Replacing the Cabin Light Wiring in a CD36

[Troy Scott]

Kurt,
It's certainly possible that your wiring is small enough that a long run could be resistive enough to mimic a normal load. However, I think it's more likely that when you test from that forward-most lamp the circuit you're testing includes a poor (or maybe just corroded) crimp or twist connection. This one connection could be resistive enough to look like a normal load and not trip the breaker. Is the light there dimmer than the other lights? You should be able to isolate the bad connection using an ohmmeter.

[John Danicic]

Troy:

My advice is: If it ain't broke, don't fix it. But you could and should be able to keep it from breaking longer.

Corrosion is a problem that will start limiting the amount of current that can get through the wires. The flow will weaken as resistance builds. Eventually, the flow will be interrupted and then no lights. I would suggest that you use less current which will get you through maybe your eighties at least and save a lot of amp hours in the process by changing all your cabin lights to LEDs. Your tungsten lights requires bigger wires to push the amps through to work. LEDs require a hair of a wire since they use so little. If, down the road, or seaway, the wires do die a corrosive death, you could work something out with teak trim and 16 or 20 gage wire. Or maybe by that time, we will have wireless power sources broadcasting energy through out the cabin to lights that hover in the air. Then, problem solved.

Also, when we are in our nineties, I wonder if we could get "meals-on-wheels" delivered to our anchorages? Meals-in-dinghys?

Sail on

John Danicic
CD 36 -Mariah- #124
Lake Superior (in the water as of the weekend)

[Matt Cawthorne]

Troy,
My solution to your problem is replace all that is possible and leave the rest. It worked like this. The original wiring was, as you know, undersized and caused a droop in voltage that left the lights to get dimmer as you turned more on. The solution for my boat was to run new, heavier gage, tinned wire at the hull-deck joint and periodically add a terminal block. The original wires were led to the local terminal blocks. The ends were cleaned prior to assembly and crimp connectors with epoxy lined heat shrink were used to make the connections. This does not provide any guarantees that things will work forever, but it minimizes the amount of the old wire in the boat.

matt

[Troy Scott]

John,

If, when I'm 90 and our lights are floating in the air..., maybe other Star Trek technology will be available to us...., those "meals-in-dinghys" could be transported out to the boat. Or maybe we'll have replicators to create them for us. Hmmmm..., 12 volt replicators? I wonder if our wiring can handle that! I wonder if the VARNISH will be better then. Do you remember the movie DUNE? I'm thinking about the character the emperor referred to as the "floating fat man". He had some sort of levitating device to help him get around. I might need that to get to the boat. At least that would eliminate the dinghy ride.

Honestly, the wiring looks pretty good. But it is 20 years old, and it isn't tinned. Anyway I've decided to leave it alone for now. Replacing it is, in my present state of mind, formidable. I can do it later if I have to.

LED cabin lights. I've been enthusiastically keeping up with their development for several years. They have improved dramatically, but I don't think they're ready for general lighting just yet. But they are certainly ready as reading lights and for other localized task lighting. In my opinion, right now, May '08, for general lighting we should choose fluorescent, and we should use the latest and best warm white LEDs for reading, etc.. Next month the situation may be different.

[Troy Scott]

Matt,
That sounds like a LOT of work! How long has it been since you did this "maintenance"? Has it held up well?

It seems to me that it would be very awkward to make all those connections under the hull-to-deck joint. I wonder if it would be easier (if somewhat more bulky) to just run separate wires from each light to some more easily accessible area where it would be easier to connect all the leads and commons. Maybe I'm not following your description very well and that's exactly what you did.

I had been thinking that if I did decide to replace the cabin light wiring, I would just replace all of it. I've re-thought the idea of covering the exposed parts of the circuit with teak moldings. I have to repaint the ceiling anyway, so I would just glue on some neat, very small half-round (probably split PVC) from the cabinet fronts to the light fixtures. These pieces would be less than 6" long. Of course this is only necessary where the deck is solid. In areas where there is a space above the lights there is no problem. These short half-round pieces would serve as conduits for the wire, and I would paint them to match the ceiling. Thoughts?

