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Second hand, 1996 pantera. The bildge pumps were hooked directly to the battery with a three way switch under the rear hatch. I checked power from the panel and I have power to the main harness when on manual. So I connected a new 500gph to the harness. but nothing happened. I then checked another pump and still no power. Disconnect and checked harness agian and shows power on volt meter. Whenever I put a pump on the harness the power shorts out or something else is going on because there is no power on the volt meter. I read on another thread that the panel may have a sensor that is shutting down the power to the bilge pump. All other panel features are working. What are your thoughts. If it is the panel can I fix it.
Thanks Aaron
Try a small light to replicate the amperage draw of a pump. If the light burns then it could be faulty pumps. The system shuts down when there is a faulty pump with excess drain. There are small internal thermal discs that open.
Will not light up a bulb, but will show on volt meter.
BCB gave you the way to test this. There are two issues, volts and amps. Volts is driven by the battery. Amps are limited by the resistance in the wiring between the battery and the demand. If you see 12 volts, that means you have continuity between the battery and the measuring point. If the bulb won’t light, that means you have excessive resistance in the circuit somewhere. This can happen in several ways:
(1) poor connection at the battery or some intermediate terminal strip. Clean the crud off and even add a little electrical contact grease to prevent it from re-forming.
(2) bad wire. This can be in the form of a wire that has flexed so long that metal fatigue has caused most of the strands of wire to break internally, leaving just one or two strands intact and they are high resistance since they are almost fatigued apart themselves. This can also happen when battery acid wicks up into the wire, under the insulation. This will turn bright copper wire into a green mess that won’t conduct very well.
(3) bad switch. Contacts can corrode when exposed to water, and corrosion leads to high resistance through the switch.
Ohm’s law will kill you for any of the above. Just adding 100 ohms of resistance limits the max current to 12 / 100 amps, which is about 120 milliamps. Not going to make that bulb glow very brightly. You can, if you want, use an ohmmeter to measure the resistance thru each wire. It ought to be in the .00x ohm range.
Simple way to isolate is to hook a new wire to the + battery post. See if the bulb will light using the new + wire and the original – wire. If not, the – wire is bad and needs to be repaired or replaced. Repeat for the – battery post. Note that it is rare but possible that both wires are bad.
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2008 Pantera Classic
2014 Mercury Pro XS 200
Shows 5 or 12 volts?
I too have just purchased a beautiful and AWESOME ’96 PII. After getting it home and examining it more I found my bilges aren’t working. They work when hooked directly to a 12V source, but not when from the digital dash button. The brown wires have no power consequently my bilges aren’t working. I have checked all connections I can find, all circuit breakers, and the terminal block on the transom the best I can. (it’s hard to get to) What and where do they get their power from. Some more food for thought… My speedo, tach, and lights are the functions that do not work in the dash. I can control the lights from the bow. Any input would be greatly appreciated.
jcobb124,
You earned a Kudo for digging in the archive and finding this post. Contact Clothing @ basscat . Com and tell them you earned a Kudo. Give them your address also.
You have more issues than just a ground. Does your voltmeter indicate voltage when running, oris the voltage high? If either low, no voltage or high voltage are there we think your voltage regulator could be an issue on your motor. This shows no or erratic voltage, which means there is no signal from the engine to drive tach, and speedo requires 150 RPM to show speed. Thus no tach no speedo.
The bilge easily could be ground issues, bad pumps as the BP dash works inside an amperage draw window. If your pumps run though are going bad and pull too many or too few amps, the dash power will turn off. Corrosion inside the pump others usually causes this. It also could be connections in the harness which is real common on older boats though your usually dealing with a switch. On this boat your dealing with harness connections and there’s a harness connection hidden by the control box behind the deck area there. So check the harness from back to front.
The lights are all on the white wires and come through the dash assembly also. A bad light bulb could take out power with no flow and require repair to complete the system. Your front switches are not smart (pc controlled) so they don’t see an issue and work everything except the broken part, they know no difference.
Ultimately it could be a dash issue, often people try to fix things on the dash itself hacking into the harness and knocking out components causing more harm as they do not know how to tech the dash and harness. You sound more apt and able to tech your way through some of these issues. Though eliminate everything outside the dash itself before you pop a retro kit in the days hole.
Good luck and we would be glad to help more. On a 1996 model you have now what could be 18 years of someone else working on our boat after it left our hands. Hard to say what has been altered, tweaked, hacked or torn up by some shadetree or do-it-your-selfer. You sound more capable and willing to chase tis rabbit.
BCB
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