Spring Clean

[Andy G]

I have been looking at the state of the wiring in the engine bay for quite a while now.

Our IG 36' is a 1981 model and over the years lots of electrical additions have been added, things patched up, new wiring, equipment moved etc. The whole thing looked untidy at best.

So I bit the bullet and booked the boat in for a full 'medical' engine bay check up.

It has been a revelation of how much old redundant wiring was taken out, some of apparently still live, though capped off.

A list of what was done:

'new switches (I will be labelling these this afternoon) – from left to right as you look at them: parallel, port, starboard, genset
New switch and fuse by starboard engine for the inverter feed
New voltage sensitive relay to join the batteries for charging from either motor (if it happens that someone switches off the parallel switches)
Installed Victron monitor and adjusted settings. This also has a Bluetooth capability, incidentally. The shunt for the monitor is on the starboard side, between engine and battery
Installed negative bus-bars by engines port and starboard
Installed negative bus-bar near new switches
Installed two positive bus-bars near switches. I have ordered covers for these and will fit them in the next couple of weeks
Cut battery box lids to accommodate new cables
Tested – very pleased with starting and running. Victron shows the current from both batteries and reports the voltage of each of the two large batteries. You should see the difference in voltage reducing to nothing (or close to) over the coming days
Installed the Bluetooth sender on the genset battery in case you want to monitor voltage on that via an app on your phone/tablet
Removed some quite interesting/redundant old wiring (what we found behind the switches was unnecessarily complex, to say the least
We have not redone the panel wiring as this would be an unnecessary expense for you given the acceptable condition,'


Not cheap, they were onboard for about 10 hours, but for me electrics are not a DIY project.

All in all highly recommended if any of the above rings a bell.

 

[BruceK]

Sounds very worthwhile Andy. The original wiring on IGs was quite good, systematic, color coded, etc. I remember a surveyor commenting how good it was, but of course that`s before multiple owners set about modifying it.