Installing a 12 Volt Receptacle

[Jason1271]

I'm looking to install a 12 Volt receptacle at the helm. I'm wondering if I can tap into the Raymarine 60 series instruments that are installed at the helm to power the receptacle. Has anyone done anything similar? I'm trying to avoid pulling new wires.Thanks in advance,Jason

 

[Rich Stidger]

I would not advise your plan

The Raymarine instruments are on their own power bus (or should be). Any 12V item that you plug in would draw current and cause a voltage drop for the instruments, and could potentially cause electrical noise on the system. For example, my instrument bus supplies power to all of the nav instruments and also to the autopilot, but the motor on the autopilot is switched from a separate breaker and is not on the instrument bus.I like to keep everything separate. If you are thinking of plugging in a spotlight or something else that draws a lot of current, you are much better off running a dedicated line to the helm and drawing power from a dedicated breaker on your panel.Running a separate line is not as difficult as you might think. You probably need a wire fishtape and a few hours, but it is quite do-able.

 

[Bill Roosa]

Dito, too much current draw from that circuit

A cig lighter outlet typicaly should be fused for 25 amps. Re-fusing your instriments for this high a load will not leave your instriments protected. There are other sources of 12 volt electricity in the cockpit. Most are associated with the instriment panel. If fact you might even have ACC on your ignition key switch. The most important thing to consider is the size and length of the wiring that will be suporting your new cig lighter. Using too small a wire size or too long a run for the wire size is a fire hazard. WM has tables in their catalog that can help size the wire size/wire length. Don't forget that when calculating the length it is battery terminal to battery terminal and not battery terminal to load.