most of electrical system not working on 1988 tracker

[fish hunter1]

I purchased the tracker and the engine runs and the live well works everthing else does not work. Anyone have a clue what is wrong.

 

[gotsea]

Everything lol, most probably (depending on maintenance) the electrical system on your boat is shoot, corroded connections, wires disintegrating, missing or insufficient ground, you need to take a close hard look at your system and determine if it is reparable, start at the ground, with an electrical meter make sure that there is ground at your instruments, gauges, lights etc, then check on the B+ see if there is solid 12V power, then go through the wiring grab wires main B+ and B- to the dashboard and tug on then to see if they are firmly attached, if the system is too bad you are better off starting from scratch. good luck

 

[papyson]

the first thing I would look for is a disconnected wire that should go to the battery in that cramped up battery compartment...you may have to remove the battery to really look..the 2nd thing I would do is determine how the live well is wired..is there a separate wire coming off the battery for it?
that boat is a nightmare when it comes to wiring...had a fishing buddy had one same year...hope that's not the one you bought..its got a leak caused by battery acid..non fixable...now back to the wiring...that boat has too much wiring in my opinion..you can do almost everything from the front of the boat that you can do at the console..overall its just a hodgepodge of switches and stuff...and that vintage was not done to standards I would have...the overall approach once you start trouble shooting is to find out how its wired...you will have to have a decent knowledge of dc wiring to trouble shoot it correctly..and a decent meter..after a quick look-see it quit trying to find one thing that will fix everything...take a simple thing and concentrate on that...do the running lights work for example?....are the gauges backlights working?...is the voltmeter working?...just pick one thing and shoot that problem... when you find the problem you may luck up and fix a bunch of stuff...if not then pick another nonworking simple thing and proceed...you probably into a time consuming project...good luck....