Electrical Issue with Gauges and Taps

[RDeLacy]

I am having 2 electrical issues in my 2003 Riders Edition.

1. When I start the boat and it is idling, all of the gauges spike up about a 1/4 of the way and then go back to down to normal. The spikes happen about once every second and continue until I increase the throttle. All the gauges act normal when the boat is running at higher RPM's.

2. The Taps starts out at 7 when you first start the boat, so you have to turn it down to 1 every time you want to drive somewhere, i.e. not pulling a skier/boarder. After driving for a few minutes, the Taps has reset back to 7. It appears that the Taps is losing power which is why it resetting. This issue has been happening for the last two seasons and I am getting tired of switching the Taps back down to 1 every 2 minutes.

I believe this to be one of two issues. First, possibly a loose ground. This would explain the Taps resetting but not the gauges spiking. My second thought is a loose power wire. This could possibly be occurring at the wire harness connector near the ski pylon. I had an issue with this several years ago. I was reading another thread where they were talking about replacing the main power wire to the dash.

Any thoughts on where to start would be much appreciated.

[RDeLacy]

Almost 100 views and no one has any suggestions???

[dom w. forte]

I would check all the grounds, on guages, ground bar under dash, wires on key switch , put volt meter on battery while out running and see if there is any glitches , hook volt meter to any guage thats jumping and see if voltage spikes, in that year I believe the taps memory was wired to the guage, and could explain why it resets if the guages are looseing power.