1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Wiring the Laundry Closet

With the walls and floor painted and the last panel fitted and varnished in the laundry closet, next I dug into the wiring.

Time to wire the laundry closet sub-panel

I ran the 8/4 supply cable a few weeks ago in the article about heading back into the aft stateroom.

Running 10/3 marine cable for the 240v dryer outlet and 12/3 for the air conditioner

Next, run 14/3 cable for the 120v washer outlet

I’m also doing a run of 14/3 from this sub-panel to the transom for outlets near the bed.

Draft-proof boxes should make the boat easier to keep warm or cool

Outlets are installed and holes are cut for the hot and cold washer spigots

I’m waiting for some Pex hose parts to show up, then I’ll install the water lines.

The top panel ‘clicks’ in place…nice fit!

Too pretty to be hidden behind a washer/dryer!

Good lookin’ laundry closet

That’s almost a wrap for the laundry closet. While I wait for the Pex parts to show up, I’ll get busy on the storage closet to the left.

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: The Aft Storage/HVAC Closet

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Back Into the Aft Stateroom

With the mahogany panel work in the V-berth done, I headed back into the aft stateroom and started work on the laundry closet.

Back into the laundry closet after 18 months

The panel edges don’t line up

The top edge of the 3/4″ plywood wall panel is parallel to the floor, but the bottom edge of the mahogany porthole surround panel is parallel to the porthole openings, which appear to be at an angle that matches the  aluminum side deck. I don’t know how a professional woodworker would resolve this issue, but I decided to make a fancy mahogany cleat to attach to the bottom edge of the porthole surround panel.

This will make a fine cleat

I’m glad I kept most of the original mahogany bits and pieces when we disassembled the interior back in 2008. It’s come in very handy as I put it all back together.

First, I cut a deep 1/4″ slot

The Sharpie marks on the porthole surround panel align with the top of the 3/4″ wall panel

Align the corresponding marks on the cleat with the cutting edge of my track saw

Angled cuts are a breeze with the EZ-One track saw table

The back panel cleat is done

Next, I cut holes for the electrical outlets

Then I put in a run of 8/4 electrical cable

I decided to run 50 amp 240v service to a breaker sub-panel for the washer, dryer, and aft stateroom AC unit.

There’s enough room in the OEM wiring conduit

The breaker sub-panel will go there

After measuring the dryer, I also had to cut a section out of the back wall to make space for the vent duct. I’ll box in that area soon.

Holes cut

Nice view into the engine room

Breaker panel fits well

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Fitting the Laundry Closet Ceiling

1969 Chris Craft Roamer Refit: Installing Chris Craft Senders on Cummins Engines

I got the engine wiring all done, both port and starboard, so the last step for engine electrical is to install the original Chris Craft senders on the Cummins 6CTA Diamonds (which also retained their original senders). This will allow the Cummins panels I’ll one day install in the ER and also the refurbished Chris Craft gauges at the helm to both work like they should.

OE Chris Craft low oil pressure alarm switches and water temp senders

One of two Chris Craft oil pressure senders

New 200°F overheat alarm senders

Gasoila is a great thread sealant

Top of the exhaust manifold is perfect for the high temp alarm sender

I just had to convince the OE Cummins plug to come out.

OE Cummins plug removed

200°F overheat alarm switch installed

OE Cummins water temp sender is waaay back behind the alternator

This is not a good place to put in a Tee and add the Chris Craft sender.

Factory Cummins Tee in the coolant circuit looks promising

The black hose coming from the left is the turbo cooling return line. The white-painted hose heading down goes to the coolant filter.

The solution: stainless steel 4-way cross

On the four-way cross in the pic above, you can see that it’s marked 1/2. So the 1/4″ to 3/8″ NPT adapters that came with the original Chris Craft water temp senders won’t work. I need 1/4″ to 1/2″ adapters, but I was able to use the 1/4″ to 3/8″ adapters for the turbocator boost line fittings. Booya.

It’s amazing how happy little victories like that can make me. 😉

Out with the old…

And let me assure you, extracting that Tee without removing the starter so I could fit a pipe wrench in there was a bear! Fortunately, not even a bit of knuckle skin was lost during the exercise. Unfortunately, after assembling the cross on the salon floor, I realized there’s not enough room to install it fully assembled.

First, the bare cross goes in with a new stainless nipple and lots of Gasoila

Turbo coolant nipple and Chris Craft temp sensor installed

Needs new hose and clamps, but looks good otherwise

Why oh why do people paint over rubber parts? When you touch them they flex, then the paint falls off in chunks.

