I just spent a little time tracing all the wires in my little Montgomery 17. I am the new owner of the boat so I am expecting the wiring system and drawing a wiring diagram up for myself for reference and to keep onboard.
My electrical requirements are pretty simple, I accurately estimate that while I am out cruising I would not be using more than 12 AH a day.
After tracing every wire and drawing up my diagram I found a few things that I was concerned about.
1- All of the ground wires are grounded on one of the bolts that hold my switch panel to the bulkhead. They are getting a good ground because all of my electrics are working fine. Something makes me think that there is a better way to do this, like having a dedicated "ground" bus bar to ground everything too. I think it would be easier to troubleshoot my an electrical failure if every ground wasn't grounded on the same bolt.
What is the best way to do this? Get myself a bus bar and ground it to the (-) terminal on my battery and run all my ground to it then?
Here you can see the bolt that everything is grounded to in the center of the photo.
-2 My next question is regarding my 12v battery tester, it's the needle kind, not digital.
It has two wires, a + and a - running from it to the battery with a inline fuse on the + wire. Then it has a tiny wire running from the tester to a + terminal on my switch panel. It also has a seperate tiny wire coming out of it that is terminated and not hooked to anything. What is the purpose of these two tiny wires?
Thank you all for you time and comments.
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Q's on my Monty 17 Electrical System
