New Rocker Switch Panel May Have Issues

[MichAngler]

Just a heads up I had to replace my dash panel a few months back to the rocker switch version and haven’t had a problem till yesterday.

Livewell fill pumps blew both fuses and all my fish died – went from 3rd to 7th due to the penalty

I’ve own 4 Skeeters and never had a problem with fish dying in the livewells but I think the replacement rocker panel may have caused this.

Fished the first spot with no problems set the livewells to auto fill and they filled right up and continued to work during this time (Putting fish in the box I could see the pumps working)

It’s when I moved to my second spot with 1 hour left I turned the fill switches off and turned the recalculate switches on for the run, once I got to my spot I turned the recalculate switches off and the auto fills back on. This is where I think the problem happened.

I hit both fill switches at the same time where as with the old touch pad panel I would do each Livewell one at a time, this is also where I take the blame for this because I didn’t see the lights come on the switches and due to the sun shining on them I assumed it was too bright to see them.

With 5 minutes of fishing left I caught a fish and when I went to cull I found 5 dead fish floating in the boxes. No hope of reviving them and no time left I tossed the one I just caught back and went in to take my penalty.

Now after checking things I found that both 3 amp fuses blew which seems strange that both of them would blow at the same time, I also noticed that both switches have a diode attached to them and are connected to one red wire. This seems strange as well considering both livewells should be independent of each other with separate timers, switches and fuses.

With only two timers they may have them wired one for fill and one for recalculate which would seem to be why both fuses blew and no longer makes them independent of each other. And makes having two fuses redundant.

So ether it was from me turning on both pumps at the same time or it may be due to the old style timers (Shotgun Shell Shaped) drawing more power or that they may be used for both the recalculate and fill but the only thing that has changed is the panel.

I do take the blame for not paying more attention but seeing that in 20 years I never had a problem with Skeeter livewells I had no reason to think there would be an issue. I haven’t had the time to look in to this further yet but I have replaced the 3 amp fuses with 5 amp for now and will be paying a lot more attention to this from now on.

[07SkeeterZX225]

After replacing the fuses, do the pumps work? Have you tried to recreate the problem?

[ChrisH]

Wonder if its a problem with the timer? My boat has 1 timer for both recirc pumps and 1 for each fill pump.

[MichAngler]

Yes recerc pumps did and still work, the first thing I did was turn the recerc pumps on when I looked in the livewells and they both worked (Like it was going to do any good)

After putting in two new 5 amp fuses both fill pumps work but haven’t had the boat on the water today to see if they last all day under load.

After looking at the wiring a little closer the way they wired the timers, instead of one timer for the left fill & Recerc and one for the right side fill & recerc they wired them one for fill pumps and one for recerc pumps. And if you have an issue with one pump that would cause a fuse to blow it will blow both and you no longer have a working livewell. Or wire it in a manner that if while both pumps are on and one fuse blows it doesn’t blow the second.

I can’t place all the blame on the panel, the true issue maybe a bad or old connection in or near the fuse box or in the new panel/timer that cases one pump to draw a little more amperage to get past the connection.

To try and explain this imagine each pump draws 2 amps and you have a bad connection on one pump and instead of drawing 2 amps it draws 2-1/2 - Now you connect it to the other fill pumps wiring and electricity will take the path of least resistance and try and draw most of the 4-1/2 amps through one 3 amp fuse *POP* goes that fuse and now its left with trying to draw all through the other 3 amp fuse *POP* goes that one.

I still don’t know the true cause yet but I just thought I’d better give a heads up so this doesn’t happen to anyone else. (Pay attention to the lights on the switches)

Now if they had been wired “Left & right” so at least only one livewell goes down rather than both I’d at least have two or three fish still alive and if I had paid a little more attention I could have caught this in time to move all the fish to the livewell that still worked. And had they done it left & right this wouldn’t have happened to me because I don’t run both fill and recerc at the same time.

My fix will be to go through the wiring and redo the connections as well as buy two more timers and rewire the system to have one pump and one timer this way if a pump blows a fuse it won’t blow any other pump providing four independent pumps.

I still don’t understand why you have 4 pumps, 4 fuses and 4 switches but only two timers.

Again I can’t place all the blame on the panel but it is the only thing that has changed in the past 5 years of perfect operation.