Hey all,
Newbie here but thought I'd post this as it might be helpful to others. The other day my power light would not come on the thruster joystick. Checked all the breakers/fuses etc and all were good. I suspected the joystick was the issue as the system was working fine a few days ago. Knowing that it had power but would not power on led me to believe I had a bad joystick. To access the back of the helm panel you must remove the lower panel inside console. On my boat all the electronics are mounted to the upper panel so I didn't have anything but a few screws to pull it off. From there you reach up and unplug the molex plug connected to the joy stick. If you jump the black wire to the blue/grey you should activate the thruster in both directions. I did this and determined it was indeed a bad joystick.
Needed to dock in a tight spot the next day and no replacement available I wired a on/off/on switch from Lowes using the above mentioned wires. I cut off the joystick side plug and wired the pig tail to the switch so I could just plug the "redneck joystick" back to the harness. Mounted this in a small piece of 1/4 plywood and used the original rear bracket to hold in place. This is not waterproof or good looking. However I had a functional thruster switch which worked perfectly as I backed into a slip in a heavy current at the Jaguars game on Sunday. Nobody watching knew what it looked like...they just saw a boat back in with no issues using a little thruster to line up.
I got the replacement joystick Monday but the new ones require a converter box to go from the molex style plug to the flat style plug. I found both readily available online. So if you have this issue and need to replace the joystick with the molex plug they don't make that any more. You will need the converter box for the new joystick. The new joystick screws in from the top.
Joystick Lewmar 589268
Converter box Lewmar 589842
Attached is a pic of the temp plug...not great but you get the idea of what the wiring/plug arrangement looks like. I'm going to throw this in my tool box as I have several friends with the same style joystick and am sure it will come in handy!
Newbie here but thought I'd post this as it might be helpful to others. The other day my power light would not come on the thruster joystick. Checked all the breakers/fuses etc and all were good. I suspected the joystick was the issue as the system was working fine a few days ago. Knowing that it had power but would not power on led me to believe I had a bad joystick. To access the back of the helm panel you must remove the lower panel inside console. On my boat all the electronics are mounted to the upper panel so I didn't have anything but a few screws to pull it off. From there you reach up and unplug the molex plug connected to the joy stick. If you jump the black wire to the blue/grey you should activate the thruster in both directions. I did this and determined it was indeed a bad joystick.
Needed to dock in a tight spot the next day and no replacement available I wired a on/off/on switch from Lowes using the above mentioned wires. I cut off the joystick side plug and wired the pig tail to the switch so I could just plug the "redneck joystick" back to the harness. Mounted this in a small piece of 1/4 plywood and used the original rear bracket to hold in place. This is not waterproof or good looking. However I had a functional thruster switch which worked perfectly as I backed into a slip in a heavy current at the Jaguars game on Sunday. Nobody watching knew what it looked like...they just saw a boat back in with no issues using a little thruster to line up.
I got the replacement joystick Monday but the new ones require a converter box to go from the molex style plug to the flat style plug. I found both readily available online. So if you have this issue and need to replace the joystick with the molex plug they don't make that any more. You will need the converter box for the new joystick. The new joystick screws in from the top.
Joystick Lewmar 589268
Converter box Lewmar 589842
Attached is a pic of the temp plug...not great but you get the idea of what the wiring/plug arrangement looks like. I'm going to throw this in my tool box as I have several friends with the same style joystick and am sure it will come in handy!
Attachments
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switch (2).jpg
