Maine Sail
- Thread starter CYQK
- Start date
Have you been through all the articles at http://www.pbase.com/mainecruising/boat_projects ? Lots of good reads there.
Pretty sure he's been busy working on his next article: How to install a cold fusion reactor in your boat with proper crimp connections.
Sorry guys my really, really busy time of year. The job I am on right now all started with this beauty. A failed solder joint which had been buried in adhesive heat shrink...
The wiring on this boat was some of the worst I have seen and the orders from the owner: "I would like all unnecessary wiring removed, and what is necessary neatened up." Sounds easy enough... NOT!!
This was 67.5 hours of "unnecessary wiring removal" on a 34' Down East "Lobster Yacht"...... Other than a couple of v-belts and two cracked & brittle PVC hoses, the unnecessary wiring filled an entire trash can and weighed more than 70 pounds....
Pride of workmanship...? Non-existent... When ever something new was added the old wires were just left in-place. I found 5 broken solder joints, & 3 crimps that literally fell apart when you touched them (made with pliers). There were perhaps 15 connections made by twisting wires together, most all of which would not pass current, likely why the circuit was bypassed to begin with. What was there was not even wired correctly. For example when you turned the search light to Port it went down. When you turned it to Starboard it went to Port. The NMEA 2K system was fraught with issues. For starters the N2K was powered by autopilot breaker so in order to use satellite weather, the GPS antenna, the bridge plotter, the sounder, the network expander, lower helm plotter and the instruments you had to have the AP on. The system only had one power drop, consisting of wires twisted together, so the GHC10's and other instruments would often drop out.
The owner got a "good deal" on this boat yet it has already needed a complete re-power at 33k, and a LOT of the wiring has been re-done. The good deal is long behind him and the new term is "money pit".....
I won't even go into the 400A 12V bow thruster fed by a single G-24 starting battery that was being charged via a diode isolator, 28' away, using 10GA wire. He had about 10 seconds before the thruster would peter out. The owner has been slowly fixing the boat for 4 years. I do a bit each year to the electrical system and one more year (next winter) should have it in "decent shape" not perfect, but decent..
It would have cost considerably less to rip 100% of it out the first year and entirely start from scratch, as I suggested he do, but he chose to do the "patch up".
Be careful with those "good deals"....
Today:
Install & wire an inverter
Finish wiring a high performance alternator & programming the regulator
Install a starting battery
Install & wire a 12V outlet on the bridge
Install & wire a set of saloon speakers
Off to work...
The wiring on this boat was some of the worst I have seen and the orders from the owner: "I would like all unnecessary wiring removed, and what is necessary neatened up." Sounds easy enough... NOT!!
This was 67.5 hours of "unnecessary wiring removal" on a 34' Down East "Lobster Yacht"...... Other than a couple of v-belts and two cracked & brittle PVC hoses, the unnecessary wiring filled an entire trash can and weighed more than 70 pounds....
Pride of workmanship...? Non-existent... When ever something new was added the old wires were just left in-place. I found 5 broken solder joints, & 3 crimps that literally fell apart when you touched them (made with pliers). There were perhaps 15 connections made by twisting wires together, most all of which would not pass current, likely why the circuit was bypassed to begin with. What was there was not even wired correctly. For example when you turned the search light to Port it went down. When you turned it to Starboard it went to Port. The NMEA 2K system was fraught with issues. For starters the N2K was powered by autopilot breaker so in order to use satellite weather, the GPS antenna, the bridge plotter, the sounder, the network expander, lower helm plotter and the instruments you had to have the AP on. The system only had one power drop, consisting of wires twisted together, so the GHC10's and other instruments would often drop out.
The owner got a "good deal" on this boat yet it has already needed a complete re-power at 33k, and a LOT of the wiring has been re-done. The good deal is long behind him and the new term is "money pit".....
I won't even go into the 400A 12V bow thruster fed by a single G-24 starting battery that was being charged via a diode isolator, 28' away, using 10GA wire. He had about 10 seconds before the thruster would peter out. The owner has been slowly fixing the boat for 4 years. I do a bit each year to the electrical system and one more year (next winter) should have it in "decent shape" not perfect, but decent..
It would have cost considerably less to rip 100% of it out the first year and entirely start from scratch, as I suggested he do, but he chose to do the "patch up".
Be careful with those "good deals"....
Today:
Install & wire an inverter
Finish wiring a high performance alternator & programming the regulator
Install a starting battery
Install & wire a 12V outlet on the bridge
Install & wire a set of saloon speakers
Off to work...
Ah.... orphaned wires are the worst. How hard can it really be to just pull the old wires out? Nothing as extreme as what you just dealt with but when I got my Balboa 26 fixer-upper.... the bilge had a pile of spaghetti wires. Drove me crazy... trying to figure out which ones were still active and which were not.... and when the previous bilge pump died... they just put a new one in next to the old one... I only kept that boat two years but dang I did a lot of rewiring and still did not have it the way I wanted....
A perfect example of why a "project boat" is a lousy excuse for going sailing.
It would have cost considerably less to rip 100% of it out the first year and entirely start from scratch, as I suggested he do, but he chose to do the "patch up".
Be careful with those "good deals"....
I re-read the whole thing on crimpers over the winter, bought the recommended crimpers for regular and heat shrink crimps plus the one for solar connectors along with a proper wire stripper, and rewired every thing I had already done with less than mainesail quality work.
I've been stripping wires with a razor blade or knife all my life. Who knew a proper wire stripper would make life so easy!
I've been stripping wires with a razor blade or knife all my life. Who knew a proper wire stripper would make life so easy!
To answer your question, it all depends. Let me count the ways.
Run a wire through a small area with limited access. Attach a fitting, let the wire slide down into a more restricted space and try pulling the wire only to jam the fitting into the more restricted, inaccessible space.
Run a group of wires in a restricted space above and behind a piece of cherry trim, pull it down put wire ties on bundle every 2 or 3 inches and jam the wire bundle back up into a very restricted space.
Run a bundle of wires down underneath a floor board before installing the floor board and secure said wires with wire ties and who knows what else. (A corollary, run an exhaust hose under the fuel tank and holding tank, secure the hose and then install the fuel tank and holding tank.)
Don't bother labeling wires, so you don't know where they go or why they are there.
I suppose those are legit... but in my case, the wires were not restricted but just lying in the bilge water. Each time I rewired something... I took a little time to run the old wires back out.
And this is why it is often less costly to do a 100% gut & replacement rather than tracking down each wire for removal independently....
Cold fusion is so last week! I'm installing a zero-point module next week. 2100 exajoules per second, no loss. Problem's with ripping the ether but I bet me LED problems are over.
Why not just print out each of the articles on his website?
YOU get to make your own book.
Saves HIM a LOT of work. Which he's already done for you.