J/30 Class Association Forums J/30 Forum The Boat, Sails and Equipment DC Electrical Panel Replacement

Koos,

I'm only covering a section aft of the cutout extending for 19". There is no reason the entire wood panel could not be covered if you want to flush mount equipment. Again, If you wanted to, you could disassemble the cabinet work there and cut a new panel from wood if you wanted to match it. For me, using Starboard as a cover is an easier approach that meets my needs.

I've made good progress on the installation procedure. This is work in process. I plan on adding a summary that will flow easier, but will leave the detailed description so people can understand the entire procedure. I also need to make sure everything is correct, once my panel arrives.

I need to take some more pictures to help make this clear for anyone.

Please provide any feed back comments.

Hello all - I wanted to let you know that we will begin the production process of the first few DC panels within the next couple of days. If there is anyone with an interest in the DC panel upgrade please let me know within this week. As we will be cutting the panel flats this week and it would be logical to cut as many flats as possible in one shot rather than having to re-setup the equipment. If you have any questions please give me a call.

Thank you,

William Montes
PANELTRONICS
Account Manager
1-800-367-2635 xt. 219
305-824-0805 fax
www.paneltronics.com

Best wishes for fair winds!

Thanks to Bill the specs and guide. It makes sense to put the electric bilge pump on a separate circuit to allow auto/off/manual with the battery switch off. That frees up room on my panel for a 12 V Outlet (probably a cigarette lighter style receptacle) and an empty Accessory. Prefer to keep the KVH Sailcomp and Nav/Instruments separate but currently have no fixed GPS, VHF or stereo.

Paneltronics sells labels for $1 each but $25 minimum order. Trying to project a few spares to order now for future changes. The full list of 2900+ is in the Excel 'Breaker Configurator' above. Any other suggestions in addition to those listed below?

1 RUNNING LIGHTS
2 STEAMING LIGHT
3 WINDEX
4 SPREADER LIGHTS
5 12 VOLT OUTLET
6 ACCESSORY
7 CABIN LIGHTS

8 VHF/STEREO
9 NAVIGATION INSTRUMENTS
10 FLUXGATE COMPASS
11 GPS
12 AUTO HELM

Spare labels:
COMPUTER
ELECTRONICS
MACERATOR PUMP
RADAR/CHART PLOTTER
RED NIGHT LIGHTS
WATER PRESSURE

A quick status update on the DC Panel as of 7 Jan 2013. William Montes just sent me a photo of the blank panel that has been silk screened with the J/30 logo. The pilot panel production run should start assembly in the next week.

The new DC Electrical Panel was on my door step when I arrived home tonight. It looks very nice. There are no instructions in the box, so I'll create the documentation for the class to install.

The first thing I noticed was the current shunt had been wired on the panel and held in place with Ty-wraps on the harness. It was the intention that the shunt be mounted by the battery so that battery charge and discharge would be sensed.


In order to accommodate that, I removed the shunt by cutting the ty-wraps and disconnecting the terminals. The picture below shows the wiring side of the panel with the shunt removed and labels added on the edge of the circuit breakers.


Once the shunt was removed, I connected a power supply and tested the panel on the bench. The meter has a low voltage alarm that can be set. I set it at 11 volts and slowly lowered the voltage. The alarm sounded a few seconds after the voltage dropped below 11 volts. The delay is a good thing as the alarm won't sound spuriously due to quick voltage transients.


After bench testing the supply, I created labels on the back side of the panel to make wiring on the boat easier. This will also make troubleshooting easier in the future. Note the -12V and Ground bus bars.



I'll be working over the next couple weeks to clean up documentation so people have something to use as a reference for installation.

Bill, the panel does look nice but I am slightly annoyed that the label fonts are not consistent, some are in regular and some in bold font.
I look forward to the rest of the installation guidelines, much needed in my case.
Thank you for all your effort in getting this together, - Koos

Opened mine, I thought the label fonts were fine and they included the spares requested. There is a wiring guide to standard Paneltronics 2206 on which this is based, but without guidance from the Class this would be a daunting project.

Received a gift of a good wire stripper and heat gun. Bill previously recommended Compass Marine, which has advice on crimpers/crimping and labeling using clear heat shrink tubing.

I have updated the specification based on the pilot production model. There are a few items that will be cleaned up. Paneltronics will be updating the schematic, and we'll have updated mechanical outline drawings.

One item to note is I inserted Figure 2 which is a hand sketch of the cutout that needs to be made to mount the panel (also attached as a PDF file). This should help those that want to play with potential options for where to locate the panel in the boat.

I will be updating the installation procedure over the next few weeks too.

Edit 2/1/2013: I touched up and rescanned the cutout drawing since the edges were cut off.

I decided rather than having the hinge only open 90 degrees and complicate the cutout, I would modify the hinge so it closed flush.

The hinge was removed from the panel and marked with tape to show the areas that needed to be notched so it could fold flat and not interfere with the components on the panel. The hinge was placed in a vice and a Dremel tool cutoff wheel used to cut the notches out. After cutting the notches, the rough edges were filed and corners rounded. This photo shows the work in process to notch the hinge.



After the notches were cut, the hinge fit was checked on the panel. The hinge was again removed and three holes 3/16" diameter were drilled that will be used to mount the hinge to the wood panel on the boat. These hole were countersunk so that they can be mounted flush when the hinge is closed. Below shows the hinge mounted on the panel, folded showing the relief area that allows the hinge to sit flat.



I traced the modified hinge and created a template others can use for modification, and for drill pilot holes to mount the hinge in the boat. This is in the PDF file attached.

Oh - all this happened this afternoon when we got power back from the blizzard. We have 20" of snow and were without power from midnight until 4 this afternoon. My plans to work on the boat this weekend were side tracked.