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OK, so I figured it out. (if you don't care about the details skip to the next paragraph) When I hooked another hot wire up to the bilge switch the pump came on, so I knew the problem was in the hot wire. I thought the bilge was powered from the hot bus bar behind the dash because the bilge...

Thank you, in talking it over with a few others they came to the same conclusion. I was thinking if it were voltage drop the pump would at least try to click over, but that’s my plan for in the morning. Shouldn’t be to bad, just trace the wires back the switch panel and common bus bars behind...

Hi everyone, I hopped on the boat today to check everything out in preparation for going out tomorrow, I noticed the bilge pump was not working. I figured oh well, it’s over 20 years old probably needs replacing. Just to be sure, I checked the fuse and the wiring, everything looked good, so...

Took the boat out twice since our mishap and everything seems to be running great. Here's to luck that it wasn't worst and now its better than new!!

I use that Perko selector a lot to go from battery 1 to battery 2 through all. It has been getting hung up on all recently. I wonder if the switch malfunctioned and dead shorted the batteries? The switch did melt where battery one is hooked up. I haven't used my volt meter for anything other...

Perko

It took me about a day and a half between the family responsibilities, (kids need to eat I guess), several trips to the store, and a little over $1,000. which was mostly 2 new batteries, cable, a new battery selector and some tools. I built all new battery cables, had to replace the ends of my...

IMG 3088

IMG 3087

IMG 3091

Yea, as I’m standing there in the 5 seconds it took to happen, while sparks and some small flames were shooting out from under the battery box my two thoughts were 1: run like hell and leave it, and 2: turn off the battery switch and grab the fire extinguisher, which I did. It was a tense moment...

I’m open to other possible causes and solutions of course, I really just want to prevent it from happening again. When I get everything hooked back up I will check the voltage output from the battery charger. I don’t think it was charging battery one though, because it was showing a fault with it.

Yeah I agree with you about the voltage, I wish I had measured the batteries this morning after they had sat for a while before I took them back.

I carefully inspected the cables, I did not see any visible corrosion. It appears that the highest amount of heat was at the battery terminal itself.

Good point I’ll check. I’m going to build them back with heat shrink up to the lug.

Here are the cables. I'm pretty confident it was a lose connection at battery 1 and battery 2's positive terminal, more so at battery 1. Both of these terminals had wing nuts on them which I should have changed out to nuts with lock washers and properly torqued them. The loose connection...

Cables

I’ve been reading my Boatowners Mechanical and Electrical Manual and all I can come up with is along your same line of thinking. Wonder if I had a poor connection at the positive terminal of battery 1, because of this maybe battery # 1 wasn’t charging and had a lower charge than battery 2. Then...

Battery Failure