Oh that brings back nightmares! When I got my boat I unscrewed the switch panel and was met by a rat's nest. Called the old owner and asked how it all worked, 'don't know, it just works', was the reply. Took weeks of tracing wires. The scariest one was a live AC male connecter deep in a locker! Thankfully, we never pulled into a marina plugged the shore power in and then reached into that locker with wet hands.
That does sound pretty painful, I certainly had several days of attaching 2 cables to a battery then wandering around the boat to see if anything turned on. I tried to keep my AC fairly simple as I am not an expert and have had a couple of mains shocks in my life, its not something I am keen to repeat.
You really do take on some seriously difficult projects Tim. I think I would have needed some serious psychiatric counseling if I'd tried that and I certainly would not have produced something that looks anywhere near as neat, tidy and functional damn fine work!
How you had the patience to do that I don't know! I get stressed trying to untangle my charger cable 😅 Awesome job though and the laser cut panels really completed the look.
😂😂😂 Once again, Tim did a superb job with this part of the restoration. The paring of the wires I think was the hardest part and he kept having to go and find what was working .... Laser cutter cam in very handy for making the cupboard nice and fancy 👍
I thought sorting the abused wiring out on my defender TD5 before adding in new toys was bad enough but this is a whole new level. Really impressed with the methodical approach firstly with tracing live cables but also with the pipe clips to keep the spaghetti tidy ready for future work. Did you chose to replace any cables that had previously been cut and joined or showed signs of age related degradation? - painful lesson I learned was trusting old joins on the grounds that they worked before I touched it so why replace - now if I can replace, I do so that I know the circuit has integrity of cabling
The clips were a great idea! Though you don't see them behind the cabinet, it will make things much easier should we need to add anything else in. I'll ask Tim if he replaced the older ones as I am not 100% sure if he did or not....
I replaced a few, like the instruments, main feeds to the panel and some of the engine cables. The rest I didn't probably would have been good to do but I had already blown the budget pretty badly and the cost of replacing all the wiring with decent tinned cable would have been pretty extreme. There isn't really much that I would say is critical, if the light in the head stops working its annoying but not really catastrophic. Its probably something I will do overtime as its pretty easy to pull new cables through with the old ones. I would also need to remove the mast as the most likely chance for failure are the ones in the mast and that is a pretty length and expensive process so will wait until I have more need to do it.
Great video, just happened on your site in advance of doing the same to my Westerly Konsort this winter - very helpful! Could you let me know where you got the switch panel from, I'm in the same 'boat as you in terms of £30 or £1k which doesn't work for me either!! & I agree the laser cut panels look great.
Tidy job 👌your pride in the project is very apparent.
Thank you! It's really starting to come together now 👍
Oh that brings back nightmares! When I got my boat I unscrewed the switch panel and was met by a rat's nest. Called the old owner and asked how it all worked, 'don't know, it just works', was the reply. Took weeks of tracing wires. The scariest one was a live AC male connecter deep in a locker! Thankfully, we never pulled into a marina plugged the shore power in and then reached into that locker with wet hands.
That does sound pretty painful, I certainly had several days of attaching 2 cables to a battery then wandering around the boat to see if anything turned on. I tried to keep my AC fairly simple as I am not an expert and have had a couple of mains shocks in my life, its not something I am keen to repeat.
You really do take on some seriously difficult projects Tim. I think I would have needed some serious psychiatric counseling if I'd tried that and I certainly would not have produced something that looks anywhere near as neat, tidy and functional damn fine work!
😂 He did a really good job on this, even if he did go a bit mad pairing all the wires together!
How you had the patience to do that I don't know! I get stressed trying to untangle my charger cable 😅
Awesome job though and the laser cut panels really completed the look.
😂😂😂 Once again, Tim did a superb job with this part of the restoration. The paring of the wires I think was the hardest part and he kept having to go and find what was working .... Laser cutter cam in very handy for making the cupboard nice and fancy 👍
I thought sorting the abused wiring out on my defender TD5 before adding in new toys was bad enough but this is a whole new level. Really impressed with the methodical approach firstly with tracing live cables but also with the pipe clips to keep the spaghetti tidy ready for future work. Did you chose to replace any cables that had previously been cut and joined or showed signs of age related degradation? - painful lesson I learned was trusting old joins on the grounds that they worked before I touched it so why replace - now if I can replace, I do so that I know the circuit has integrity of cabling
The clips were a great idea! Though you don't see them behind the cabinet, it will make things much easier should we need to add anything else in. I'll ask Tim if he replaced the older ones as I am not 100% sure if he did or not....
I replaced a few, like the instruments, main feeds to the panel and some of the engine cables. The rest I didn't probably would have been good to do but I had already blown the budget pretty badly and the cost of replacing all the wiring with decent tinned cable would have been pretty extreme. There isn't really much that I would say is critical, if the light in the head stops working its annoying but not really catastrophic. Its probably something I will do overtime as its pretty easy to pull new cables through with the old ones. I would also need to remove the mast as the most likely chance for failure are the ones in the mast and that is a pretty length and expensive process so will wait until I have more need to do it.
Great video, just happened on your site in advance of doing the same to my Westerly Konsort this winter - very helpful! Could you let me know where you got the switch panel from, I'm in the same 'boat as you in terms of £30 or £1k which doesn't work for me either!! & I agree the laser cut panels look great.
He got it from www.midlandchandlers.co.uk/
What's the name and manufacturer of those tablet mounts?
They are Railblaza, we got ours from force4 👍