T-Mac or other Mercury

[Hawgeye]

I have a 2000 125HP Mercury. The ignition switch is on the console of a 2001 Lund Pro-V. I have an hour meter that I have installed in the dash and would like to know which wire I can tap in to. I thought it would be simple until I looked at the ignition switch/key that has 6 wires coming from it. It is encapsulated so I cannot tell which is the "run" wire for the hour meter. Can someone tell me what color wire I should tap into? The following wires are on the switch according to my installation document from the original ignition switch assembly installation. The following are the colors of conductors. I believe but do not know that the red is hot always to feed power to the switch and the black is common or negative always. If so, that leaves the following. Am I missing something? Any help would be appreciated.

Red, - Constant 12VDC power???

Black, - Constact neg power???

Yel/blck, - ???

Yel/Red,- Yellow/Red goes to the neutral switch on the shift assembly and which does not provide power during run so I have eliminated that one.

Pur, - ???

Black/Yel - Black/Yellow is a negative that goes to the emergency kill switch which is always active unless the emergency switch is off.

[Hawgeye]

Well, I think I found my answer. The link below goes to the standard color code chart for Mercury outboards. It looks like my method of elimination got me really close! The purple it is!

http://www.mercurymarine.com/cgi-bin/mercprod/MercuryHome/Templates/FaqTemplate.jsp?BV_SessionID=@@@@1260616166.101935 7392@@@@&BV_EngineID=kadcdlelmlfebedcfececjf.0&page_id=323&catID=51&issueID=238&searchAnswer=1

[Troy LaTour]

Yep, purple is the one you want. That is a "keyed" hot...only has power when the key is on.

[Hawgeye]

Just came in from the garage, all done! The purple it was. Sometimes I just have to dig a little deeper before asking. Oh well, information in case someone else is looking into doing the same thing.

Hey thanks for the confirmation Troy, you made my confidence better. I hate troubleshooting too much without schematics. Did it for the last 10 years as a profession, don't like to do it when I am "off" work!