Thread: Looking for help on weird navigation lighting issue....??

Electrical stuff can be pretty tricky sometimes. When you are testing where are you grounding your test light on the ground that's part of the light socket or on the boat? My experience is that weird lighting issues will often times be a bad ground. Also if your test light is an LED light and your bulbs are incandescent lights you may have enough connection to light an LED but not enough to light an incandescent bulb. Any way I bet it's a weak connection somewhere, but most likely it's on the ground side of the connection. Is it an aluminum or glass boat?

Originally Posted by Mac Daddy

Electrical stuff can be pretty tricky sometimes. When you are testing where are you grounding your test light on the ground that's part of the light socket or on the boat? My experience is that weird lighting issues will often times be a bad ground. Also if your test light is an LED light and your bulbs are incandescent lights you may have enough connection to light an LED but not enough to light an incandescent bulb. Any way I bet it's a weak connection somewhere, but most likely it's on the ground side of the connection. Is it an aluminum or glass boat?

Thanks Mac Daddy for the response, I was grounding to the light socket because my test light has a short cable. And I was using an incandescent test light. Thanks again for the input. I was kinda leaning towards something of that nature. I will check that.

I recently had a problem with Trailer Lights ---- It was not making since till I found a butt splice in an out of the way place covered in tape to the frame. Dissimilar metals in splices can get enough corrosion to quit passing current

If its not a major ordeal i would run new fresh wires

Originally Posted by Lawnmowerman43

If its not a major ordeal i would run new fresh wires

I’m giving that some thought because I’m wanting to go to LED lights anyway. Thanks for the suggestions!


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Almost always a ground problem. Bare a small spot on your ground wire coming out of your receptacle and run a jumper from there to the neg post on your battery. If it lights up you know you have lost ground somewhere.

Originally Posted by BG12

Almost always a ground problem. Bare a small spot on your ground wire coming out of your receptacle and run a jumper from there to the neg post on your battery. If it lights up you know you have lost ground somewhere.

Thanks BG12, I will try that! That's a good test, hadn't thought of that! I have bigger issues to chase now.....I tried to take the boat out yesterday and it didn't go well! The boat would always start and run well at the house on water muffs but I got it out on the water and it wouldn't run, couldn't get it over 5 mph and it would die.....thank God I didn't get far from the ramp and I went against the wind so it helped push me back with the trolling motor....take it from me NEVER buy a used boat unless you know the boat will run out on the water! I'm hoping it's just minor fuel issues, maybe bad gas, water in the gas, bad primer bubble, dirty carbs....we'll see. At least I have next week off so I can work on it quite a bit!

Sounds like carbs need to be rebuilt.