Another discovery

[dubble dippin]

I was getting ready to install the control unit of my new fishfinder last night and discovered something new. When I was looking for the hot and ground wires to hook up under the dash I could not find a existing ground that was not used so started pocking around. I followed one of the grounds (from one of the gauges that wasn't working right, the night light wasn't working). What I found was a ground block where all of the ground wires from the dass seem to be connected. A few of them are loose and don't appear to be making good contact. Last fall I had issues with my depth finder that I think may had been caused by a bad ground (I had cleaned the contact on the back of the gauge). It is next to impossible to tighten the screws on the block without removing the block. This weekend I plan on removing the block and removing all the grounds, cleaning them and then re-securing them. Hopefully this will fix some of my other minor gauge issues.

[Brit Rider]

Something else to bare in mind, if adding electronics is that the main ground wire running from this block to the battery will likely not be sufficient - I'd upgrade that to 4ga cabling then you can be trouble free and throw pretty much anything on there apart from large stereo amplifiers etc.

If you choose not to upgrade the wiring I would put a circuit breaker on it close to the distribution block once you do the calcs on the wire size and what it should be able to take.

Hope that helps

Mike

[dubble dippin]

Thanks Mike,
I'll have a look at the ground wire, it looks pretty hefty already, I'll check to see if it is at least 4 gauge. The installion instruction recommend a 3 amp inline fuse. The hot line is wired through an Auxiliary switch which in turn has a breaker on the panel. Is this sufficient, or should I beef up the cable and install an inline fuse

[Brit Rider]

If the wire is sufficient an inline fuse won't be required, but if its getting towards it limit for the stuff attached to it then I'd fuse it - for the $3.00 its very cheap insurance to what could be a nightmare.

You will, as the installation instruction states need to fuse the fishfinder. Generally rule of thumb is that anything with a power feed will need to be independently fused. The breaker is technically only protecting the main power cable, not the items attached to it, as the auxillary items will have thinner cabling which could easily burn out (and start a fire) well before the main breaker would have any need to pop - if at all!.

Hope that helps, and dont' hesitiate to ask more questions - you can never be too careful with 12volt electronics.