House Power Supply

All, I picked up a 1993 380 Tournament with 6-71 Detroit. two weeks ago and we have been fighting/figuring out electrical things. I am trying to figure out the House power supply. On the electrical panel, it seems that both feeds are from the same battery (via voltmeter). I have traced out both supply lines. From the battery 1&2, These leads go to the disconnect switch. The disconnect SW. feeds the emergency solenoid. Also feeds this black box with a push-button breaker(not a clue what this does). From there it looks to go to the electrical panel. Also, this box feeds the bilge pumps. There is a glass type fuse holder on the top of this box. And there is an 18 gauge wire with a fuse holder coming out the bottom. Each battery has its own black box. It almost seems to auto-switch when I disconnected the battery lead. The house power comes from cranking batteries.

Joshua, you are correct. The battery cable from the battery goes to the disconnect switch. From the disconnect switch, the wire is jumpered to the breaker below. From there, there are two wires that run the distribution panel. One is to the breaker 1 or 2 depending on which side you are on. The smaller wire goes to the Bilge Pumps (Making them hot all the time) I just don't know how the breaker attach works? Also for some reason, in my distribution panel, it looks like both legs are tied to the same batter. Since I can only turn one on at a time, I would think that each breaker would have its own voltage. to prove this, I went to the battery and removed the wire. Both Breakers in the panel have 12v. And to make things more interesting, I removed each battery one at a time and voltage kept on both breakers. Seems to me that there is some kind of switching device somewhere. Still troubleshooting.

Can someone tell me what kind of breaker is in the picture? If you look closely, there is a small wire coming out of the bottom that I don't know where it goes and the one on the port side is broken.

The good thing is that soon, I will have it all figured out. Worked on installing a new autopilot yesterday. Wish I lived closer.

Well, there are two of these and they are for the House pwr from Batt 1 and Batt 2 breaker. Each seems to be independent. The larger orange strip wire ties to the breaker in the panel. Each batter feeds its own breaker. The smaller orange wire goes to the Bilge pumps. Battey 1 goes to two of the Bilge pump and battery 2 goes to the last one. There is a small wire coming out the bottom as well, this is 14 ga. wire with a fuse. Can not figure what this is used for. The wire on the port site is disconnected/cut. I have no clue where this goes. Maybe the battery check gauges/switch (I don't know how this should work and it doesn't work). If I was smaller , I could pull that black box off and figure its function. My thought is that the supply comes from the battery (the disconnect switch) and then goes to the 50amp breaker on the front face and then to the breakers in the panel. The supply is also jumpered to the glass fuse holder on the top. This feeds the smaller orange wire and then on to the bilge pumps. Now, this is all a guess but also, the small red wire somehow goes to the analog gauges, switch, for the battery test. Just wish I knew for sure.

I am working up a drawing for what I know so far.