I have a 15 or so year old 17' Aries w/ Merc 150 XR2 which needs some
wiring work. 24V trolling motor wired exclusive circuit to 2 12V deep
cycle batteries run in series. The trolling motor wires were installed
in a straight forward manner. I have no problems there.

Now on the other side of the boat, there are all of the instruments and
fish/depth finders. I have no idea how this thing has ever worked.
There are wires split off of wires 3 or 4 times, with so many wires run
to the back of the boat that I am not sure I can even get them all out.


At this point I would like to just rip out all current wiring, and
reinstall correctly. I have the book 12 Volt Bible and just ordered the
Boatowner's Illustrated guide to Wiring, based on the recommendataion
of some of the posters.

I would like to know why the instruments were not just wired directly
to a junction/fuse box under the console, and a big 6/8 gauge wire run
from the box to the back of the boat to the battery.

Any information on how I might proceed or references that I can acquire
would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Brian

You probably could wire the POWER connectors into a main busbar but the
sensor/transducer cables should be kept separate.

Try searching the web for the manufacturer's of the kit that you have; most
seem to have downloadable manuals which should show you which wire goes
where.

Thanks for the info. I actually pulled all of the power wiring last
night but was careful to leave the transducer wires for the depth/fish
finders entact. I plan on running a large power (pos and neg) wire from
the battery to a good size fuse box and then run all of the power to
instruments from it.
I will have to re-run the feedback wires from the engine to the gauges
since I could not separate them from the existing wiring. *crossing
fingers*

I will check back in with progress in hopes that someone else may
benefit.

Thanks,
Brian