1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Powering Up the 12VDC Breaker Panel

My Boatamalan* painter says the Whisper Wall headliner has to be installed before he sprays the ICA clear top coat in the salon and V-berth. Before the headliner can be installed, all of the  lighting and sound system wiring and attachment points have to be installed. Since access to the wiring will be complicated once the headliner is installed, I wanted to power up the 12vdc breaker panel first so I can identify all of the circuits and make sure things work the way I want. This will be a big step. The boat was put on the hard back in the mid-1980s, and the last registration sticker on the helm station side windows was dated 1981. Unless I’m wrong, these circuits haven’t been energized for ~35 years.

Boatamalan: portmanteau indicating highly skilled boat workers of Central American origin. They’re actually from Honduras, but Boatamalan rolls off the tongue better.

The main power panel

First, I installed the remote for the Magnum inverter/charger

Next, I installed the battery selector switches

I made the switch base two years ago. Man…how time flies. Anyway, I wetted out the contact areas with epoxy, applied wood flour-thickened epoxy, then screwed the switch base in place.

That looks about right

The switches are  located just inside a hatch I cut in the salon floor that’s sized so an 8D battery can be lowered into the engine room. They’re out of the way, but are easily accessed from either the ER or the salon. I wanted it that way because on other Chris Crafts I’ve owned, I could only access the switches from one or the other space. This is much more convenient.

Installing the cross-overs

Next, the battery cables got installed

One last check of the wiring in the salon service chase

Speaking of the service chase, back in May 2018 I installed the service chase panels when I was working on the aft salon cabinet interior. It looked great!

See what I mean?

But over the summer, I started noticing a problem with the upper panel…the one that I’d had my painter put a new veneer on, then stain and spray to match the rest of the salon.

Blisters and waves

In the heat of the summer, it developed big blisters under the mahogany veneer (encircled above) and you can see and feel waves where the arrow is. They did a poor job with the contact cement, and now the whole thing has to be redone. It’s really frustrating paying expensive professionals to do a job poorly. Fortunately, he says he’ll redo it for no charge.

Anyway, back to the 12v breaker panel.

The moment of truth

Chris Craft powered the 12v breaker panel such that the starboard engine battery powered one bank of breakers and the port side powered the other. I’ll be using several batteries that will make up the starboard engine/house bank. The port engine will have just a starting battery. So I wired both banks of the breakers together with a jumper rather than using the original cable from the port battery.

With everything attached, I made sure all of the breakers were off then flipped the battery switch to the ON position.

Nothing happened…no sparks…no smoke…nothing. I was so happy! So then I started flipping breakers on one by one. Again…no sparks…no smoke…nothing. So I went to the aft stateroom and flipped the switch on one of the OEM light fixtures…and something happened!

And then there was light!

I spent the next hour going around with a multimeter, confirming that there’s power throughout the 12v system. Everything checks out. For the first time in three decades, juice is flowing through the 12v wiring!

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Installing the Salon Light Mounts

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Making the Battery Switch Mount

I’m still waiting for the exhaust riser insulation to show up, but I have plenty of other things to do. I was working on the engine electrical during the summer, including running the battery cables. To complete that installation, I need to install battery cutoff/combiner switches, and I wanted to install them in a place that will have reasonably good access from either the engine room or the salon. I think I got a good spot figured out, so the next step was to make the switch mount.

Scrap okume marine plywood, a sour cream container, a sharpie, and a jigsaw is all it takes

I didn’t want to have to disassemble the new battery switch to mark the circle on the plywood, but a sour cream container I’ll use as an epoxy mixing cup worked fine as the template.

Sanding the end pieces on my Shopsmith

Pocket screw holes are drilled

Next, I rounded the edge with a router

Nice fit…ready to glue & screw

Wet out all contact surfaces with epoxy

Next, apply wood flour-thickened epoxy and screw it together

Next, I mixed up another batch of epoxy and wetted out the surface of the mount–front, back, and sides, but not the edges that will eventually attach to the boat. The edges tend to soak up a lot more than the faces, so it took two applications before they were close to fully wetted and no bubbles were forming. Then I added white colorant to the epoxy and brushed on more.

A little colorant goes a long way

Two coats yields good coverage

This is the first time I’ve used colorant, and it does something funny. When you brush it on, the coverage is great. But over ten minutes or so, the colorant flows out and thins in spots, revealing the grain of the wood below. Rebrushing (without necessarily adding more) changes it back from translucent to opaque. So I rebrushed it three times until it set up enough to hold.

Good shine

Good fit…ready to install

The switch mount is ready to install, but I’m not too keen on going to the boat this weekend. It’s going to be 16°F and windy starting Thursday and won’t go above freezing on Friday. The weekend isn’t looking much better. It was just a few months back that it was too hot to work in the tent, now winter is coming on hard a full month earlier than the pattern for the last few years. I may end up staying home in the garage and working on polishing all of those stainless stanchions.

Next up on our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Main Raw Water Inlets