HotTubPhil

Hi,

I bought my 290 in June of this year from LOTO - I went down with 10 or 12 boats to look at - I looked at the first boat, which was told to me to be "mint" - it had more spider cracks in it than I have ever seen - I looked at the second boat and decided I had seen enough, I needed to look no further.

This PQ is a 92, and I honestly found only 1 scratch on it. It was owned by a couple that I think may be more ultra anal than my wife and I. When I lurked the forum earlier this year, I think I saw someone speaking about my particular boat - the owner was from STL area and has a condo in LOTO. Super cool people, with a hero's career.

Anyways, this boat has been a dream this summer, and for a 20 year old boat, has given me less problems than I anticipated.

I have a technical question, and if this place is not the right place, I apologize, please direct me to a technical section.

My question is this:

When I am on the lake, on DC power, the AC/DC tv will not work. Also, when we were out late at night, we had all the running lights on, cockpit lights etc. and the main breaker on the motor popped causing the electrical to shut down as well as the starboard motor.

I will do a load test on the batteries the next chance I get, but could it be simply a weak battery?

Also, at night when I have the stereo going, and I flip on the docking lights, the stereo will cut out for a few seconds while the docking lights power up.

Any help or advice on which direction to go would be much appreciated and I will also help and be involved in the group going forward.

Thanks so much,

HTP

BlueOval

My 290 would do strange things when I turn lights on at night, I ran a heavy ground wire to dash from battery, fixed my problem, sounds like you may have a few more things going on, but I would start with grounds. Love my PQ's, but never very happy with the wiring.

boatnt

iTrader: (1)

Yep..run a 8 gage ground to the helm on a bus bar and splice all your grounds there

apollard

What they said. Run good grounds. The wiring is the only part of my 257 where things are not top notch. Some of the connectors were clearly 'crimped' with regular slip joint pliers (WTF?), and the ground buss was about 50% under size IMO.

diggin H20

I had to do the same thing on my 2000 Vyper. Ran a 10 ga. ground wire from dash back to battery and solved my issues.

Jplanes

Congrats on the purchase, and I'm glad you posted this. I have a 92 290 as well and the stereo problem is the same with my boat. I hoping to do a gauge and dash upgrade this winter and I'll re-do the ground as well. Thanks for the info guys!

HotTubPhil

Thanks so much everybody! I am going to run the ground -

But - I soldved plenty of the issues once I tested the starboard battery - it was bad.

Now that I installed a new battery, the problems are gone - BUT, I think I found a new/existing problem.

It does not seam the on-board battery charger shuts down. I watched the charger not turn off, even thou my batterys tested at 13.9 - I wonder if it goes to battery tender mode??? Is the charger designed to shut off, or just charge to the 13's and stay put?