Bought the set off of ebay and ordered the bezels and a couple of other switches separately from their store. Can't remember the name of the vendor, but there are a lot of vendors on there. You can also buy them from iBoats, etc. They are just Carling switches. Wouldn't surprise me if Chpthril could get you a good price on them. Check with him. I would rather buy from someone I trusted. You can get them lighted, and with all kinds of logos. I also replaced the large, potted (cant remember the name, but all the switches are wired to it) with a nice fuse panel. Wish I had spent a little more and used a breaker panel though.
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Hey all, wish I had seen this thread before I had to figure it out all on my own, but I just went through the same process. Tige was absolutely zero help, ("Call West Marine"), which is crazy since its not really that hard to do this install.
Another suggestion/different view on how to do this:
Materials (all can be bought off amazon) ~$120 if you already have the tools
- 8 Contura iii switches (could use others, but I liked these), I only used 6 and added a usb charging port and a battery voltmeter since I didn't have a shower. You'll want the SPST (single pole, single throw) switches, these just mean that they are on-off.
- 4 blue sea "end pieces" mounting brackets
- 4 blue sea "middle pieces" mounting brackets
- box of glarks electrical spade type connectors https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1
- Dremel
-Soldering iron
-Solder
-Wire Strippers/Cutters
- I also recommend buying two really cheap 5 pin prewired 4 or 8 switch system just so you can steal the piggyback wiring, the 5 pin systems usually are the light up ones you get from china for cheap on amazon
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Look under the dash and locate your relay, as stated before. Your relay will have 9 orange wires going to a weird squarish looking plug. This plug/wires was originally the one that sent power to each of these 9 wires to turn things on - radio, bilge, etc. i.e the "load wire". The relay has a black and red power and ground wires as inputs that will no longer be connected to it once you remove it, obviously. DON'T THROW THE RELAY AWAY. You will need to plug that the 9 wires were connected to to make the installation easier.
Mark each of the 9 orange wires, and cut them halfway between the relay and the plug. You are going to strip the end of the wires on the plug outlets and hijack it so you don't have to rewire everything.
Take the plug with 9 loose wires on it (looks like a sentinel from the matrix), strip the wires, and solder electrical connectors on them (need to add some length to the wire as well) - you can buy these connectors, or hijack them from other prewired sets. The $20 is probably worth the time savings.
Alternatively, if you hate soldering, you could crimp the spade connectors on the loose wires then just put the opposite connector on a length of loose wire. On the other end of the extension wire, you will need to make sure to have a female spade connector, since this will be going to dash switch's "load" terminal.
Remove the old push switches, but not the whole dash piece. Take the Dremel and SLOWLY hollow out the old mounting parts. You are going to be putting 4 switch slots (2 end pieces and 2 center) on each side. If you accidentally Dremel out too much, the mounting brackets won't have a tight fit. You will also need to Dremel off a little bit off the corners of the mounting brackets to get the fit right. Once your brackets are inserted, mount the new switches in them by pushing.
Remember those positive and negative wires coming from the battery? You need to connect (I recommend soldering these) to the red and black piggy back wires that are the positive and negative wires on the newly mounted switches. The switches will have wiring diagram on the back. Its pretty simple - the positive of each switch needs to be connected somehow (recommend piggy backs) to the positive wire from the battery, same for the negative and black wire. Wrap these soldered battery connections with electrical tape so they don't short out. Wrap all solder connections with electrical tape if you haven't already.
You'll notice you have 3 pins on these switches. The load pin connects to the output wires from that square plug that you hijacked from the relay. When you switch the switch on, power will flow through the load wire to each of the items that were previously running through that switch. You'll have to do some trial and error as to which switch is which function. Red is radio, yellow is blower, brown is bilge I think, etc. etc.
Because you've lost some of the light up and multi-push functionality of the old system, you may find yourself with only 6 or 7 functional wires. In this case, you can put in usb chargers or a battery voltmeter in those final slots.
When you are done, your panel will look like this guy's.
http://www.tigeowners.com/forum/show...Panel-Problems
My Cut relay:
IMG_1715.jpg
Voila! Your boat now has better looking and more robust switch systems than before! For much cheaper than the Tige factory replacement they ran out of a long time ago.Comment
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