[pine island fred]

Am faced with a weird problem. It is a recently repowered with a OX66, 200 hp. 03 vintage, replacing an older carbed 200. Old instruments were replaced with yamaha digital ones, one the tach the other spedo with the associated other indications in those instruments. Problem has come up like this. Turn the key on and nothing happens. No power to the starter and no power to the instruments. Turn on the boat supplied instrument lights switch and the instruments display and the starter will engage. Have found that the instruments do light up for nite operation.
I have a similar set up with the tach gague only but do not know if it lights up or not as I do not go out at night. Any ideas? Are the instruments normally lite up with the key on or are the display and background lighting seperate? I am suspicious that somehow the lighting is back energising the rest of the system. The tilt/ trim sym. is operating normally from the throttle and motor switch with the key off as I suspect it is supposed to. Would appreciate any ideas if you have run into this. regards FRED

[Ray Neudecker]

Normally the yellow wire should be the postive wire for the guages ect. The blue wire is run through the light switch so it only goes postive when the light switch is on. First check to be sure the yellow wire is going hot when the key switch is on. If not you have a switch problem. If it is check the wiring to the guages.

[pine island fred]

RAY, thankyou for the response. Boat is now a 1000 miles away so someone else will have to tear into it. Something will have to be does as when the engine operation degrades to the point of turning on the panel light switch to operate the engine, something is wrong.
My limited experience, wiring boats I never tap off the engine harness at all. Easy to grab power off the ignition switch but I run seperate power with a switch to power the nav, accessory bus. I believe in keeping the buses isolated. FRED