Re: 1990 Chris Craft 254 Seahawk ( Refurb and upgrades)
Chris,
again great job.
the dog house work should quiet the engine down some.
sorry to take you backwards,
but i have some questions on your led striplight install.
first did you buy the dc power supply for them? how did you wire in?
i assume you cut them many times to place in different places.
did you solder extention wires in between them?
and what guage wire did you use?
getting ready to make my order and would like to buy it all at once
thanks in advance
Ok, hope I can remember all this,lol Mine are the rgb lights with remote controller. It has whats called a rf controller. Your power from battery will run to the rf controller or to a fuse box and then to the rf control box. Then all the wires from the lights run to the rf controller. No need for a dc adapter on these. If your buying them, get the 12v lights.
I ran one strip under each gunnel rod box on port and starboard sides and one strip in the overhead electronics box and one strip behind the logo cutout on the front of the electronics overhead box. I originally had them wired in series but then backed off of that. Reason being, is if one of the lights had an issue, it would be easier to find the issue if they all had straight runs back to the rf control box. So each light I installed, has four wires soldered to one end of each light strip that is then run back to the rf control box. The wires are very small!! Anything big, you will not be able to solder then to the led light strip. Don't remember what exact size I used,sorry.
So all that being said, what I have is 4 lights, with 4 wires coming off of each light. Those 4 wires from each light run back to the rf controller box under my helm. I actually did not run power from the battery to the control box. I added a fuse buss for all the new electronics, so the power is run to the fuse box and then one of the terminals is designated and run to the rf contoller. This also works well for any issues down the road, because I know right where to start by checking the fuse for that particular thing. Inline fuses suck imo.
Lastly, I do not have mine wired into a switch anywhere because it was a remote contol. I do however have the lead wire coming from the battery running through the on off switch for the whole boat. This way, when I am not using the boat, the little red light on the control rf contol bow isn't draining my battery. Don't think it would drain much anyway, but also keeps the leds from accidentally being turned on while boat id docked or layed up.
This pic shows the rf controller box, it is the little silver thing at the upper left.
You can see here where the gunnel lights simply have a hole drilled through the rod locker and those wires go up to the helm to the rf contol box. And yes, there is four wires there and I bought color coded wire. The rf control box has blue, red,green and black if I am remembering right.
Here you can see the fuse bank I put in. Bought it at autozone. Has the square fuses that I like. The lights were not hooked up yet though.
Hope that helps.
