Shore Thing

When i looked under my dash the other day, i noticed that there is a pos and neg wire coming from the back of my controls. I also noticed that they weren't connected to anything. Do they have to do with the neutral safety switch? What function does this wire perform and what should it be connected to?

Thanks for any help.

-Lance

monstaaa

most likely either neutral safety or kill switch depending onj the make of the controls. possibly trim, but there would be 3 wires for trim.

good luck

hillbilly24

if they are nuetral safety they should both be yellow w/ red tracer, if they were trim there would be three wires blue, green and purple or red. If you have one red and one black they are probably for a backlight or something.

Shore Thing

Thanks. There's only 2 wires, so i guess it must be neutral safety. I already knew i could start it in gear, i just figured either the neutral safety switch was bad or was not there at all. The boat is a 1986 chris craft stinger and they are the original controls so I'm guessing they are mercury zero effort controls (or whatever they were called back then)?

Any idea what I should look for to connect these things to?

The wiring in there is a mess, the last guy that owned the boat was NO electrician.

hillbilly24

There should be tow wires that come out of the main harness about 3 feet from the dash end. They will both be yellow w/red tracer. It doesn't matter wich ones hooks to wich cuase it's just a switch, polarity doesn'y matter. The two wires from the harness must be connected to each other right now so you will have to disconect them and hook em up to the wires coming from your shifter.

Shore Thing

cool. Thanks a lot man.

tomas_wallin

There might be a cause that the cables are disconnected, most often there are reasons for such things.

The neutral safety switch might be broken...

hillbilly24

It is not uncommon at all for the boat builder to just loop the wires together in the harness and not hook it up at all.

Liberator21

Before hooking up anything, I would connect an ohm meter or continuity checker to the wires just to make sure it's a switch, and it's not broken. It only takes a minute to do.