breaker tripping

[svnfightsvn]

So whenever I hit the "Fill" switch on my starboard rear ballast, it runs for a few seconds and then the breaker trips. It seems I have a short somewhere. Everything worked fine until I re-wired my head unit to pull power from the house battery instead of the starting battery. I ran wire (power/ground) from my house distro block to a fuse block under the helm and then from there I ran power/ground to the headunit where I attached the yellow wire from the harness to the new power wire and the black wire from the harness to the new ground. The existing power and ground wires running to my headunit from the starting battery I simply taped off. Could this have caused my issue?

[MLA]

Your factory head-unit wiring and ballast pump wiring should not have any thing in common after the helm BUSS and they should certainly not share the same circuit protection. Disconnect the pump's B+ at the pump motor and turn the switch on. If the breaker no longer trips, you know the short/excessive current draw, is the pump. Pull the motor cartridge from the housing and see if theres some trash in there thats binding the impeller.

[Bobby Light]

Sometimes you need to pull the pump and spin the impeller by hand to free it up, they will freeze up sometimes.

[shawndoggy]

odd coincidence, methinks.

I used to tape stuff off. Then I used those thread on wire nuts. Get a good crimper and put a butt splice on those unused wire ends.

[nuttyskier2002]

If only the breaker dedicated to the ballast pump is tripping I will have to agree with everything said above........this is merely a coincidence. The pump is probably at fault and it may be replacement time. If the impeller/shaft is stuck.......it will probably happen again and again (if you do get it freed up that is). You can try "nursing" it along but it won't be long until you will be replacing it.