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: 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 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 Refit: Engine Wiring III

Well, it’s getting hot in the tent again, so I’ve been spending more time than I’d like making hatches and vents. Cutting holes in shrink wrap is easy, but each opening weakens the skin unless it’s secured by battens to some sort of framing. When I’m not ventilating the tent, I’ve been working on getting the engine wiring done. The battery cables are mostly installed, and I’m getting close to having the Cummins OE wiring interfaced with the OE Chris Craft wiring.

New hinged tent vent opens to catch southerly breezes

The new vent helps, but I’ve got to open up the top of the tent somehow. Heat rises, and it’s still scorching up above the deck level. Meanwhile, down in the engine room…

Somebody’s been in the port engine starter/alternator loom before

On the port engine, the starter loom isn’t neatly run between the starter and block. The untrimmed zip tie secures the loom to the turbo oil return line, which is fine, but I’ll repeat what I did on the starboard engine wiring and replace the original Cummins alternator wire with a much heavier #6AWG wire, re-routed to accommodate the OE Chris Craft ammeter shunt.

New 6AWG +12v cable from the alternator

Ready to install

That’s a proper wire for a 100+ amp output alternator

Stuffing the fatter loom behind the starter and down to the aux. starter solenoid took a bit of work

But it’s a much cleaner installation

Alternator wire trimmed to fit the shunt, then new wire up to the starter + terminal

Interfacing the Chris Craft and Cummins wiring

The #8AWG red Chris Craft wire on the left supplies power to the port 12v breaker panel, which is now connected to the battery terminal on the starter and the Cummins alternator via the the Chris Craft shunt. The green Chris Craft starter wire is connected to the 12v+ side of the aux. starter solenoid. I’ve been thinking for a while that I’d like to install a neutral safety switch. I’ve never started a boat that was in gear, but I’ve been on one where that happened and there’s nothing quite like a 900hp boat trying to take off while still attached to the dock! Neutral safety switches are a good upgrade. It looks like the Cummins loom uses switched ground for neutral safety, which will work well with the Chris Craft wiring.

Chris Craft shunt wiring is attached and trimmed zip ties secure all of the wiring

There was less “extra” shunt wiring on the port side; a couple of loops  take up the excess

On the starboard side, I put glued shrink tube on all terminals and attached the negative battery cable to the block

That pretty much wraps up the Chris Craft side of the wiring. Next I need to dig into the Cummins looms and clip wires to size, come up with neutral safety switches, and then install the Chris Craft oil and water temp senders and alarms on the Cummins blocks.

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

1969 Chris Craft Roamer Refit: Engine Wiring II

Well, the bad news for 2016 has officially arrived with the death of my father-in-law. 90 years is a good, long run, but my wife had just returned from a six-week family visit three weeks ago when we got the news. So I got her back on a plane and am in bachelor mode once again until mid-July when I’ll fly out to participate in the final burial ceremony. Of course, it’s a very sad thing to lose a relative, and bachelor mode has both up- and down-sides for this refit project as well as for other aspects of life. My wife is terrific and has, at times, been very helpful and hands-on in this refit, but the clothes don’t get washed and folded by themselves, nor does dinner magically appear on the table every night. So when she’s away visiting family, the load she carries in keeping our household going falls to me. I have to squeeze time for cooking, laundry, etc into an already-packed schedule. The long drives to the boatyard and back give plenty of time to reflect on her father’s life and other family matters, but I find it’s harder to focus on refit problem-solving. Fortunately, sitting in the cool bilge on hot days next to two tons of cool Cummins engines while doing the wiring tends to bring me back into focus.

Cheapo hydraulic crimper does a surprisingly good job on 4/0 cables

I’ve used high end manual crimpers to make battery cables before, but I have to say these cheapo hydraulic ones on ebay do a fine job, especially for $31 shipping included.

Good crimp

Red colored shrink tubing identifies the positive cable

Good glue squeeze out after I applied heat

Ditto for the negative side

Next, I clipped and put new ends on the OE Chris Craft engine wires

The OE Chris Craft +12v supply line from the engine to the breaker panels uses 8AWG wire. All the rest–ignition, starter, water temp, oil pressure, and alarms are 10~14AWG.

