Guage or panel lights question

[vettnman]

My panel guage lights are out. as a matter of fact, they've not worked since i bought my boat back in march. The bulbs in them are fine and appear to be in working condition. I 've checked all the fuses that I can find and all were intact, although I couldn't find a fuse specific to the guage lights. So here's my problem. The guages all work (tach, speed, etc) but the lights don't work in them. I can't find a fuse specfic to the lights and don't have a switch specfic to the lights. Any ideas? I've tried to trace the wiring, but not had any luck so far. If someone could point me in the general direction, I'd appreciate it. Thx

[offshore]

Keep tracing the wire. If all the panel lights dont work it has to either be the hot lead from buss bar or the fuse. Do you have fuses on the switch panel?? What type of fuses do you have?? Dont forget the ground from the ground buss to the panel lights. Get a multimeter and start checking the leads....Mark

[Capt Rick Hiott]

It sounds like a ground wire has fallen off.


This might not be the problem but, If you remove the bulbs again clean the contacts and use Di-Electric grease in the socket when you put it back together.

Like Mark said,,get a meter or test light and keep looking if thats not the problem...............................
You can get it in the tube or a little packet like this. I cant do without this stuff. I use it on ALL of my connections.

[vettnman]

I thought a ground wire may have fell off or a fuse blown myself. However, all the fuses appear to be intact. I'm pretty sure the gauge lights are tied into my navigation lights since I don't have a separate switch for the panel lights, but I can't find the hotwire responsible for that. I'll keep looking. Any other advice on where to look is very welcome, because i don't want to undo all the zipties holding my wiring together. The original owner made a little mess in there and there's wires going off in different directions. That's about the only bad thing of buying used vs. new is that the wiring is a bit confused. I'll figure it out eventually

[fishbard]

The gauge lights do typically come off the nav light switch. The 12volt lead daisy chains from the switch to gauge to gauge--and so on. Turn on the nav lights and check for voltage going out of the switch, there should be a wiring going to the nav lights from that terminal and another wire going to the gauges. If you think there is a ground problem, you can try running a temporary ground from the grounding bus to one of the gauges and see if the light comes on.

[welder]

Check and see if it's picking the power up off the ACC side of the key.
Sounds more like a Ground proplem though.

[Southshore Marine Service]

Trace where the ground first comes into the gauge cluster as after it comes in it should just jump from gauge to gauge.