Nav light switch

[JRB]

The cover broke on this switch. Can’t find one just like it local. Academy has one but it has 6 terminals where this has only four. Everything else is the same: On-Off-On.Any of you electrical gurus think the 6 terminal switch will work?


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[Erin Brewer]

Just have to get a dvom and figure out which pins are for what...


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[thill]

A 5 or 6 terminal switch is more common than a 4 when wiring nav lights. Are you sure that's not for something else?

In your existing switch, you probably had 12V power going to the center, with top and bottom going to your nav and anchor lights. The #4 terminal off by itself is probably the ground for the lighted switch.

So you probably only need to connect ONE side of a 6-terminal switch: 12V to center, Nav + bottom, Anchor = top, and if lighted, the ground to which ever terminal is a different color than the others, usually copper or black.

This is assuming that the boat is wired for that to work properly with your wiring.


But on MOST boats, the switch wiring is diferent. In MOST boats, the right and left sides of a 6 or 7 terminal switch are powered separately, via the center terminal on each side.

How you wire a 6 lug switch for NAV/ANC lights...

12V power in goes to the RIGHT CENTER terminal
The anchor light connects to the TOP RIGHT terminal, with a jumper also going diagonally to the CENTER LEFT terminal.
The red/green nav light is connected to the BOTTOM RIGHT terminal, with a jumper going to the BOTTOM LEFT

So how this works, is when you hit ANC, only the anchor light fires up. But when you hit NAV, it fires up the nav light AND the left side, which also lights up the ANC light.

I hope this works. If not, let me know, and I'll draw a diagram.

-Tony

[thill]

Here is a pic of the basic NAV/ANC wiring with a typical 6-terminal switch. You only need 5 terminals, so sometimes the unused one will be a ground for the lighted switch.

I hope this helps.

[Glenn54]

I replaced a couple of my switches not long ago. I used the numbers off my old switch to search for a new switch. My switch wasn't the nav light but you should be able to do the same thing. Pretty sure I got mine from Amazon. Just a thought.