3607 Bridge Rewire

[km1125]

Well, partial rewire. While troubleshooting a spotlight issue, I decided to finally tackle some of this and clean up some wiring. I thought I had a "before" picture, but I can't find it. Just imagine a bit of a rat's nest of wire.

First, I had to make a mounting board. Under the helm there really is no where to mount anything except a small 3/4" x 3/4" blocking at the top and a 2.5" band at the bottom. So I had some old marine teak plywood and made a mounting board:

Bridge_rewire_mount_board.jpg

Getting it in behind all the existing wiring was a chore, but I got it in. You can see the old terminal strips which are just push-on connectors. That was the standard back then. They were screwed into the top but I had to remove them to mount the board. They get corroded after a while and develop some resistance so you have to periodically clean them off if you want them to work correctly. You can also see the tach syncronizer hanging. It was also mounted up near the top but since there wasn't a big enough surface it was just kind of hanging diagonally.

Bridge_rewire_new_mount_board.jpg

Here are the new terminal blocks with some of the wiring going in. Most of the stuff has their own fuses inline. I had to add a couple more. I had thought about putting in a fuse block like I did in the lower station (different thread for that) but I wanted it to be accessible without having to unscrew a panel. This will be a huge upgrade over the push-on terminal blocks.

Bridge_rewire_new_terminal_blocks.jpg

In this process I found out that the spotlight was never actually feeding from the spotlight breaker provided on the main panel. The breaker was there and all the wiring provided by Carver, but whoever installed the spotlight just tapped into the bridge feed (there's a 25A breaker and feed for the bridge and a different one for the lower station). I was able to wire it in correctly so now that's on it's own breaker like it should be.

[Viper]

NICE.
That's one expensive mounting board

A good wiring practice is to have the wires going UP to the terminal block instead of down to it. If the wiring is coming from above, it should go below the point of connection, then loop up to it. Wiring should also be secured to the panel close to blocks to relieve strain on them. I suspect though that you're not finished yet and that you'll get around to doing that but thought I'd put it out there for the benefit of others.

Good job. Wish the wiring looked that neat under everybody's helm!

[km1125]

Not done yet and I was working with the existing wiring. I didn't want to put splices in all the wires just to dress things in.
You can see a couple of the ty-wrap mounting blocks with nothing on them yet, and I put a few more in there as well after I got some more of the routing down.

One of the reasons for looping the wires below the connection point is to create 'drip loops', where any errant water splashed or from condensate will run away from the connections instead of towards them. Really important in places like a bilge where they could easily get splashed with water.

[Viper]

Source of the post ......One of the reasons for looping the wires below the connection point is to create 'drip loops', where any errant water splashed or from condensate will run away from the connections instead of towards them. Really important in places like a bilge where they could easily get splashed with water.

Correct, but it's a good wiring practice to do that everywhere. It's not very hard to spill a drink on the helm, have canvas leaks, or hydraulic leaks. The point is to get into the habit of wiring it that way no matter the location so that you'll do it that way where it really counts.