Anchor Light wiring

[gaspony]

Hello everybody. I'm a new tige owner as of about a month ago. I've been out 3 times so far and need to get some pictures but I'm in the process of redoing the gelcoat and wetsanding so I kinda want to get the boat in shape before I post pics. I just put a Krypt tower on and it is awesome.
My question is about the anchor light. When I bought the boat the guy that sold it had gave me the aftermarket perko that he bought and hadn't got around to installing it. To install this light I have to install a new base. The original base had two wires coming from it (I assume the two contact points and these were wired to a black wire that came from the cockpit area and to another black wire that continued on to the back of the boat. The other weird thing is that the two black wires were connected with a jumper so that they formed one continuous circuit as well. So I installed the new base and I get nothing when I switch on the anchor switch. I also tried the nav switch and acc switch. The boat is a 97 PRE 2100 WT.
The other crazy thing is that I originally wired the base without the jumper between the two black wires and TAPS stopped working, I put the jumper back in and TAPS started to work again.
Thanks to everybody on the forum for looking at this and next time you are on Canyon lake look for the PRE 2100WT with the crappy wakeboarder behind it.

[whitlock87]

I might be easer to run new wire.
One from the switch, and one ground.
There are a lot of tige owners where you are, see if Daniel can help you out.

[chpthril]

Sounds like something wasn't wired correctly with the current one, and that's why he was thinking it needed a new one.......just speculating.

Wiring in the new base, providing the old base was wired correctly, should be a simple as clipping the 2 wires and splicing them to the 2 wires on the base, period. A 12V lightbulb does not know polarity, so there is not POS ans NEG designation, all you need is to have a constant GND, and a switched POS.

Get ahold of a 12v test-light and check those wires for polarity, sounds like they are both ground. I would imagine that the switched POS on the harness side would be another color and not have 2 blacks.

[gaspony]

So I got under the dash and tried to find all the wires. I have included the original circuit diagram of how the first base was wired befor I replaced it.

The two black wires I told you about originally, well one comes from the TAPS motor and the other is a continuation of it to the stern of the boat. I checked the wires with a volt meter and you get 12V through the wire coming from the TAPS motor when you activate the taps switch on the throttle arm. There is no voltage when you activate the anchor switch. By looking at the circuit there seems to be no power going to the stern anchor light when the anchor switch is activated but there should be power when the TAPS switch is activated, but that makes no sense because whoever had originally wired it there is no power source going to the rear from the anchor switch when it is activated. It is really weird though because it doesn't look like anything was cut or changed but I have no idea how the original anchor light base was getting power. The anchor light was switched out because the tige store lost the light when they were out testing the boat one day but they gave him this base and new anchor light and said to just rewire it and it should be plug and play (I guess they were not so smart) Anyway, maybe someone can look at the circuit I drew in MS Paint and make sense of it, but there doesn't seem to be a power source to the anchor light that comes from the anchor switch. At least I'm learning something about DC wiring.

[gaspony]

So if anybody gives a hoot I figured out my problem. There was a wire hanging down in the back that I hadn't seen and I decided to see if there was voltage across it when I flipped on the anchor switch and 12volts registered. So I hooked up one side of the anchor light base to that extra wire and the other side to a ground and sure enough the light comes on with the anchor light switch now.
It always seems to be the easiest explaination. Thanks to everybody who wrote advice and I'll try to pass on the help.

[chpthril]

Kinda what I figured, glad you found it