Carver Owners Forum

whose to say this is the right switch and the previous owner didnt install the wrong one. i question it as oem since you have a indicator lamp right above it . your switch has 3 because the lamp needs a gnd to work so you probably have a on-off switch. you could pull it and see what the model code is and determine with what i sent you earlier. you need a on-on switch it takes 3 wires but its hard to say how this presently wired. i know no diagraham. try looking very closely under the dash close by for any stray wire that may be loose, you still might have a wiring issue somewhere but ? . to help understand if you will forget about the lamp the above drawing shows a on-on with a center off which i would not use but this drawing is easy to understand and i know put up as a reference. do you have a meter to measure voltage at the float? is it breaking the positive or negative wiring? any chance of taking a pic underneath the dash area of switch?

Check around your battery and your battery switch to see if there are any unhooked wires. They would likely be BROWN wires. Someone may have not connected them back up after they changed the battery or switch. Also check your circuit breaker panel for other breakers that are labelled "auto bilge". The float switch should be wired through a breaker or fuse either directly to the battery switch or directly to the battery.

You panel switch is a "on-auto" switch. It is really just an "on-off" for the "continuous" function of the bilge pump. The diagram posted is likely not going to be correct for your boat because that would mean that both the "continuous" and "auto" are fed from the same fuse which is unlikely, as the "continuous" would be connected after the battery switch and the "auto" is before the battery switch.

On the switch, the ground is for the light. the power comes into one of the other tabs and the pump connects to the other, so when the switch is "on" those two tabs are connected together. The positive side of the light is also connected to one of those tabs and that should be the same side that the pump is on, so that when the pump has power, so does the light.

This all appears to be a factory helm setup. The light tube has it’s own wire that runs into the wiring harness separate from the others. Maybe that’s why it comes on (when everything works) whether it’s auto or continuos. There are 3 bilge pump switches on the helm and they are all the same. They all share a common ground with many other switches under the helm. Second pic is my actual switch, the first one is a on-off switch I found online that looks pretty much the same. The switch there now says Carlington, 12vdc, Mexico but nothing else. I know this setup worked before because the bilge in question was working with the float since I’ve owned the boat, it only recently misbehaved.

There are 3 wires coming out of the harness down where the bilge is. 2 are brown (one of the Browns has a black stripe) then the 3rd is black (ground). I wired it up like the old one was. Which is like this (if memory serves): pump power->brown/black stripe. Pump ground->black. One float switch wire->brown/black. The other float switch wire->brown. So, the pump power and one of the float switch wires share one common connection to brown/black.

Yes that certainly looks original .......it occurs to me that you have a few other bilge pumps, could you see how they work as far as how the float switch works etc....if they are different ,then put one of those switches in the circuit you are having trouble with and see what happens......cant hurt ,then you will know if the switch is actually bad.....save a lot of guessing.

I still believe that one of those brown wires is connected to somewhere else, but the switch change will verify that.

Solid brown is bilge pump. Brown with stripe is float switch, black is ground and yellow at switch is power from boat

Although it looks like it's attached I beleive the yelow in this pic is attached to something else if you zoom in on it. The 12v constant is the problem finding it or just run a new 12v + constant to battery could be solution

OK, I tried to find a diagram online but couldn't find a good one, so I drew this one up quickly. The yellow wires in the diagram could be black too.... ABYC rules say you can use either for the NEGATIVE connections (so, above, where you say "yellow at switch is power from boat" is probably not correct). In my boat, the "fuse or breaker" that is shown just above the "1-2-all-off" switch is actually located in the breaker panel two rows down from the main BILGE pump breaker, and is labelled "AUTO" or something like that. This breaker is not fed from the panel, but fed by a direct wire that goes to the battery switch "1" terminal (as shown in diagram). In this configuration, the light at the switch will illuminate if the pump is turned on EITHER by the helm switch OR by the float switch, so a glance at the light will tell you if the pump is on when it shouldn't be. You can also wire an alarm in parallel to that light so if the float triggers, it will sound an alarm.

Another little tidbit, that might help (from the Santego manual):

Excellent! I’ll check the battery selector switch and fuses in that area as soon as I can get back down to the boat! This makes perfect sense, because the old pump would trip the breaker in “on” position. It must have blown a fuse in the “auto” position. Thank you so much, I’ve been pulling my hair out!