nav light wiring

[bobbymalone]

I have standard 2 pin pole light bases for my nav lights. I am replacing one (the pins keep falling out, >30 years old). The new light base has two leads coming off the bottom from the pins, but they aren't marked as positive or negative, just plain black wires. I can't figure out which way to wire them.

I know it doesn't make a difference if I am running an incandescent light in there because the bulb doesn't care which way current goes through it. But I have an LED light and I'm worried that if I wire it up backwards I'll fry the circuit in there.

The light base has that slot so that the pole can only go in one way. Because there is only one way to plug it in, I'm not so confident it has some sort of backwards wiring protection built into the circuit.

So is there a standard on which pin is pos/neg? Is there a way I can determine it from the pole light without tearing it apart or just connecting it and seeing if it turns on?

[gixxer01]

Do you have a multimeter? It would tell you which is positive. Even a test light would work.

[jentz]

Look closer at the wires one should have a colored tracer stripe.That one will be +.

On the base the center wire is +

Or do a continunity test touch the center post of the base,Then try each wire comming out the bottom of the base,When the meter needle jumps thats the + wire

[boatfixer]

Easiest and surest way is use a test light. Connect the ground lead of the test light/meter to a known ground, turn on the switch and use other lead to find the pos.

[bobbymalone]

Yeah, I can tell which pin on the base side is positive with a multimeter. But that's entirely dependent on which lead I connect to the wiring. I can flip it the other way and change it. And my boats wiring is marked pos/neg, It's just I don't know if I'm supposed to connect the pos wire to the left side pin or the right side pin on the base.

I need to know which direction my light pole wants the juice fed into it so I can wire the base whichever way i need.

And yes, I checked the leads coming out of the base. They are just plain black. I would think they would be marked based on some sort of nav light standard but they aren't.

I would look at factory installed bow light and determine which pin is positive there, but those pins have fallen out a million times too and I have just pushed them back in from underneath arbitrarily because the incandescent light up front burns any way you hook it up.

[jentz]

What brand name is the new base,Did you buyit as a kit? meaning base and light pole

[bobbymalone]

I suppose I could see I could check out a light base on the shelf at the store and see if the pin wiring is marked pos/neg.

[bobbymalone]

The pole is an attwood.

The base is whatever was in that box I had laying around with a pole light base in it.

[jentz]

Just did some reading if you hook them backwards you WILL burn them out.BUT at low voltage they wont.Here's what I found.You need a multimeter.

It’s a little bit harder to determine the polarity with Surface Mount LEDS. Some are marked with a (-) to indicate the negative lead, but often, they are not. The single best way to determine the polarity is through the use a multimeter.

Surface Mount LED

Set the multimeter to the diode/continuity setting. Usually,the multimeter will supply enough current into the LED which will just barely light it up. The black (common) lead on the multimeter indicates the negative (cathode) lead, and the red indicates the positive or anode side.

[jentz]

How big of a hurry are you in?I have two Atwood bases in the shop,I know both are red and black wires,red being +.I can on Monday post which go to which side of the base.I have two boats and just finished rebuilding one with new LEDs last year,The atwood bases use the red &black wire scheme, course the light pole I believe has a set screw on the plug that goes to the base,If that was removed the wire code would beseen.If you need itnow.

[bobbymalone]

I checked out an attwood base at the store and wired it up accordingly. Flipped the switch, YAAAAY!!!! lights work. Just for fun I did that test that jentz posted for the LEDs and that worked too.

Thanks for the help guys!