1995 Scarab 302 Sport for a re-wire...

[seabob4]

Andy,
Yes, I use the marine standard for wire colors. Blue for lighting, brown for pumps, gray for nav lgts, pink for fuel sender, and have been using yellow for grounds for several years now. Yellow actually stems from a CE requirement that came out a few years ago wherein any boat that had 120VAC on board, the 12VDC grounds have to be yellow to differentiate between 12VDC negative and 120/240VAC hot (both being black). I was an engineer at Proline then, and we determined that rather than stock different harnesses for US boats and for European boats, we would simply have ALL of our harnesses changed to yellow grounds, regardless of whether the boat got 120VAC or not. Saves inventory costs. Now, per ABYC E-11, yellow is an acceptable color for 12VDC ground, regardless of the boat's destination.

I would like to use the various stripes (brown w/white, brown w/blue, etc.) to further differentiate functions and to assist in trouble shooting, but the cost of a re-wire would grow substantially. The sources I use (Greg's Marine wire and genuinedealz) have both told me they could stock the striped wire, but the cost would be WAY more than the solid colors...

BTW, Dave's Scarab is back at the house for more work. Going to add a second C80 display and completely re-do that electronics flat, as well as install a Flo-Scan...

[Captain]

Good stuff Bob...admire your work, and I can see your as anal as I am when it comes to cutting in a wired system.

You may have discovered or seen this trick before...but if you haven't, you'll start immediately!

Instead of clipping or cutting off "tag end" of ziptie which leaves a burr (and I know you've cust'd more than once taking a slice across the back of your hand)...take your pliers and clamp the nose of them onto the tag end of the ziptie pressed right up tight to the locking device. Now twist or spin the pliers until the tag end drops off. You now have a non-burred head on the ziptie which is very smooth with little or no chance of cutting the back of ones hand when reaching back under during additional work or maintenance. 

I go through at least 100-200 zipties cutting in a full size audio video rack for a home theater system or security system.

I think they make a specialized tool to do this, but I have never seen anyone use one.

Bill