Recently-installed wiring for Chris Craft temp sensor is already in the new loom and ready to attach

Oil gallery port just forward of the oil filter

Good spot for a Chris Craft low oil pressure alarm switch

That’s a wrap for the senders on the right side of the engine. So I crawled around to the left side and, like any reasonable man, tackled the easy pickins first.

Turbocator boost line ties into the most out-of-the-way intake manifold port

There were two other ports I could have used for the boost line, but both of them were near the injector pump. I could see the boost lines getting bumped and snagged if they’re out in the open like that. This port just behind the aftercooler tubing wasn’t hard to get to with a swivel and socket. Installing it here keeps the tubing out of the way and lessens the chances of me accidentally ripping it out of the fitting while messing around in the ER.

Unfortunately, the engineers at Cummins put no such thought into their placement of gear cooling hoses or wire looms.

Deep within the bowels of the left side of the engine, I found an oil port

Gad.

There are other oil ports, but they’re blocked by metal pieces that won’t move without lots of new pieces being fabricated. This one in the pic above is just aft of the OE Cummins oil pressure sender. The only thing blocking it is all of this…stuff.

Where there’s a will…there’s still junk in the way!

But if you look very closely at the pic above, there’s a black object just to the right of the baggie-wrapped fuel pump. That, my friends, is a 1969 OE Chris Craft oil pressure sender installed in the left-side oil gallery of a Cummins 6CTA block. Booyah.

And, again, no knuckle skin was lost in the operation. I know…it was OK to think it, but I’m getting cocky writing about it. I will pay with the loss of much knuckle skin later. This is known. 🙂

Different angle, with new oil pressure sender wiring hooked up

I really do like that cloth electrical tape. Sooo pleasant to work with compared to the PVC junk.

So that’s pretty much a wrap for the engine electrical, which was a big item on the pre-splash honey-do list. I’ve got new coolant hoses and clamps on the way and test kits for the coolant so I can get the anti-crevice corrosion additive just right (this is a sleeved block and pitting is a known issue that’s resolved with corrosion inhibitors). The exhaust system is well over half-way done. All of the raw water cooling parts are sitting there ready to be welded in or bolted on. I should be able to get those things done fairly quickly. Meanwhile, my boatamalan painter finally got a break in his schedule and has been making great progress on the V-berth head (AKA the Throne Room). Oh, and the glass for the salon, helm, and all of the hatches and portholes finally showed up…what a bunch of work that was. Like I’ve said, there’s lots of stuff going on beyond what’s in any particular article. Stay tuned.

Next up on our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer Refit: Trim Tabs & Gauges

1969 Chris Craft Roamer Refit: Engine Wiring IV

With the OE Chris Craft wiring hooked up to the interface panel for the Cummins engines, next I need to dig into the Cummins loom and also install the senders for my completely refurbished Chris Craft gauges. But first, I wanted to install some sort of neutral safety switches. I spent a lot of time over the last few years wondering what sort of switches I should use and how I should place them so the switches would interrupt the start circuit when the gear levers were engaged either way. Then one day recently, I realized that the ZF gears I’ve got come with built-in neutral safety switches! That’s much better! But for some reason, the neutral safety switch wiring in the Cummins engine harnesses terminate in  factory-installed dead ends. All I had to do was modify the wiring so the neutral safety feature will work from the Cummins panels I will one day install in the engine room or from the Chris Craft helm.

An unloved neutral safety switch

Pretty simple device

Something inside the gear pushes on the ball, which breaks the circuit in the switch when it’s put into gear. Nice and simple design.

Failed switch or failed screw?

I found many forum discussions on the internet about these switches failing. But it’s a simple design that seems fairly robust and is used by ZF, Paragon, and other marine gear manufacturers. Based on what I saw on my switches, contact failure at the steel washer is the more likely cause of switch failure. I bought new ones anyway, and found prices ranged widely: many sellers listed the switches for $50 or more under the ZF brand name. I ended up picking up a set of Paragon branded switches for $17 each.

Digging into the Cummins loom

It’s pretty obvious somebody has been in this loom before. It appears that when they installed the 20′ extension, they clipped the wires rather than just plugging the OE Cummins connectors together, which makes no intuitive sense. They didn’t even bother to use shrink connectors. Either way, the white wire comes from the neutral safety switch to the connector for the Cummins panel. There’s also a black wire that goes to the neutral safety switch, but it enters the loom and heads away from the connector. Hmmm…time to dig in.

That cloth electrical tape is good stuff

The black wire stays in the main loom that passes under the turbo

Ah-Ha! All of the grounds come together at this one connector under the turbo

The Cummins schematic didn’t show all grounds connected at the same point. I’d been trying for a while to figure out where all the black wires tapped into the ground circuit. It wasn’t apparent until I opened up the loom in the most inaccessible place on the block…under the turbo.

