70's Lightning Energizer Ignition & tachs

[ricksrster]

Re: 70's Lightning Energizer Ignition & tachs

Nice! But allot of work. Wouldn't it be easier to run a new wire from the rectifier to the tach?

 

[TriadSteeler]

Re: 70's Lightning Energizer Ignition & tachs

Rick it had to be done anyhow. My internal harness wires were turning into green dust and the insulators would crack when bent. I figured I wire it to accept the tach wire while I was at it.

I just killed two birds with one stone.

 

[pman7]

Re: 70's Lightning Energizer Ignition & tachs

Triad, you sound a bit like me. I'd much rather repair something old than buy new. I also love my 1986 Ford F-150 d

I guess I'm a little luckier than you. Once I got my harness out and completely stripped down I can see that I have about 3/4" of wire seemingly unaffected by corrosion and degradation of the insulation. The insulation even seems quite flexible.

I haven't yet completed the project because I'm still waiting on my marine grade wire. I couldn't find all the wire locally and what I could find would be comprimising on gauge and I didn't want to do that. Without buying complete spools I still am having to buy from two different sellers to get all the colors in the right gauge.

Did you get all the correct colors in the proper gauge? Did you use tin coated copper wire?

If so where did you purchase it?

It seems I'm going to have a simpler repair job by being able to just cut the wires, solder on new ones, shrink tube them and then bundle them back up. The two big wires, red and black, which were old are still in functional conditon. It's just the smaller orange/salmon, yellow, gray and red to the rectifier that I'll have to change. Then hooking the new brown to the rectifier input along with a new brown over to my mercury switch should all be a snap compared to spliting the plug open.

Thanks for the description of your repair. I won't really know what I'll need to do until I complete this and get everything working.

I wish my wire would get here. I ordered it from Southeast Marine (oregon) They had held back shipment because they were waiting on gray wire. I told them to forget the gray and go ahead and ship about a week or so ago but I still haven't received my wire.


ps: Triad, as far a reusing the old plug casing, on the chance that I have to try that sometime I've got another idea I might give a try. In the past I've had to machine rubber parts. When I did I would first freeze the rubber in liquid nitrogen and then drill or machine what I needed quickly before the rubber thawed. The main drawback to this is if you freeze the rubber too fast, sometimes it will sort of self destruct and crack into many pieces. Sort of an mini explosion.

So if I could get the casing frozen, it wouldn't be too much trouble to carve out extra space to make the wires fit easier.

 

[pman7]

Re: 70's Lightning Energizer Ignition & tachs

Nice! But allot of work. Wouldn't it be easier to run a new wire from the rectifier to the tach?

I'm not sure that it would have been that much easier/better if the internal wire insulation was in good shape. Cutting into that jumper wire would have been very simple if the harness insulation was fine.

It wouldn't have been such a big deal at all if the internal insulation wasn't degraded so. On my motor as it stands, the internal harness needed to be rebuilt anyway.

 

[TriadSteeler]

Re: 70's Lightning Energizer Ignition & tachs

Yes, it is all marine grade copper tinned wire. I actually went a little conservative with the wire and bought all 12 gauge for the 4 small wires. Since I was crafting this thing myself, and my soldering skills are marginal at best) I wanted the thicker wire just to be on the safe side. (I think the original wire was 16)

I got my wire from 3 different places (Color was the main issue). I don't know why but even though none of this will be seen, I wanted the CORRECT colors. I am lucky because I have the big three within 3-4 miles of each other (Overton's, Boaters World & West Marine).

I needed 3 stores to find all the colors.
West Marine
Boaters World
Graham Marine (Local Shop)

I was able to by all the wire by the foot, so that helped out on the price.

I'm going to pick up a tach in the next few days and mount it, my little 3 gallon gas tank, a battery box, and my extra control rig, up to my motor stand so that I can link & sync the carbs.

I'll let you know how it turns out.


BTW, pman & Rick,

Does it matter which post of the rectifier to hook the send wire to?

 

[pman7]

Re: 70's Lightning Energizer Ignition & tachs

Does it matter which post of the rectifier to hook the send wire to?

From what I've read either rectifier input post (wire is yellow with red stripes) that has the wire coming from under the flywheel will work. The output of the rectifier is the red one you are replacing.

So the smaller wires were 16 gauge? I didn't know so I was guessing. From comparing my harness wires to automobile primary wire in O'Reilly's and NAPA, and from stated OD measurements from a couple of web sites I came to the conclusion that the orange, yellow and gray wires were originally 12 gauge and the red wire running to the rectifier was 10 gauge. At least that's what I ordered. As it stands, my gray wire (choke solenoid) will have to be 14 gauge as that is all I could find.

Wish I had some Marina's like your's. I checked at about 5 local places and basically struck out with all.

 

[Tom P]

Re: 70's Lightning Energizer Ignition & tachs

I have a 1985 50hp Merc 500 that I am also going to hook a Tach up to. It has a Thunderbolt ignition. My control box also has a keyed, three pin plug in the front. I’m going to buy the harness from a Merc dealer. I’m going to price the Merc tech. If the difference is less than a tank of gas, I’ll do the Merc Tech. I like one stop shopping and the directions being wrong on the Telflex spooked me.

1. Should all of the wires I need be in the harness coming out of the control box for my setup?

2. Can I also hook up a volt gauge with the wires from the control box?

Thanks,

Tom

 

[pman7]

Re: 70's Lightning Energizer Ignition & tachs

Just wanted to give some feedback on this thread to let you all know how the jumper wire fix worked. After waiting for 5 weeks to get my wire (pathetic story) and waiting maybe another 5 weeks to find a nice weekend day when I didn't have other things, I finally got to try it out.

It worked, it worked, it worked.

Rerouting the jumper wire just behind the motor's internal plug to the rectifier allowed me to plug my tach right into the 3 prong tach plug on the control box. I've got RPMs baby.

Just for the record, the tach plug has two horizontal slots and one vertical slot. On mine the bottom horizontal slot was the 12v power, the top horizontal was the ground and the vertical slot is the sender wire that now goes to the rectifier.

Many thanks to Triad, the Rickster and others on this thread that provided me with the knowhow and gumption to do this.

I've now got a tach and a rebuilt internal wiring harness.

My next step will be to install a new Uflex steering system. I'm switching from spashwall mount for my cable to a tilt tube mount. I'd better hurry because the spring striper season is coming fast.