My CD30 cabin lights appear to have a short as my circuit breaker keeps tripping. I lost 2 of the lights last year due to pinched wires and now the whole circuit is out. I'm unable to get to the area of the pinched wires for repairs. My thought is to abandon the current wires and run a completely new circuit. Has anyone faced the problem of fishing wires behind the panels the length of the cabin? Are the teak panels around the portholes removeable?
Any suggestions or experiences with this problem would be greatly appreaciated. Electrical matters are not my strong point!
CD 30 Cabin Wiring
Moderator: Jim Walsh
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Dana Arenius
Re: CD 30 Cabin Wiring
Jerry,Jerry wrote: My CD30 cabin lights appear to have a short as my circuit breaker keeps tripping. I lost 2 of the lights last year due to pinched wires and now the whole circuit is out. I'm unable to get to the area of the pinched wires for repairs. My thought is to abandon the current wires and run a completely new circuit. Has anyone faced the problem of fishing wires behind the panels the length of the cabin? Are the teak panels around the portholes removeable?
Any suggestions or experiences with this problem would be greatly appreaciated. Electrical matters are not my strong point!
I do not think you will have to remove the teak panels. I think the wiring harness is located just inside the lip edge of the fiberglass ceiling liner where it joins the hull. Depending on your boat, there may be a teak cover panel which covers the liner to hull opening for the length of cabin. The wiring bundle that runs down the length has everything along that side of the boat bundled with it. When a specific light location is reached, a single pair of wires from the bundle is fed up between the outside coach fiberglass skin and the ceiling liner. The wiring probably then just "pokes" thru a hole thru the combined teak/fiberglass liner surface at the light location. New wires might pulled thru by using the old wiring at the light locations as the "pull" wires.
When my boat was new, I had a short in the lighting wiring as well. My power panel is mounted in the upper coach ceiling corner near the galley. When the teak cockpit coamings were attached to the outside
of the coach, the mounting screws of the coamings had poked thru and cut into the wiring harness as it ran along the side of the interior of the boat.
Dana
arenius@jlab.org