Another Grounding question

[setidball]

Is there any reason that one should not run a dedicated ground wire direct from the battery to the instrument cluster? I'm not sure where the instruments are getting ground from...someplace on the block I presume. (1995 PS190 350)

[gotta_ski]

I'd be interested to hear the verdict on this. My tach drops a bit with everything I turn on. Running just the heater makes it show 1000 rpm lower. I really want to sort this out before summer.

[Skipper]

The ground comes back from the engine in the wiring harness. I don't think that you will hurt anything to run a ground directly to a block for the instrument panel. Often times if you just trace the ground from the battery to the engine you can clean up that connection.

[Ben]

I ran a 8 or 10 ga from the block to my ballast swtiches when I put 2 pumps in a few yrs ago. All the little crap wires up there made me nervous. Also, I ran a separate ground from battery for my little amp (2x45w) as well. All works well.

I think I see some drop with the factory items when I turn on my nav lights though, but that is not often. Now I think about it, I could swap all the ground to the big wire from the block, although that is low on the list...

[setidball]

I ask the question because…grounding seems to be a big pain for just about everybody. In my case…voltage at the instrument cluster was reading low, about 10.8 volts. This, as indicated by the OEM volt meter, the PP, and my hand held volt meter. Adding a dedicated ground direct from the battery brought the voltage back up to 12.5v, indicating that there is a poor ground in the circuit someplace. There are a lot of wires in the cluster and in the wire harness. So I started cleaning every connection I could find. This helped a bit, but did not totally restore the voltage. So what unseen issue could be created by simply adding a ‘direct to battery’ cluster ground wire, bypassing the whole block and wiring harness. I can think of one possible problem but want to fish for other thoughts and opinions. Thanks S

[ahhudgins]

You can only help things by running an extra ground. Most of the time the ground wire from the battery goes directly to the block and then ground wires are taken from the block. There are usually several connectors, splices, crimps, and smaller gauge wires running all over the boat. Can't hurt.

[cwright]

I had all kinds of electrical issues stemming from poor grounding. I always theorized that the daisy chain approach to grounding the gages behind the dash was the culprit. That, or simply having too many devices connected to an under-rated ground wire. I finally bought a terminal strip, ran all my ground wires to their own screw on the strip, then I ran a 10 guage wire from the terminal strip to the negative post on my battery. This action resolved my electrical problems. Volt meter reads higher > than 12 volts now too. Good luck.

[hadzinak]

I have been having electrical issues since I added a second battery and installed a Perko switch ( the electrician changed all the connections so when the switch is set at zero not even the bilge pumps work... ) . My gauges don't start working when I switch the engine on,except the voltage and the star gazer. I live in Greece and there isn't an authorized MC dealer so I just have to deal with an electrician that hasn't dealt with MC boats before... Could someone provide an opinion regarding my problem and some pics of what the ground cable form the gauges looks like and where it should start and end so I can have a personal look and opinion?

[bturner2]

I went from picture one to picture two. Was having some really weird sounds coming from the stereo. Basically pulled everything apart and started from scratch. I installed terminal blocks for all the power and ground leads and replaced all the cables with at least two sizes larger cable where ever possible. Also replace the on/off switch with a Blue Seas ACR add a battery kit. Everything works great now.

[agarabaghi]

how does the acr add a battery kit work? I see the switch, and then that little box, im assuming it has terminals in there took hook up each battery?