The alternator and water temp sender wiring loom is tucked up neatly behind the coolant filter

If you look closely at the alternator, you can see a rather small, 12AWG wire that’s connected to the 12v+ output post, which is a tiny little wire for engines that have ~100a output alternators and air heaters that put a large load on the alternators at start-up.

Starter wiring disconnected from the alternator and the aux. starter solenoid

I have learned to hate all the white paint sprayed on the wire looms and wiring. What good is it to number all the wires if you’re just going to coat them with white paint??? And when you touch the painted split loom or move the wires around, it falls off in chunks…sort of. It’s very messy stuff.

New 6AWG +12v cable from the alternator

Cheapo crimper does 6AWG as well as it does 4/0

New 6AWG cable fits back in the alternator/H2O temp loom

Packing all the wiring back into the split loom

Because Chris Craft used ammeters with shunts instead of voltmeters, I need to reroute the alternator output cable past the battery cable terminal on the starter and have it first go through the shunt before returning to the starter. That will permit my OE ammeters to work properly at the helm, and when I eventually install Cummins panels in the engine room they’ll still get alternator output voltage from the starter battery post via the OE Cummins wiring.

But running that 6AWG wire to the shunt will be a challenge. The auxilliary starter solenoid wiring loom, which is what I’ll run the new 6AWG wire through, was installed behind the starter, and I suspect it was put in place before the starter was installed. It’s very neat and tidy doing it that way, but it’s also a lot tougher threading the loom back through that tight space between the starter and engine block than it was pulling it out. To get enough slack to make it fit, I ended up having to loosen up the loom all the way to the opposite side of the engine block.

New +12v alternator cable exits cleanly from behind the starter

New/old engine wiring interface terminal strip and shunt

New 6AWG wire from the shunt to the starter battery terminal

Shunt wires temporarily attached; black to the alternator side, white to the battery side

I’ve heard that the wire length is extremely critical for ammeters to accurately read the output from the shunts. So instead of cutting the wires I just looped and wire-tied them.

Wire ties clipped and the terminal cover installed

That gets the basic connections done on one engine, and now I know exactly what each wire in the Cummins loom does. But while I had my nose stuffed up against the engine block trying to pull the wires behind the starter, I noticed that somebody hadn’t been very careful installing hoses and clamps in this engine’s history.

Zero clearance between the starter and this heat exchanger hose and clamp

To fix that, I needed to loosen the heat exchanger and relocate it 1/4″ further back. When I went to loosen the heat exchanger clamp bolts, I found a very similar problem on the other end of the same hose. Fortunately, both problems were resolved by just moving the HEX aft a bit.

Another heat exchanger hose clamp with clearance issues

Better to find these kinds of problems and fix them now, I suppose.

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

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

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Reinstalling the Isolation Transformer

Having made it through the 2016 Mid-Atlantic Blizzard without Tent Model XXX being damaged, I’m still hoping to splash the boat later this year. I’m still waiting for the new glass to show up, and in addition to the portholes there are a few other holes in the exterior that need to be filled before the Roamer can splash. I also want to have functioning shore power when the boat splashes.

New #6AWG  primary wire

First, lay out and take the twist out of the wire

Next, lay out the wire loom

Work the wire into the loom and tape the ends

Inside the transformer, old wire and new

50 year-old OE wiring is shiny copper, but not marine grade

Removing the last old wire

After using a razor to cut through the OE fusing silicone tape, pliers help pull it apart

When I first tried to take the tape off of the split bolt connector by unwinding it, it just didn’t work. Unlike tape I was used to, you can’t unwind this stuff. It’s called silicone self-fusing tape, and once it sets up it’s not coming off. When you install it, you have to stretch it 2x it’s original length as you wrap the wire. The stretching somehow activates the silicone, and it becomes one big mass of rubber within 24 hours. Because the wire was still bright copper, it’s obvious the stuff keeps water out of the connection. The only way to remove it is with a knife.

