Carling Contura ON-OFF Rocker Switch Wiring – Diagram Included

This is the beginning of a series of posts on how to wire up New Wire Marine’s line of Marine related V-Series Contura Rocker Switches.  Let’s start off with a simple one… Carling’s ON-OFF V1D1 model.  This is a simple ON-OFF switch with a negative for the return current for the light bulb.

Here is what the switch looks like:

You can see the bulb in the front (will be covered up with the actuator), and the 0.250” quick disconnect terminals on the back.

Carling uses the terminal numbering show here:

1-3 is on the left, 4-6 is on the right, and 7 and 8 are specialty terminals at the top.  In this carling V-series switch (and all others), all the terminal locations are numbered even if they are not used in this particular switch model... as you can see there are only 3 terminals on this one.

Here is a graphical way to look at it:

Power comes into terminal 2, and goes out of terminal 3 (the switch leg).  The switch leg is hot if the switch is ON, and not when the switch is OFF.  The negative for the light uses terminal 7.

Here is a wiring diagram of how the internal switching and lamp wiring is connected. 

Power feeds the bulb from terminal 3.  If you think about this for a moment, you realize that the switch could be wired up differently… if you put the + input on pin 3, then the light would always be ON and pin 2 could become the switch leg.  Additionally, if you had a load with an alternate input (like a bilge pump with a float switch), that input would feed back up the switch leg into pin 3 and illuminate the light, even if the switch is OFF.  This is really neat for a bilge because you can tell (via the lamp) when your float switch is making your bilge pump run… cool stuff!

New Wire Marine carries all the parts you need to make this work, and a lot more!