A year or so ago, my 192 had some pulpit damage and bow light destruction. When I bought her (recently) the pulpit had been repaired but the light needed to be replaced. I managed to carefully splice on some additional length to the wires, and the light is working.
The wires really need to be replaced. Is there someplace I can find a schematic and perhaps wiring diagram? I am capable of doing this work myself but I'd like to be informed before tearing the boat apart to follow the wires.
I doubt if you're going to find any type of wiring diagram for the O'Day 192 or the 222. At least, I've never had one and I'm an original owner of my boat and I have the manual that came with it.
Most of the wires in your boat are single conductor copper stranded red and black wires, red being the hot leg and black is the ground. The wires going to your bow light are under the carpet liner on the Port side and there are two sets of black and reds going toward the bow.
One set goes to the bow light and the other set goes to the interior dome lights. If you have an anchor light at the top of your mast, there's a set for that.
The bow and stern lights come off the same breaker on the panel and are probably marked, "Running Lights". The mast light comes off a separate breaker marked "Anchor Light" and the dome lights come off a breaker marked, "Cabin Lights."
Other accessories like your VHF, compass light, and electronic autopilot can be added to the cabin lights.
You probably don't have a steaming light on your mast, but if you did, it would be on a separate switch. My boat never came with one but I had one installed back in the mid 1990s and it was more trouble than it was worth in a mast with internal halyards, so I removed it a couple of years ago. You would only use a steaming light if you were motoring at night with your running lights. Of course if you were sailing at night you would just be using your running lights and this why a steaming light needs to be on a separate switch.
With this info you can draw up your own schematic and run your wires and mark them. All your blacks will be tied together with the battery black wire (Line side), and your reds will be coming off the load side of each breaker. I would even mark the black wires also.
The larger red conductor from the battery, (Line side) is connected to a buss bar in the panel that feeds each breaker.
I think that you're going to find that most of the wiring is still in good shape for it's age. I know that mine is. If this is the case, you could ring out each pair of wires with an Ohms Meter and just mark them.
The wiring in these boats is very simple compared to what I've seen in other boats. You should have no problem doing this job. Good luck!
Joe
