The joy of wiring.

Okay so here we go with the dumbest question. I have a CHB 34. All the interior and exterior lights were working fine. On my last trip I tied up to the dock, turned on my main salon 12 volt lights. The 2 standard round lights and the twin tube florescent over the galley worked fine. I turned them off and went to dinner. When I came back, turned on the lights and oh joy, darkness. All 3 main salon lights dead. Bow, stern, both heads and engine room all fine. I have checked the circuit and there is no power to any of the main salon lights. So here we go. Do I really have to take the whole damn headliner down to check and/or rewire them?

I'd check your fuse panel first. If NO lights are getting power, its probably a fuse somewhere.

toocoys said:

I'd check your fuse panel first. If NO lights are getting power, its probably a fuse somewhere.

Click to expand...

Agreed. One light... yeah, it can go bad at any time. Two... unlikely but possible. All three at the same time... much more likely that there is a root cause, a single point of failure. And the most likely place is a fuse. Start at the breaker panel and make sure power is passing through the breaker for those lights. Move outward from there.

It could also be a bad ground.

My boat has a small convenience switch to activate the salon lights when you walk into the door. Same for forward and aft lights. When I first bought the boat - losing all the lights drove me crazy for a few minutes until I found the switch.

Ken

Check the breaker for the cabin lights
Check volts at the output of that breaker
Also check to see if everything else still works
If you have to get into the wires, start by taking down the first figure closest to the breaker panel and check the voltage. Usually that light will feed the other more distant lights.
All of your wire connections should be at a fixture. Really bad hack job if wires are spliced in non-accessible areas like behind head liner.

Switch which turns them on maybe bad,since all three are in saloon..

Thanks to all re: the joys of wiring.

Thanks to all of you that offered suggestions and ideas. Managed to trace and check as far as the bus behind the upper helm station. All good to there but from there the wiring is first run through a glassed in channel and into the main salon overhead. From the bus to the fixtures there is no power. As this is an old boat my solution is going to be to rewire the fixtures, run the wiring to the main bus under the lower helm station and connect them to the breaker. While not perfect I can cover the short run of wire with a teak strip for looks alone. It will also solve the problem of having the 3 salon lights wired in series as they are now. Also means I don't have to start sorting through all that lovely twine wrapped wiring or ripping the entire headliner out of the boat to find the break in the wire. Thanks again all.

Also, switch to LEDs, the load is so much less.