Wiring new switch panel

I have my Papaws 1997 sprint 277 f/s boat. The wiring is a nightmare. 3 Out of 5 rocker switches work, the ones connected the grounding bus bar are the accessories, and the horn, the horns the only one that works of the two. The navigation/aerator, the bilge, and the power switch are not connected to the bus bar, but the power and bilge work fine.. The navigation switch no matter what won't turn off. Not unless you unplug it completely. I just bought a wholw
new rocker switch set, cause just replacing the switch itself didn't work at all. Figured it was all just from blown fuses and bad grounding. Anyone know
where
i can buy good/stromg
enough wire to ground it to the bus bar? What gauge? Does it have to be black? I'm not good with electronics but I ain't payin a shop out the ass to fix it, not yet at least.

If you are running the ground wire directly from the battery use 10 AWG as a minimum. 8 AWG is better. Be sure to use only marine grade (tinned) stranded wire. You can buy it online from West Marine or Jamestowne Distributors, among others. They have a variety of colors. However, you should use black for the ground wire.

At the battery, make sure that you are nylon lock nuts on the terminals, NOT wing nuts.

Patience is the key to working on old boat wiring...the first thing to determine is exactly what you have and how it is wired..especially if there has been additions to the original..make a little drawing of the wiring as you determine how its wired and make sure you understand it...a multi meter and ability to use it is another key point... if you don't understand how it is wired and replace all the switches etc and then have problems then you have another real mess on your hands...at this point you will HAVE to figure out what you got...keep in mind that you could also have bad components in an old boat and the switch and wiring for the device could be good..thats another area where the meter is required...

most boats were built with wiring as an afterthought and the connections are crimped..they are notorious for corrosion and bad connections..also where the small connections on gauges and switches are made they just crimp the connectors on..with time and expansion and heat they become bad... there is nothing wrong with crimping if its done right with the proper tool and connectors but you will be lucky if that is the case..

when digging into the wiring under the console I would have the battery disconnected unless I was at the measuring voltage point.in the trouble shooting procedure..

keep in mind that if a good wire was used in the original wiring that the wires themselves are probably.....


good luck and try not too get frustrated...

keep in mind that if a good wire was used in the original wiring that the wires themselves are probably ok.....

Yeah definitely gonna take some patience. I needed to replace the switches whether they were the issue or not, I say that because the rocker switches, well the switch itself on two have broken off. Nowhere to be found. This boat say for two years outside under a canopy. Anyway, like I said before, the grounding wires that go to the bus bar, (power switch, navigation and bilge pump switch) are nowhere to be found. I've been looking before but I cannot for the life of me find where they are grounded at. Have to be somewhere for it to work IMO. It's not going to be grounded to the battery, unless that's where these other switches are grounded at, but it will go the bus bar. Might be cheaper to do just the battery though. And yes I don't use
wing nuts.

Papyson is giving good advice.

On a boat 12 V system, a ground is a ground, whether it comes off the battery, or the engine block, or any place else. It is the return pipe for all of those electrons to get back to the battery. Typically there will be a ground wire from the battery negative post that finds its way to the helm console. When I rewired my own boat I ran an 8 AWG ground wire straight from the battery to a distribution bus under the console. I ran an 8 AWG positive wire from the battery switch to another bus under the console. From those two buses, I connected all of my equipment - VHF, MAP/GPS, digital depth finder, nav lights and running lights, gauges, etc. etc. The signal wires for the gauges will come off of the wiring harness from the motor (except for the fuel tank signal and the speed petit tube.) This set up assures that when you turn off the battery switch, everything is turned off (except the bilge pump, which is wired separately.)

That Sprint 277 looks like it likely has a pretty simple wiring scheme. So personally, if I were in your position, I would go ahead and rewire the whole thing with new wire and new connectors - at least new connectors. That way, you know everything in there - where each wire comes from and where each goes. Where a wire comes into either one of the two busses, label what it is. I use these little string tags that you can write on. That way, when you need to troubleshoot an electrical problem (which you inevitably will) you can easily identify what wires you need to be dealing with.

Did you look it up online the wiring scheme for the boat? Only ask cause it should be easier then it looks. This boat has been modified from the way it used to be wired. Only say that cause wires are
missing, broken, leading to nowhere, old wires are still sitting in the boat. Like the old trolling motor cables, the on board battery charger, the front running lights, the copper wires were completely black so they fried..

When I'm connecting the ground wires, or the negative ones, if I'd rather hook it upto battery, it would go to the cranking battery right?

Assuming that you have two batteries and they are wired to a battery selector switch with positions on the switch of OFF, 1, BOTH, and 2, then the negative posts of the batteries are NORMALLY connected to each other, and the ground wire to the engine comes off the cranking battery, so it really doesn't matter.

But as a matter of convention, the negative wire from the console instruments and equipment is normally wired to the "house" battery (#2 position on the selector switch), not the cranking battery.

Newer boats are typically wired a bit differently, allowing total isolation of the two battery banks for charging them separately.

I actually have 3. (24 volt trolling motor) two trolling, and then the cranking. And sadly I don't have a battery selector switch, not yet at least.