[John Danicic]

Troy:

Well I am waiting for a "Mr.. Fuel Cell" to power my boat. I hope the Perkins holds out till then as well as the check book.
As far as the Star Trek stuff, we are well on our way, gadget wise, to achieving that. The egalitarian and socially inclusive concepts that Star Trek portrayed still elude us, though we are still into the William Shatner style fisticuffs and blowing up planets.

I am hoping to hold out till I ninety and have a good chance as both my parents are alive and in their 90's. Got them both on the boat last summer though they wouldn't let me put up the sails (too windy) and my dad's walker rolled off the dock. I just hope I am more nimble getting around then they are.

Good decision about the wiring. We can only fix so much on these boats. Cape Dory's poor wiring is like the "mistake" that the Navahos weave into their blankets, put there to prove that only god is perfect.

Sail on

John Danicic
CD 36 -Mariah- #124
Lake Superior - water temperature, 38 degrees F

[Boyd]

On my 30 MkII I have pretty much the same system you describe. The wires themselves are stranded with THHN insulation. While this is not tinned like true marine wire its not a bad choice, cheap but not bad. The copper wire inside the insulation is generally not corroded back a half inch or so from the joints. This type of wire insulation is oil and gas resistant and will last for a very long time.

Its the connections that are really scarry. They are soldered and taped. While the solder is ok the tape is falling off in places and where salt water has gotten to it corrosion has set in.

Facing the problems you mentioned with pulling new wire, I compromised and everytime I find one of those joints, I redo it, cutting out the bad ends of the wire and using the good marine crimp connections. Generally there has been enough slack to allow this to happen.

I am not worried about the wire size since I have changed out all my light bulbs to LED's that use nothing compared to the old automotive tail light bulbs. I will change out the breaker to a much smaller one as others have suggested.

In several instances where I needed to add or move something I have found that removing an existing trim piece and routing a slot in the backside for wires keeps the wire invisible.

I know its a compromise but considering the demolition necessary to replace everything this seems like a good choice. The really scarry stuff was done by the PO with wire nuts and lamp cord.

Boyd
s/v Tern
CD30 MkII
Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

[Troy Scott]

John,

I'm all for the S-T idealized version of the future. I would like to be there, but I'm doing my best to cope with the present.

I wish CD had installed better wire, wire which they could have bought right here on Earth. And they could have left longer pigtails!

[Troy Scott]

Boyd,

Which LED lights did you choose? Do you feel you have as much ambient light in the cabin as before? I ask because most LEDs are so directional, and only bright in spots, like a flashlight. How is the COLOR of the light? I find the cold blue-white of the cheaper/older LEDs very depressing. The newest warm-white LEDs are nicer, but they still don't create the nice effect of plain old power-hungry incandescent lights. The old "tail light bulbs" make a beautiful, full light.

[John Danicic]

Troy:

The Sensibulb is by far and away the best LED I have found out there. The new versions are almost indistinguishable color wise, from tungsten. They are bright and the power they use is 1/10th of a tail-light. They fit nicely in the dome light fixtures. Not cheep but it is a boat. What are you going to use that economic stimulus check on anyways? If you want warm, romanic, beautiful light, get an oil lamp. If you want light to work and read in, get a .

http://www.sailorssolutions.com/index.a ... tem=SEN10W

With exception of two lights, all my cabin lights are LED. I am a low power guy now but well lit.

Sail on

John Danicic
CD 36 -Mariah- #124
Lake Superior

[Matt Cawthorne]

Troy,
When I went to add a new wire to the system some years ago I pulled the panel off and there was a tangled rats nest that would have made Medusa proud. Yikes. It had instrument wires tangled with DC wires, tangled with 110 volt wires. The breakers were old and soldered in. Nothing was labeled, and the green 110 volt ground was cut just behind the panel. The lights flickered.
We re-wired the entire boat including electrical panels, battery cables, 110 volt wires, instrument wires, wires in the mast, wires in the stern rail, engine controls, outlets, pumps, Radar and lights. I believe that the only original wire left are the short runs of wire for the lights that are bonded between the liner and deck. I added 6 extra 12 volt outlets on separate port and starboard circuits. I made a wiring diagram and numbered everything so that I can track stuff down if needed. That was probably 4 or 5 years ago. The electrical system is not something that I worry about any more. It was a great deal of work, but I think that I have all of the smoke tightly contained within the system.

