Marine Electronics Forum - Where to connect trim tabs pos wire under dash

I have a 1994 24' SeaRay Sundancer. I am installing Bennett trim tabs. Where can I connect the 12V positive wire to under the dash board? It needs a 20 amp circuit

you need to connect it to a fused connection ...with at least a 20 amp breaker!


JOhn

i connected mine at my positive bus bar, with a 20a in-line fuse

I gave mine its own breaker in the breaker panel when I changed over to the Bennetts, but I was in the process of rewireing the boat at the same time anyway so it was no big deal to do that. Trim tabs have a high drain during the short periods of time when they are actually being acculated, hence the 20 amp fuse or breaker. The thing is that if you are just finding a place that has switched power in an existing electrical system is you have to look down stream from the connection to make sure that somewhere in that circuit you are'n't relying on small wire to carry that load. I have seen some very odd wire runs and splicing on boats and some of it has been downright dangerous. So even if you find a nice 12 gauge wire that is hot you might want to trace it down to see where it goes before you hook up to it. It would be a shame to hook up to one like that not knowing that further back in the boat, out of sight, that same line was spliced into a little 18 guage for its power supply, way to small to carry the load you will demand of it.

Thom

If you don't have a buss bar, you might want to consider starting one with this connection. It really makes the rats nest effect behind a dash a lot easier to deal with. I redid the electronics wiring of 2 VHF's and a GPS on my old SeaOx last year with a nice fused buss that was made by a company called Blueseas I think. Really much better and more reliable than a bunch of splices like I had before the rework :)