You do not want to charge the 24v batteries with the motor. The ignition switch and bilge pump are normally separate from the accy circuit. switch the guages from the ignition switch and run the lights and accessories from a dedicated accy circuit. If you have to pull two wires from the start battery 8g tinned wire to the fuse block. Put a inline fuse at the battery positive to the accy switch for the fuse block. You can never have too many fuses so fuse all the accys individually and put a light for accy power on the dash so you dont leave it on by mistake.

Yeah The old switches started giving out, I turned the power switch off and the light was off, come back 10 minutes later and notice with the switch off and light still on, so i flipped it back on and off again and the light went away. Go home and get up the next morning and notice light was back on and battery was pretty low... Thanks for the input everyone! Been dealing wiTh more expensive issues on the boat, hopefully I'm done for a little while cause my wallet has about had it. Supposed to be cool tomorrow and Thursday so if I get off work early enough I'll hop on it!

Just take your time going through it you dont want a wire fire out on the water no where to run. Wiring is relatively cheap but can be time consuming if done properly. Fuse everything!

The best way to deal with a 19 year old boat electrical problems is to start from scratch, new over old doesn't work, otherwise you will be dealing with electrical issues for the rest your ownership, not difficult to do, I have done three (mine, and two friends) some teen years ago and not a problem, your rocker switches should be fix to a removable dash make the wiring outside then install as one unit, jump the + of all switches with 14g the use a single 10g to power it from the B+ block under the console, look up marine wiring code so you will have different color codes for every accessory, easy to find at the other end and easy to troubleshoot, you can make your harness out side and thread it as one.

Here's a question, I've been dealing with motor problems so I had to put wiring on hold, if I replace the rocker switches, the old ones have 3 male connectors, but the new ones only have two, how would I connect the old with the new if I'm short a connection?

The rocker switches were 3 pronged, but now I have 2 pronged toggle switches, will these even work?

Two wires or three wire to the switch? It depends on what the switch is for.

Everything has 3 wires, including the power switch, except the horn, it's a mom-off switch. I have a bilge pump switch, it's on-off. The navigation switch is on-off-on, because the bottom of it is for the old power anchor the boat used to have. The accessories switch, it's also on-off-on, the bottom part of it is the aerator. And then the power switch, it's just on-off. All have the wires leading to them, except the horn. The nav switch stays on til I turn the power switch off, even if the nav switch is in the off position, which buys me cause I took a new 10g ground wire and put it on the bus ar and it did the same thing.. Replacing the switch did nothing to

Here is the basic setup you need to wire. I'll try to do this upload. Not sure it will work....

Georgiaboy....here is what I would do considering what you describe as the shape of the boat and what I think ...identify the wires going to the nav lights and the bilge pump..if they look good tag them and leave them in the boat..leave the heavy duty trolling motor wire in the boat...rip everything else out...everything including switches...get a fuse block and mount it..run every circuit you add through a fuse..get a new single pole single throw switch(on and off) that is rated for 10 amps...get an automatic bilge pump switch...wire up the bilge pump to these two switches where they are in parallel...make sure the bilge pump works...I do not fuse a trolling motor because it blows when I start picking up grass..get a single pole double throw switch for your running lights...wire that switch where in the center(off) position neither light is on...in the top position wire both lights to come on..in the bottom position wire only your transom light to be on...that will be your anchor light..get a 5 buck air horn at Walmart..make sure the lights work..then wire up your trolling motor to the house battery...make sure it works... charge both batteries...no battery switch at this time..when you run the motor make sure your ignition battery is charging....launch the frigging coat and use it..you are now legal(if I aint forgot something)....you will want to wire a voltmeter and a tach at some point...make sure both batteries are fully charged before you launch....you are now in a position to wire one thing at a time at your leisure...run separate circuits for everything and keep it simple... understand what you are doing on every connection...using this approach you will have a working rig sooner and get a good understanding of dc circuitry...good luck...

Thanks chawk_man and papyson. You guys are awesome! That's why I'm always having trouble cause some of the terms these others use make no sense! Your posts do. Plus I have a bad comprehension problem I have to read things multiple times to make sure I get it right. Especially with electrical wires, don't need any mess ups on there, bad day ahead if that happens. I think the wires on the nav switch is bad. Both sides of it illuminate, and on top of that I stuck a new wire to the bus bar and it still wouldn't turn off.. I thought it had to be bad grounding. Unless the bus bar is bad.

Well I had put new wires in and installed the new switch panel, everything worked for a few minutes. Then all of a sudden it just quit. They were all getting power after everything stopped. Checked with a multimeter, as everything was working I had cut the old wires out, to save myself a headache of trying to figure what each one was for. They were different colors then the ones that werr
plugged into the switch panel, and everything was still attached. I'm sure it's just a cheap $50 switch panel with crappy fuses tjat blew.. Really wish one of y'all lived here
in GA I'd pay someone other then a boat shop to re-wire it

["Well I had put new wires in and installed the new switch panel, everything worked for a few minutes. Then all of a sudden it just quit."]

yea, sorry to hear, that is the problem in trying to work on top of an old deteriorated system, the problem lays in the fact that you don't know what is bad till it fails, is like chasing a ghost, best of lucks