Marinette Boat Forum

does the lower station ignition keys have to be turned to the on position for the fly bride to get power.

Thanks Mark

Ignition keys or starter switches? Master Keys must be on.

dave

Depends on the year of Marinette.
bill

Bill may be correct on model year being a factor, but on my '75, the two helms are completely separate, isolated systems. I would think that that would be a USCG requirement. If you need to shut down the powerplant in an emergency, you certainly wouldn't want to scurry down the ladder, run into the cabin and shut off the engine off, say if a fire broke out.

On my 1988 boat, there was a set of master on/off keys in the cupboard behind the lower helm. At the helm station, a pair of switches that allowed each engine to be started. Same thing on the f'bridge. If one started the engines from the lower helm, you could go upstairs and control the boat...but the only way to kill the engines was to run downstairs and turn off the ignition. And vice versa. So, our procedure was either a) start up from the cabin and check to make sure all systems were go, listen for strange sounds then shut them off and return to the bridge and restart. Or b) just start from upstairs. We rarely ran the boat from the cabin because the visibility from up top was so much superior.

In case of bad weather, we shut down up top, then restarted from down below. We always wanted to be able to kill the engines in case of emergency. I am sure, some genius out there could wire a three way arrangement but that was over my pay grade.

Three way switch is easy, putting the drawing on here is hard. Send me a message if you want to do this and I will try to e-mail the info to you.--Ed

Send me the drawing and I will get it on the forum.

When I rewired my '72 express, I set it up so that it has to be initially started from the lower helm. Then, using a set of 5 pin sealed relays, I have a switch to stop and start from up top. This eliminated quite a few wires running to the flybridge, and eliminating the kids accidently turning on, and leaving on, an ignition switch. So far it has worked great. Everything meets at junction blocks in the bilge, and I used Crusader harnesses. I have used this same setup on a few customer boats with positive feedback as well.

You will need to add two wires and two switches for each engine. Wires will go from lower to upper helm, and switches need to be single pole, double throw. Double pole are common, will work fine, you will just have spare contacts unused. Do not get center off, or spring loaded switches. Just four SPDT or four DPDT switches. Single engine will only need two. Then you can start or stop from top or bottom. ( if the picture shows up )

Mine is a 1985 39ft sedan with the flybridge-being 35 years old soo many mechanics had there own way of wiring or rewiring this it sometimes gets hard to understand when a orange wire somehow turns into a green wire. It makes ense that I had power up in the flybridge but I must of had the ignition on and since then I have looked and found no power to the flybridge because of the off on the ignition.

thanks Mark