This is a long post, but contained within is a fuse block replacement how-to with relevant parts info, so bear with me.
Well, I swore I wasn't going to do any actual work on the boat this weekend, being that it was the holiday weekend and all I wanted to do was party after knocking out a multitude of little projects every weekend since our launch date back in April... Needless to say, screwing around with that fuse panel was not on my radar at all...
Flamingo Obsession had other plans for me, apparently.
Gonna 'jack my own thread for a second, as this is what led to completing the fuse panel project this weekend instead of sometime in the future...As luck would have it, the Guest dual bank charger that was on the boat when we bought it gave up Thursday night. Cabin lights getting dim, CO monitors going off...thought it was loose fuses in the stupid fuse panel again, but no. Definitely a low power issue. Checked inline charger fuses at battery, all good. Engine start bank indicators on charger were lit up green, but house bank indicators dark...nothing happening on that side whatsoever. Flipped battery switch to both, so that charger could bring house batteries back up from the engine start circuit and Friday it was off to find a charger locally. The West Marine here sucks, never anything in stock and it's way on the other side of town...after calling ahead to check stock on what they had for chargers and being on hold for like ten minutes and then guy tells me he can't get over there to check but he thinks he has a couple of chargers in stock, I can just come into the store and look if I want...?? Sorry dude...not driving thirty minutes out of my way just for a maybe. My GF calls BassPro while I'm out running some errands (getting beer, cuz im figuring if the other side of the charger goes out over the weekend we will just be drinking in the dark...) and in less than two minutes the guy is able to tell her what they have, and that one of the chargers on my preferred short list was there in stock. Awesome. Prosport 20 Plus is what I ended up going with: I'm sure people love em or hate em, but I did buy the 2 year extended warranty, and it's pretty easy to change out so if it's a turd, BassPro will just be swapping them out for me a lot...
http://www.pmariner.com/productFeature.php?ProductNum=42021Got the charger installed and figured since I was on a roll and had everything with me to do the job, might as well swap that fuse panel. I am not going to do a blow by blow, because I figured removing the screws for the panel, unbolting the old fuse block, and unplugging and reattaching spade connectors is pretty self explanatory. I tried to stop and take pictures where I thought they were most relevant, but I also have a hard time remembering to stop at each step and take them...you know you get on a roll and think, crap I forgot to take a pic of that. The hardest part of this job was finding the replacement fuse block itself, because of the way FW has the panel mounted with the wiring all coming in from the back side of the fuse block. I'll throw the disclaimer in right now - I'm sure that if you had the time, money and the belief that only parts from FW will function properly, you could find your local dealer, have them find and order up a FW part number, pay a premium for it and get someone to install it for you. Nothing wrong with that. However, a fuse block is a fuse block and I know FW had to buy them from someone and modify them to fit their specific needs. The thing that makes this fuse block different is the fact that the ground bar and the power lug are all on the back side of the block. Anyone who has had any dealings with most generic marine and automotive fuse blocks know that everything is usually on the same side facing up - fuses, spades for each circuit, power lug, and ground bus if it has one, because most installations are surface mounted with the wires running to the front from the outside. If you do a google search for fuse blocks, that is what you will find all day long. My 05 268 has the wiring behind the fuse block with it mounted to a panel in front to give it a clean appearance. It has 28 fuse positions in two groups of 14. After looking, I was able to determine that it is actually two 14 gang fuse blocks. One comes with a ground bar attached to the bottom and one does not. I did a little digging and was able to find what I needed. I ordered one Sierra FS40410 and one Sierra FS40440. The FS40410 does not have a ground bar, but for some reason almost every picture I could find shows it with one. If you were to order two of the FS40440s it isn't a big deal, you would just have an extra ground bar that you wouldn't use. The 10 was @ $20 and the 40 was @ $25 plus shipping, so even if you ordered two 40s, you still are looking at less than $50 in parts for this little adventure.
