Low voltage at dash

awhires

have low voltage at dash, good at batteries, main engine wiring harness is good. Any ideas? 1995 fav-265

mvn

How low is low?

Mark

youstolemybeer

i have the same boat and had the same problem. More than likely Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder got with Helen Keller and did some re-wiring on some of your components. If you go in the bathroom and raise the mirror you will find all sorts of tangled wires that connect to the gauges of your dash.  Clean each connector at the back of your dash gauges. 
The way Rinker wired the boat on mine is that when the ignition is on, the gauge lights are on. That gives a lower reading at the volt gauge. Also the way they wired it is that the volt gauge reads off the wire that powers the dash, not a separate wire that leads directly to the battery so again you will get a lower reading than the batteries. 
You can make your life easier if you just run 3 wires from your batteries to a spot you can easily see (2 hot for positive and 1 cold for the negative) and connect digital volt gauges to them.  More accurate reading at the batteries, good luck

awhires

12.5 at the volt gauge then when anything is turned on it drops.
also getting low voltage alarm on chart plotter and fish finder.
thanks for the input I will check and clean the connections. 
Under the mirror is quite the birds nest

awhires

I ran home runs to the blocks behind the bathroom mirror, problem solved!

Michael T

Great solve @awhires. Another culprit at the helm can be a loose, corroded and/or cra**y ground. Over the years I'd have to say that cra**y ground wires have been my biggest wiring problem in boats.