Assistance in wire ID

[Wylie_Tunes]

2012 SLX250

Red 12ga wire connected directly to battery B+. See pic. Its the wire with the yellow tag. Has no inline fuse. One of the other small red wires is OEM and the 3rd is the aftermarket charger.



Wire has a parasitic draw thats making the charger stay out of sleep mode and leading to dry batteries.

Boat has been to a dealer and they could not identify the circuit in order to resolve the draw. Any help would much appreciated.

 

[scoflaw]

Disconnect it. What doesn't work?

 

[Skybolt]

Disconnect it. What doesn't work?

Definitely the first step, turn everything that is 12v on and disconnect the wire.

secondly try and trace it back to something. I know tough to do sometimes.

It could be the wrong wire going to a parallel switch which could be wired incorrectly and actually bridging the two batteries, if there are two that is.

 

[Doc O Rock]

Here is what the pros use. Trace where it goes.

Amazon.com

 

[Scott215]

Disconnect it and see what doesn't work

 

[Wanderer 290]

You could also get an amp meter to measure draw then start turning things on and watch for a spike.

 

[Skybolt]

Here is what the pros use. Trace where it goes.

Amazon.com

The tracers are tough to use on a boat. It's hard to get to all of the spots where wires terminate. Easier to turn everything on and disconnect the wire.

 

[Scott215]

Were there any aftermarket accessories put in the boat like an amp gauges. I had a few on my boat when I got it. My electrian son went though all my stereo stuff and got rid of three wires that did nothing. One was 12v hot all the time.

 

[Lazy Daze]

My first thought is that it's something aftermarket given the slight color difference. But, that aside...

One of the batteries would have a wire for the Mercathode system. But that's a smaller gauge - 16g, maybe - definitely not confused with a 12g.

One of the batteries would also have a lead for the bilge pump floats and stereo memory (which is some of these boats, it then splits to connect to each subcircuit with an inline fuse in the smaller wire). I thought that was a 10g, though - and that would likely be easily traced/figured out.

For now, I think that brings us back to something installed aftermarket and the advice above is probably the easiest/fastest way to figure it out.

 

[Scott215]

I would definitely think aftermarket if you can get up under your dash or where your stereo is and have a look

 

[Wylie_Tunes]

Thanks for all the suggestions for the "pro" tools and "pro" tips that the "Pros" as the searay dealer could have and should have, already tried.

Aftermarket? Nope this wire was already there and goes right into the factory wire harness bundle.

Stereo memory? This was the dealer's best guess, but the stereo head unit has since failed and been replaced with a unit that uses EEPROM memory and no longer requires a constant 12V B+. With the replacement of the Sony head unit, the stereo was now 100% aftermarket. This wire was already there, and the draw remained.

I thought there were a couple of seasoned searay techs that were active here. I hoped one could open a battery schematic and identify the two small red B+ wires.

 

[Skybolt]

@Wylie_Tunes the largest SLX on the Sea Ray site is a 230. This is from that owners manual. There are only two non 2/0 gauge wires coming form the battery. A single 12ga wire that feeds a bilge pump and the original stereo memory wire you eluded to. The other set of batteries only show 2/0 ga wire for the engine(s). The 12v panel looks like it is fed from the engine 50A 12v feed.

The manual is here: https://owners-resources.searayweb.com/owners-manuals-files/2012_230 SLX_230SLX Manual.pdf

Sorry not a SR tech.

 

[Skybolt]

The 250 has a slightly more complicated setup - The wire that goes off the SS is for the mercathode.

 

[techmitch]

Thanks for all the suggestions for the "pro" tools and "pro" tips that the "Pros" as the searay dealer could have and should have, already tried.

Aftermarket? Nope this wire was already there and goes right into the factory wire harness bundle.

Stereo memory? This was the dealer's best guess, but the stereo head unit has since failed and been replaced with a unit that uses EEPROM memory and no longer requires a constant 12V B+. With the replacement of the Sony head unit, the stereo was now 100% aftermarket. This wire was already there, and the draw remained.

I thought there were a couple of seasoned searay techs that were active here. I hoped one could open a battery schematic and identify the two small red B+ wires.

I saw that also but the pic he posted,

shows 6 on the pos. post/connection, some of which may not even be ABYC compliant.
I looked at a couple different years.

Edit; That big sucker on the pos. nut post may be for the optional windlass but I don't like it.
A lot stuff may possibly dealer installed (even extremely tidy sometimes) so who knows who did it or if they really knew what they were doing.

 

[Lazy Daze]

From looking at the schematic, I believe the answer above still holds merit. IF that wire is indeed factory, then it should have a factory data tag on it. Does it? Just because a wire goes into a bundle doesn't mean it is, in fact, factory. Whether it's original or not is till up for debate - but unless you've owned the boat from day one and know what has/hasn't been done it would be misleading to assume it's factory. In the end, though, it's a somewhat moot point - other than it makes it harder to diagnose - especially through a forum.

But, if you look at the wiring diagram, you can see that what you have pictured doesn't match. That makes it awful hard for us to trace it from where we are, you know?

Trace the wire - open up the loom that it goes into.

Or, as has been mentioned a few times... disconnect it and see what (if anything) no longer works.

 

[Wanderer 290]

The yellow tape on it leads me to believe it was installed after the boat was sold.

 

[Wylie_Tunes]

The yellow tape on it leads me to believe it was installed after the boat was sold.

I flagged the wire with yellow tape, thinking it would help an actual Searay trained tech, trace down the suspect wire, since thay had a 50/50 shot and following the right one.

 

[Wanderer 290]

This is a long shot… Some Glomex tv antenna tv antennas have a 12 volt power supply.

 

[Wylie_Tunes]

Thanks for the ideas. So far, the active anoids is the front runner.

@ lazy daze, I should have been more clear, there are 2 cables on that threaded posts that are not OEM, but were added by me. A 14ga thats the charger B+ and the 1/0 that goas around to the 2nd house battery. The one fused is OEM and the suspect non-fused is OEM. This is why I asked if a manual showed two small gauge wires to the battery.

 

[Lazy Daze]

The diagrams do show that - see the schematics provided above. Although the picture above of the schematic is only partial (you can get the full thing through SR's site), it doesn't ID the small (probably 16g) attached to the lug - that is most likely the Mercathode system. Although it's strange that the tagged wire is a different color, by process of elimination then that one must be the feed for the bilge pumps and stereo memory since the fused wire would be for the charger.

I suspect, by now, you've figured all that out though (possibly by just doing the "disconnect" method). It would be strange for a Mercathode to go bad... well, not "strange", but maybe "very uncommon". But it could certainly happen.

The minute draw that the Mercathode pulls all the time (by design) and even the tiny draw that a computer may have are not enough to keep the charger from going into maintenance mode, though (at least not the OEM charger).

Have you considered the charger may be defective?