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As usual, I get a better idea in my head and very quickly become discontent with the way I did things the first time. I had been knocking around new boats at boat shows, and I noticed the cool rocker switches on the new boats. I looked hard and finally found them. They are Contura Rocker switches made by a company called Carlingswitch. I found a distributor that would special order me a dozen. This was not cheap! I set about drawing a template of what the new panels would look like.
I found a trophy shop in town that could order me a sheet of 1/8" matte black outdoor engraving stock. He also told me that he could engrave the switch functions on the panels if I gave him a template. Once I got the panels cut and engraved, it was time to wire them.
I couldn't even get help from those that are closest to me.
Be sure to put down a protective cover over your wife's expensive coffee table.
The custom circuit breaker box (left) is fed with 8 awg wire from the battery switch. The wires from breaker to breaker are 12 awg. All connectors are crimped and covered with heat shrink insulation. A dash panel (right) is wired thus far with ground and 12 volt illumination. All materials used were marine rated.
The breaker box has 10 push button breakers for the switched items on the dash panels. It also has 8 toggle breakers from items on a constant power feed or with their own switch.
Here are the dash panels finally installed.
And here they are lit up... Sorry about the blurred image.
close up
Wiring the breaker box in to the boat was a long process. Hundreds of connectors and lots of heat shrink tubing. At this point I still have several little things to hook up, but the important things are functional.
So, I went from this...
to this...
and ended up here...
I like it!
The next project is going to the the greatly anticipated re-power. A shinny new Merc 225 EFI is waiting to be hung on the transom of the RingLeader.
