on wiring on the HOME PAGE in the right collumn :)