NMEA 1803 cable upgrade

[gregcope]

Hi All

I recently found that my 1997 professionally installed B&G Network (NMEA 1803) and Funro radwas without much IP protection.

The undermast connection block box had mounting holes and open glands. However the more interesting was the cockpit locker had two chocblocks just sitting on a shelf. To be fair they had nice ferules. However there was noticeable corrosion on the exposed wires.

The undermast funro radar cable was in a box. However the professional rigger who reconnected this two years ago neglected to mention that one gland was broken and the other missing. The later would had chafed the wires in time…



These bottom two pictures show the Radar wiring with the broken gland on the left and the missing gland on the right. The missing gland gets me, as this would had chaffed over time and the radar would have miss behaved. It would have taken a while to find that issue...

Also the close up of the chockblock shows one of the braided sheilds has broken off. It broke off when I looked at it grumpily. Corrosion had damaged that exposed copper. I had to strip that one back quite far, which is annoying as that was the short end of the wire...

 

[gregcope]

So i decided to replace all of these with Wiska 308 or 407 boxes, M20 Wiska Sprint glands and Wago 221-402 connectors.

i had to strip some wires back to get back to decent copper.

 

[gregcope]

Okay so the last little box is not a Wiska one. Its an Ebay IP68 box. I replaced that busy one with a Wiska 308 and reused that one in the cockpit locker next to the other black box.

 

[gregcope]

Wiska are selling boxes at electrical wholesalers with three way Wagos which is interesting (different companies).

I also insert cables in the same side as this get cores to align easier to insert into the side by side Wagos. I also strip around 40mm of insulation as the Wagos need 11mm stripped. For the Radar with 17 cores I used a 407 box and 50mm of insulation removed.

i use a re-usable cable tie around the wagos so that the tail presses on the case to stop the Wagos bouncing in within the box. In land based fittings this is not required, however on a moving boat I want to minimise movement.