'88 sunsport dash switch/electrical question

[jtryon]

i've been looking to replace my stock dash switches/buttons as they are tempermental quite often, to where some of them won't stay depressed until i push them about 20 times. with that in mind, i was out the other night and was running my new ronix 3700gph ballast pump (20amps) and flipped on my bilge pump at the same time. this may have been a coincidence, but the main ignition switch/button popped to the off position within a couple seconds. a couple button pushes and i was able to start the boat back up without issue, but every time i would try to use that pump or the other front sumo pump, it would work for a bit then i'd lose power again. i'm not certain whether this is the switch or if something's wired incorrectly, causing the 15A dash switch/buttons to pop frequently. does anyone else have this issue? this only happened once last season that i remember, where the main ignition switch popped to the off position, so i'm not sure if it's just needing replacement or if it's triggered by something.

my initial thought is to replace them all with toggle switches, so that i don't have this issue anymore. however, do i need to put a 15A fuse inline to the toggle switch to match what the factory put in? the stock switch replacements are ~$22 on skidim which is WAY too expensive to replace all 8 or so. if i don't use a fuse at all inline with the new switches, will i potentially have a different failure point in the wiring system? i have to re-do some of the stereo wiring to begin with, because the PO had wired some things through a relay which, when having no amps in place to use the inline remote wire, causes the depth finder that's on that same relay to not power on. or can i just install new toggle switches everywhere without issue? the other dash switch that constantly pops to 'off' is the cigarette adapter, whether i have something plugged into it or not. really annoying...i'd like to take care of this once and for all!

thanks in advance...

[SquamInboards]

Honestly, the best way to fix it "once and for all" in my opinion is to replace the switches/breakers with proper replacements from skidim. $22 for a switch and a breaker that will last 25+ years seems pretty reasonable to me. Fuses are the worst in a boat because if you pop one on the water, it's much harder to fix than a popped breaker, i.e. you better have spares of all varieties.

For your 20 amp ballast pump, you should run a separate (fuse or breaker in line) power from your battery for that, as you would with a big amplifier or something. It's going to trip a 15 amp breaker (nearly) every time, and just using a bigger breaker is putting a lot of juice through those little wires.

If you don't want to spend $176 on getting your electrical system sorted out, maybe just replace the worst offenders first? I've replaced a few of mine over the years, the ones I use the most. And I keep a couple of the old "questionable" ones as spares in case one breaks at a bad time.

[jtryon]

thanks for the reply squam. i was looking more into that and am leaning towards just that--buying an additional 12v plug installed to run the ballast pumps off of. either that or re-wire the existing adapter with 8 gauge wire directly to the battery and a toggle switch with a 30A fuse, and then i can keep fuses on hand all the time. i'll have to sort through the wiring under the dash to clean up any "fixes" that were done by the previous owners, and make sure everything is clean as well.

[92SupraComp]

Well, you see everything is run through that 30 amp ignition switch... On the older ones that is... The newer ones such as our comp only has the gauges and ignition run through the main breaker. It has fuse panel underneath...

Supra is guilty just as MC and CC and every other boat brand as well as car manufacturer. they ALL used far UNDERRATED wire for everything! I completely rewired under the dash in our comp. Heaps better. Biggest thing was grounding. They ran all the grounds to the back of the bilge switch and piggy backed small wire for everything. Now, everything is connected via several routes to a brass buss bar. I would rate every ground point I have 15+ amps with ease :)