This old "Slim Line" fluorescent light has been a pain for quite some time.
It is getting gutted and rebuilt as an LED red nav light.
November 2018 - We are now currently in Riberas (Riberas del Pilar) which is a neighborhood in Lake Chapala, Mexico pet/house sitting.
Again, here is another shot of the old "Slim Line" fluorescent light and where it is.
We have rebuilt all the "Slim Line" fluorescent lights on our boat s\v Elegant'sea by converting them from fluorescent bulbs to LED strips. They still look factory correct and are a great light for the space and now are all LED except for this one in the Nav Station. This light was another fluorescent light with two white bulbs. We put two plastic red tubes around the bulbs so we could use the light on night passages. The red tubes worked good but the bulbs did not.
Here you see the red tubes we had purchased from Downwind Marine in San Diego CA.
Fluorescent lights bulbs on with red tubes covering them, no shade on.
Fluorescent bulbs with red tubes covering them,
no shade on and light not on.
no shade on and light not on.
Fluorescent lights bulbs with red tubes covering them, shade on.
Broken bulb.
So the fluorescent tubes would not make a good connection with the light fixture. They would work for a while but then when we needed to use the light on a passage they would fail...you know how it is😊 We tried reworking the fixture but that did not help. We tried different bulbs but that did not help. So we decided to replace the guts of the fixture and put in LED lights. We could not find any red LED strips like the white ones we put in the other fixtures so we opted for regular LED light. Besides, now we will not need to carry spare fluorescent bulbs as they are hard to find and break easily.
We decided to do this work over the summer
when we were up in the mountains of Mexico keeping cool😎
Here we are removing the light.
when we were up in the mountains of Mexico keeping cool😎
Here we are removing the light.
The wires run through the headliner.
The LED light next to this one is a touch map chart light. It has a red LED that goes on automatically at night for a night light. F4 TouchLED Task Light 12-Inch Black made by Imtra and bought at Apex Lighting. Apex lighting, I think, was YachtLights.com.
You can see the string (blue) that we used so we can re-snake the wires back.
Next we had to find red LED lights that were not too high
and not too long so they would fit in the fixture. We found some on Amazon.
and not too long so they would fit in the fixture. We found some on Amazon.
There is a white metal cover for the fluorescent transformer.
It is off to the top left of the picture. We will not need that anymore.
It took quite a while to find a house that someone did DIY while we were house sitting in the Lake Chapala area this summer. In fact, it was our very last house sit. We needed a 12v battery to test out the wiring, some glue and some clamps etc. We could have used our car battery but that is a real pain trying to test out the light(s) that way.
Now that we stripped the fixture of all the guts we do not want except for a few more wires.
We did not want to come back to the boat and do this because we have other items there that need to get done so we can get cruising. This little project takes some time.
Now after cutting out the rest of the wires we do not need,
I am wiring it up for a test lighting.
I am wiring it up for a test lighting.
We only need the two black wires from the switch so the lights will turn on\off.
As you can see, it is working great. We used the DeWalt 12 v drill battery to test it out.
Now it is time to glue the LED lights in the fixture.
We scratched up the fixture first and then spread the glue.
We scratched up the fixture first and then spread the glue.
I am trying to get the LED lights in the fixture straight. First one done!
Ok all done!
The wiring is temporary. When we return to our boat s\v Elegant'sea
we will use butt connectors and add a ground wire.
The ground wire we created came from the scrap wiring from the fixture.
Without the cover on the fixture.
With the cover on the fixture and the fixture turned so it is facing the way it will on the boat.
The brightness seems good but if it is too bright then we can put some tint inside the fixture cover or tape onto the LED lights or whatever we want to dim the lights.
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