Matt

Matt

[Troy Scott]

John,

I've been reading about the Sensibulb for a few years now. A few years ago I got really interested in LED lighting. At that time I collected a bunch of samples to play with and learn about. I have many individual LEDs, LED clusters made to fit in several kinds of sockets, etc., etc.. But to be perfectly honest, I have never seen a Sensibulb. That's because I collected all this stuff some years ago and then put it all away when other projects took over my attention. I understand that the folks at Sailor's Solutions have recently made yet another improvement in this already good design. I'm sure it's time to try the Sensibulb. I will restrain myself from further comments about it's being appropriate for general lighting until I can speak from personal experience.

Sailor's Solutions sells a version of the ABI dome lights. As I understand it they have converted it to house TWO of their Sensibulbs. The price seems about right when you add two times the $39 price of a Sensibulb plus the cost of the ABI fixture. These lights, in the Titan-Tuff gold finish, have the advantage of looking right in a Cape Dory. I feel that this is probably a reasonable choice for our boats.

John, did you convert your existing fixtures to Sensibulbs? Do you have one or two Sensibulbs per fixture? Do you think one is enough? If one is enough I could just buy the ABI fixture and do the conversion myself, at considerable savings. I could save even more money by cleaning/polishing/relacquering my "antique" fixtures before converting them with the Sensibulbs. I'm ALMOST sentimental/nostalgic enough to go to that trouble, but it does seem ridiculous considering I can buy a beautiful, shiny new and almost identical dome light for less than $19.00!!

[Troy Scott]

Matt,

I think you're probably the man to ask for advice about rewiring a CD36. Sounds to me like you were pretty thorough. The fact that it's been a while and all the smoke is still where it belongs is proof that you were/are on the right track. Had you done this sort of thing before? We had a similar experience four of five years ago with a Pearson 33. We worked really hard on her. Shortly after we had pronounced her "ready for prime time" hurricane Katrina chewed her up and spit her out. All the evidence that we actually knew what we were doing is gone. The only good thing about all that is that I learned a lot. However, fixing up this 1988 CD36, #152, is taking longer than expected. I seem to be in perpetual fix-up mode. I hope I remember how to sail when I finally launch this one. I think I WILL NOT ever say she is "finished". Apparently that's bad luck. And I will be much more pro-active about hurricanes in the future. I now know enough to avoid the bad hurricane preparedness advice I took last time.

[John Danicic]

Troy:

I tried various LEDs over the years and found most to be....primitive. The Sensibulb changed all that. The original design was plenty bright. The new design is brighter still. Installing them in the original dome fixture was so easy and fast that even my brother had time to do it. I can't imagine that you would want or need two Sensibulbs per dome. If you feel you need more light you could always add one later. I kept the older, blue cast LED bulbs for the brass swivel lights since they are used directionally. After all, our CD 36 has 16 light fixtures in it and converting them all to Sensibulbs would be more then the upgrade bank would lend me so I kept most of my early LEDs attempts in the less used fixtures. The visual difference in light output is striking to any visitor.

I would clean up your old fixtures if you have the time. They are pretty simple and unless the glass is broken should clean up nice and last you well into your nineties. If you could only get one Sensibulb, I would put it over the galley sink. That is the most used light in the cabin and tends to be on the longest.

Sail on


John Danicic
CD 36 -Mariah- #124
Lake Superior

[Russell]

John, did you convert your existing fixtures to Sensibulbs? Do you have one or two Sensibulbs per fixture? Do you think one is enough? If one is enough I could just buy the ABI fixture and do the conversion myself, at considerable savings. I could save even more money by cleaning/polishing/relacquering my "antique" fixtures before converting them with the Sensibulbs. I'm ALMOST sentimental/nostalgic enough to go to that trouble, but it does seem ridiculous considering I can buy a beautiful, shiny new and almost identical dome light for less than $19.00!!

Where can you find dome lights for less then $19?? Mine look horrid and I have often thought of replacing them, but the price of replacing them all always makes me think of better things to do with my money.

I have tried polishing them up with little success, some of those spots seem permanent. I beleive the origonal dome lights are simply brass plated, and the plating seems gone on spots on mine. John your fresh water boat probably does not see nearly the corrosion on such things as most of us deal with.