Well, I just got through rewiring my boat, I do it every three years. This year, at the suggestion of my father-in-law, I put in a fuse box up under the dash. Slick unit, and I sealed the connectors at the battery end.

All in all, adding a fuse box, I eliminated 8 wires going to the back of the boat, now the ingnition, dash, and left fuse box wires.

Anybody do anything different?

DF, you had me going for a second there!

I almost thought it was one of those night before wiring jobs gone south.

See you tommorrow. See 4.1 thread for where and when to meet in the AM.

FJ...out.

Hey Andy,

I'd be curious to see the fuse box you used. I put one under the dash of my boat four years ago, and had trouble with it last year.. it's one of those open fuseboxes, and even though I sprayed everything to seal it, I had problems with the fuses and fuse holders corroding and causing bad connections. I asked around, and a few guys recommended going with just in-line fuses, one for each device (GPS, radio, sonar, etc.) I've got to crawl under there soon and take a look at it, if you sourced some sort of sealed fusebox, let me know, that's ideally what I'd like to go with.

-N.

Mine is not a sealed unit, but it sits up ina an area out of the reach of most of the salt water. The make is "Blue Sea Systems" and there is a cover, but vapor can still get inside. All metal is corrosion resistant, brass, stainless, plated heavily, etc. I got it at Boater's World, $20.00 for a six fuse box. I used liquid electrical tape to seal the wiring at the battery end, and coated the positive terminals with a wipe of vaseline. I just get tired of running wire, even though I do it seldomly.

Right on Andy!!! Boat and trailer wiring can be such a pain in the a$$!! The one thing that I would add is to use a good quality fuse box. Our boat came with one installed and we added another one, well the one we added got replaced last summer by our mechanic as it was giving us problems with intermitent power and the likes. Live and learn eh!?!!?
Good luck and tight lines, Jeff

Thanks for the info, Andy! I'll have to check that unit out.

The one thing I'll add is that I always use "pre-tinned" marine grade copper wire, it costs a bit more, but I learned that lesson the hard way a couple of years ago... oh, and those nifty barrel crimp connectors, the blue ones that are heat-shrink and have goo in them that oozes out when you shrink them... they are awesome... expensive, but they work great. Buy them in bulk, they are a lot cheaper that way.

-N.