Guinnydog wrote:
Here's my battery/bilge delemma; the previous owner of my boat bought it new from a FW dealer (Wash state) and had a second battery and Perko switch added. The bilge will now only work if the battery switch is in one of the two on positions. Currently, I leave my house battery on while I have the boat slipped and ensure all other electronics are turned off. The boat never really sits that long between uses and I check on it if it has been raining, so I am confident the battery would power the bilge if required.
When looking at the bilge, the wires "disappear" into the heavy wiring harness in the engine compartment. Does anyone know where and at what point on the boat the bilge would get it's power from based on the old factory system of one battery? With the Perko switch in place, that "point" is now behind the switch, somewhere! The other thing I have considered is to disconnect the bilge from the wiring harness and connect it directly to the battery with inline fuses.
Questions, comments, concerns.
Rod
On mine, the bilge pump is powered through the helm wiring harness, complete with a 'manual on' switch at the helm console. The automatic portion of the pump was on if there was power to the helm systems. I believe that FW usually has only two leads going to the positive terminal of a single battery setup. One (a hefty #2 or larger cable) goes straight to the starter, the other (#8?) will go to a circuit breaker, then to a #2 or larger cable leading to the main helm harness. Likely when they added your switch and second battery, they set it up so that either battery provides power to these two leads, or neither when the switch is off. Note this is not the way the Guest switch in the owners manual is diagramed, there the bilge is fused and wired to the switch such that it is energized by both batteries irrespective of the switch position. Anyway, it should be easy enough to follow the leads from the bilge pump to the plug where it attaches to the harness, and then wire it direct to a battery. If you have a manual switch at the helm, you can retain it's functionality by only running the 'automatic' or 'float switch' power lead to the battery. I'd suggest adding a second bilge pump, mounting it an inch or so higher than the existing pump, and attaching it to the other battery - I'm doing this as soon as I install my dual battery setup.
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