Don’t need the 20′ loom extension anymore…

But I do need the factory connector at the far end of the extension

I know where each and every wire goes!

I plan on using Cummins’ wire scheme for all of the Chris Craft senders I’ll be adding to the engines, so purple is ignition, red is 12vdc+, brown is water temp, etc. The 20′ extension harness will provide the wiring I need.

Hello. What’s that about “MARINE WIRE”?

I was surprised to cut back the insulation and find bare copper wire, since I always thought a hallmark of marine wire is that it’s tinned. I guess if you’re buying wire by the truckload, you can order whatever you want printed on the outside of the insulation.

New safety switch terminal

The neutral safety switch completes a circuit to ground when the gear is in neutral. When the Cummins’ panel sees ground on the neutral safety circuit, it activates the Start circuit, so when you hit the START button 12vdc+ current passes to the aux. starter solenoid and the internal combustion magic begins. But on the Chris Craft side, the START circuit is always hot. So to get the two to work together, I believe all I need to do is to cut the ground from the aux. starter solenoid at the big ground connection point under the turbo, then add a separate ground line from the safety switch to the cut wire. That way, even if the START switch gets hit up at the Chris Craft helm, the ground side of the  circuit will be interrupted if the gear isn’t in neutral. The Cummins side is wired per the factory schematic, so it should be unaffected by this.

With the neutral safety circuit pretty much done, I installed the Turbocator wiring and boost lines since they also have to join up with the loom that goes under the turbo…and I never want to have to dig into that ever again.

Turbocator wiring & boost tubing

Turbocator cable/boost line goes into a loom

Thermocouple wiring is almost done

I was so impressed with how difficult it was to remove that cloth electrical tape that I ordered a couple of rolls, along with some 1/4″ and 3/8″ split loom.

Thermocouple wiring is ready to go

And that’s a wrap

All of the engine wiring is done now. In the pic above, you can see all of the Cummins wires on the right side of the terminal block, with the Chris Craft wiring on the left side. The next step will be to install the various senders that work with the OE Chris Craft gauges.

Next up on our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer Refit: Installing Chris Craft Senders on Cummins Engines

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Engine Wiring

I got the engines installed over the winter of 2015~16, but the exhaust, electrical, cooling, and fuel systems still need to be done. During a recent hot spell, I jumped into the engine room and got busy on the wiring. The biggest challenge will be figuring out how to get all of the original Chris Craft gauges, which use American standard inputs, to work with these Cummins 6CTA engines that use metric-scaled senders. The oil and water temp gauges should be easy enough: just install the Chris Craft senders. But since I will eventually install Cummins instrument panels in the engine room, the Cummins senders need to stay in place. The Chris Craft ammeter is a bit more complicated, since it gets its inputs from a shunt that was never used on these Cummins engines. In retrospect, I probably should have had the ammeters converted to volt meters back when I had the gauges refurbished, but it’s too late now. One way or another, I’ve got to get the engine electrical done if I’m going to splash later this year.

Cummins/Chris Craft wiring schematic

I used TinyCAD to make the schematic. There are online schematics for Cummins 6CTA marine engines, but none of them matched what I’ve got on mine. The Cummins schematics all show 2- and 3-wire alternators, but mine is a 1-wire unit. I also removed the air heaters, since they’re prone to trouble and the lads over at boatdiesel.com recommend getting rid of them. That simplifies the engine wiring quite a bit. Next, I need to make a base for the shunt and wiring harness interface terminals.

Starboard scraps will make a good base

Just the right size

Position parts, drill holes

Countersink the back-side

Disassemble and clean up the shunt

Somebody got sloppy with blue paint some time between 1969 and 1985, when the boat went on the hard and stayed there for decades. Fortunately, it comes off easily enough.

The shunt cleaned up pretty good

Shunt and terminal strip test fit

Sand the base edges smooth

Nicely radiused corners, but I’m not keen on the sharp edges

Bosche router rounds the edges nicely

 

Starboard leaves a fuzzy edge at the end of the cut zone

Fortunately, the fuzz comes off easily with a knife.

Harness interface panel is ready to install

The terminal strips I’m using were on the Super Seamaster twin turbo and intercooled 534ci Ford Super Duty engines that were in the boat when we found it on Purgatory Row in a southern Maryland boatyard in late 2007. I’ll eventually need to have new cover panels made. Brand new terminal strips would be OK, but I wanted to use OE and period-correct parts whenever possible.

Next up on our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer Refit: Engine Wiring II