Lights

Dec 5, 2009

Here are the bow running lights before & after cleaning. I used the headlight cleaner kit (that I bought to recondition the compass) to polish the lenses. They were rather hazy I think from the previous owner's use of chrome polish and having it go over the lenses.


Before	After - I used Alex Latex silicone caulk to seal them.

So the lenses are better, the bulbs are better, but the light housings are still pretty rusty. I contemplated covering them with powder coating (white I suppose) but decided to just put them back on and let them rust some more before I re-coat them.

Dec. 6, 2009

Got the bow lights back on. I cleaned the contacts and put silicone dielectric grease on them. Don't the look nice?

When I bought the boat, Mr. Steely said that the deck light on the mast couldn't work, because there weren't enought conductors because mast top light has red and green running lights and a white anchor lights and so there weren't enough conductors for these three lights. That had me scatching my head so I took a photo of the masthead light and the mast wiring connector. There are four conductors (at least four pins in the connector) so that should be one for ground, one for the running lights, one for the anchor light and one for the deck light. Seems like enough to me.


The masthead light. Tri-color directional it appears. I guess I need to take this off, and check it out. Its one thing that has to be done before it goes on the water - I'm not climbing the mast!	The mast connector - four pins. It looks fairly corroded.

I took some photos of the back of the switch panel. I think I need to pull it out and see what I can see. There does look to be some factory wire on the switch labeled "Misc." I'd like to know where that goes. I think I had better check the fuses too. Wouldn't surprise me to find one oversized.

I took the masthead light off and have discovered that it has three lights. One for running (tri-color), one for anchor (solid white) and a distress light (strobe). So that does take three conductors. I think I'll bag the distress stobe and use the wire for the deck light. I can get an LED flashlight with a strobe for distress signalling.

Here are the before and after photos:

Before -
There were two plastic screws that hold it together. One had the head completely broken off, the other had half the head broken off. I was able to get the one with half a head out using pliers. The other I had to drill and then colapse into itself.

After -
I cleaned the lens with the headlight polish kit (I didn't realize how much I'd be using that when I bought it.) and I replaced the screws that where broken and I put silicone grease on the light bulb and around the base. I may regret putting it on the base, but the idea is to keep water out of the base. I don't know how clearly it shows up in the photo, but its definitely much cleaner now. I hope it works ;-)