Three layers of silicone tape

New wires wrapped and installed

Buttoned up for the first time in 7 years

“Getting Egyptian” to install the transformer

The transformer is 14″ high, and the bottom 6″ are empty but for the wires. All of the windings and core are in the top 8″, and this bad boy weighs 175 pounds. When flipped right-side-up for installation it’s very unstable with all the weight up top. So, taking great care, I first tipped it up onto the big wood block, then tipped it side-to-side while inserting scraps of wood to slowly lift it to the right height.

Bolts in…it’s on the bulkhead

Speaking of the bulkhead, it’s not pretty, but it is fully encapsulated in epoxy. I recycled it from the pile of good 3/4″ marine ply from when we disassembled the boat. I thought about making it pretty but decided it wasn’t worth waiting another day for paint to dry. This panel will never be seen once the V-berth is assembled. If I’d had some colorant when I epoxied it, I could have made it white, but… Anyway, it’s a detail I’m willing to overlook.

Secure the wires and call it done

I’ll run the wire looms back to the distribution panel in the salon later and finish the connections. In the meantime, I’ve got plenty of other things to do. Since my main focus is getting the boat waterproof and ready to splash, I need to make some parts so  I can seal up the biggest source of underwater holes remaining.

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Making Spacers for the Swim Platform

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Organizing the Electrical System

Dust, dust everywhere.

Way back in 2008, we sandblasted the hull inside and out. Cleaning up the big piles of sand afterwards was one big job. Little did I know that five years and dozens of times working the shop vac later, we’d still be finding sandblasting residue! Well, that and all of the dust from grinding the gelcoat off the cabin top and then the fairing compound and primer when we made it nice and straight in preparation for paint. One of the places that was harboring the most dust was the original wiring, much of which I left intact. Note to self: when you leave bundles of wires in place during sandblasting and sanding operations, every wire in the bundle will be coated with as much dust as gravity can pile on top. Bump any of those coated wires though, and the dust will fall straight down into your eyes.

Why is it always the eyes???

Anyway, while the layout of the boat will change quite a bit when I build the interior, the basic layout of the electrical system won’t change all that much. The main panel will get replaced, but it’ll still be in the salon cabinet where Chris Craft put them. There will still be heavy gauge wire going to the genset, which is in the same location as the original, as well as 120vac and 12vdc lines going forward and aft to service the two staterooms. Only their outlet locations will change. And since the boat wasn’t on the water for very long before being hauled on the hard and forgotten about circa 1985, the original wiring is in surprisingly good condition. I’ll cut the ends back a bit, but the copper is still bright in the sheathing.

But first, I need to clean all the wires, replace all the looms and generally get the system organized.

Tangled mess ‘o wires

I was very careful to mark each wire and loom when we first tore the boat apart back in 2008. Unfortunately, I marked the wires by making a tag out of blue masking tape and writing on it with a fine-point Sharpie. Over time most of the tape vanished, and the tape that remained no longer had any distinguishing marks from the Sharpie. I guess “permanent marker” only applies if the surface you write on stays in place and intact…

Slowly getting untangled

I carefully pulled each wire out of the looms and wire conduits, then wiped them down to remove dust. My coveralls, respirator and eye protection sure got a good workout! This also allowed me to trace each wire back to the main panels and buses. Now I pretty much know where each one goes.

New wire loom from Del City Supply

Out with the old…

Dust-free wiring up and out of the way

95% dust free

Fortunately, old boats aren’t very electrically complicated

It’s probably not a rare skill, but I have pretty much memorized the wiring on the boat. That should be good for winning drinks at any Chris Craft raft up. “Circuit #22? Oh, yeah, that’s the nav lights.”

Sharpies mark the wires wherever possible

Hopefully, this will be a more permanent marking system than the tape was.

Panda genset wiring looks tangled…but it’s an organized tangle.

With the wiring sort of out of the way, it’s time to get moving on the engine install. For that to happen, some very long pieces of stainless steel round bar–Aquamet 22, to be precise–need to find their way onto the boat.

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Installing the propeller shafts.