The digital readout for the hour meter on the Yanmar tach is toast. I understand from some of the other Hunter owners in the club that this is pretty common. I bought an analog hour meter and planned on installing it in the instrument panel in the cockpit for no particular reason other than that's where the other display is. After thinking that through a little more I realized that although I get to use my favorite 2" holesaw, I'm actually adding a potential future leak plus I'm disturbing the perfectly good seal on that panel. I'm now thinking a better idea would be to install the meter to the right of the electrical panel down below like it was on the Island Packet (and I still get to use the hole saw). We talked things over with the broker who was in tune with the amount of use the PO did with the boat and agreed that it was minimal, so as a base line we figured about 10 hours run time per season or roughly 70 hours on the motor. I hooked the hour meter up to a small 12v charger on my work bench and let it run until it showed 70 hours on the display, not 100% accurate I'm sure but close enough to be an ethical representation of actual use?

My plan was to run the negative wire to a ground and the positive wire to the ignition switch, however moving the meter down below makes that wiring idea pretty labor intensive (although not impossible). Putting it next to the electrical panel means I could run the negative to the ground buss, I'm not really sure where to run the positive on the diesel? There is usually a wire to the alternator that excites the field and is activated by the ignition switch I believe, any thoughts on a better choice for the positive lead?