LED Courtesy Lights

During the pre-purchase inspection we had discovered that the courtesy lights were all original and only one was working. We threw in some new bulbs but only used them occasionally after we saw the big current draw they generated. On top of whatever else we had turned on they were a major power hog! We finally got around to doing something about them, deciding to go with LED's. We are slowly converting all the cabin lighting to LED.

Ammeter showing approximately 4 amp draw with all eight courtesy lights on using original incandescent bulbs.

After a lot of surfing over all the usual suspect marine sites we couldn't see any suitable LED replacements that combined the right features with the right price....yes, we are cheap! There are plenty of good lights available but the prices are crazy. So, we started looking further afield for sites that specialised in LED's for all applications, household, marine, auto etc., etc. After a bit of browsing we found some powerful, twin LED license plate lamps at Super Bright LED's that seemed to fit the bill at less than $6 a copy! Compared to the offerings on the marine sites they were a steal. We bought a dozen, planning to use the extras inside the hanging lockers.

Compact and inexpensive, twin LED license plate lamp. 20 lumen (approx 15 Watt equivalent) with just 40 Milliamp draw.

By far the hardest and most time consuming part of the job was removing the face plates from the original units. They had all been screwed 'uphill' in their various locations and there was only about 4 inches between the cabin sole and the bottom face of the cabinetry where they were located so a specially modified cross-head bit in a miniature ratchet and some painful wrist action was needed to undo them! It seems likely the units were mounted before the furniture was installed during manufacture without thought of maintenance....a situation we have seen in numerous other areas of the boat.

Once the old lights were out the new ones went in without a problem except that, after testing the first one, we determined that they were too bright to face directly outward. We flipped that one and installed the rest facing inward and got quite a nice result with the light reflected back from the furniture. The pics below were taken with varying levels of background light, from moderate to pitch black.

But by far the most impressive result of the whole exercise can be seen in the final picture at left. All eight courtesy lights plus the florescent light over the sink.......barely 2 amps........enough said!