After receiving both blocks and connecting them together, they look like this:
They just slide together and lock, then the nut on the power lug in the middle is tightened to provide the electrical connection through the now-larger block. As previously stated, the only problem at this point is that the bottom lug for the 12v supply and the ground bar need to be facing the rear, because the wiring comes in from the back of the panel. The lug is just a hex head bolt molded into the block. To flip it around, I simply drilled a hole the size of the bolt head through the plastic on the back of the fuse block, took off the nut, and pushed it out the back side. Then I could insert it from the front and put another nut on it to hold it in place. Now the 12v lug is on the back side of the panel where it is needed. The ground bar was even easier. I removed the center tab, and it snaps right into place with lugs facing to the rear. The mounting bolts keep it in place after the whole block is mounted to the panel.
Lug removed and put in from front:
Lug secured with nut from back. An additional nut will secure the 12v supply terminal after it is placed on the lug:
Ground bar in place after center tab removed:
New fuse block mounted to panel and ready to swap wiring:
The rest of the project was pretty straightforward. Just swap wires over from new to old. I did them one at a time just because it's easier and quicker than marking and then trying to figure out what went wrong when you don't remember what went where.
What a rats nest...I did try to streamline that a little, but there is only so much you can do with that much spaghetti...
I also took care of some questionable connections in the disconnect plugs that had been causing me some intermittent problems due to corrosion:
I have to confess, I had ordered enough male and female pins to replace the corroded pins and I have all the pin tools to get them out and crimp them but after seeing that there is also a fair amount of wiring in the various harnesses that doesn't run through those disconnect blocks I just didn't see the advantage there. Removing, crimping and reinserting those pins is a PITA even with all the right tools and it's fairly time consuming with no real advantage. It's not like you can just disconnect those three blocks and take the whole fuse panel out. In the end, I cut the offending wires and butt connected them together with heat shrink connectors. If I get bored at some point and decide that having a bundle of corroded, unsealed pin connections is really the way to go, there is plenty of slack in that harness so it's entirely possible to go back and put pins on and put them back in the plug, if desired. Just for reference, If anyone has one or two pins they would like to replace that are corroded or loose, or if you would like to replace entire connectors and/or pins you just need to do a search for Universal Mate and Lock connectors and pins. The ones behind the fuse panel are 12 pin and 15 pin connectors. They can be found pretty inexpensively on Amazon.
After taking care of half a dozen or so bad connections, and pulling some unused wiring out of there and trying to neaten things up, I got everything back into the hole and reinstalled the panel. I replaced all the fuses and loved having to apply some pressure to get them to seat. Everything was nice and tight. The old panel actually had a handful of fuses fall out of it when I removed it and flipped it over. It was toast. The final step was to make sure everything was working properly (it was!
) and label the new fuse block. The old one had two decals attached to the block itself. I took photos and will print them to scale on some sticker paper and apply them to the new panel next weekend.
The old fuse block with labels:
And that's that! All done in less than an hour and less than $50 bucks worth of materials. Since we got this boat last summer, I have been dealing with loose fuses literally falling out when motoring through some chop, stuff that would just mysteriously quit working until you ran your thumb across the line of fuses in the panel, cockpit lights that won't turn on unless you bang on the fuse panel, TV and DVD player would just quit in the middle of watching a movie, radio that has a tendency to cut out if you hit a wake, lights dimming when you turn the vacu flush on, etc. We had absolutely none of those issues this weekend whatsoever and it was AWESOME! You can't put a price tag on that!
Anyway, hope this thread helps anyone that encounters similar issues, as I had searched and searched but didn't really see any threads specifically addressing the Vista 268 fuse panel issue. I guess most other Vistas have breakers for the 12v stuff. I may decide to do an upgrade to a custom 12v breaker panel install in the future, but as of right now I'm just happy with having a fuse panel that works.
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I figure while I'm in there I may as well cut those out and replace them because I know those corroded pins aren't helping anything. I will probably do some "weeding" while I'm in there, as a previous owner had run some wiring that doesn't go anywhere anymore...I could tell it was a professional job, because they used speaker wiring to run 12v circuits with...wtf.
