So far all my lights are working except for the bow light. I have 3 wires that go to the bow; white passes through for a cabin light, black goes to both cabin and bow light, red goes to bow light. The cabin light works so I know the black and white wires have power, but I cannot get any reading on the red wire and the bow light doesn't work. It is really hard to trace that wire back b/c the 3 wires are in a small space b/w the hull and deck fiberglass. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to trace and fix the issue with that one bad wire or recommendations on how to route a new wire?
Need to fix or rewire bow light on a 1986
- Thread starter RKenSailor
- Start date
The red is probably +12V and the black is probably ground. White might be +12V for the cabin lights, sharing the same ground as the bow light. While it’s possible that the red wire has failed somewhere along the run the most likely places for failure are at the terminations. Start by checking the voltage between the red wire and ground wherever the red wire starts on the panel end, using a multimeter. That will narrow down whether the circuit is being powered at all. If it is then check again at the light end. If you have power at the source end but not at the light end then you do have a failure somewhere along the wire run. Your options at that point would be to try to re-run the whole wire, which might involve disassembly of parts of the boat, or just running a new wire wherever you have access.