Under Gunnel Courtesy Lights Work When They Feel Like It - 1987 18.6 Maverick

[Alex Craig]

Greetings all!

Bought a 1987 Maverick in reasonable good shape in early August of this year.

Have put 100+ hours into new equipment & maintenance projects to get her where I want her; and only have a few items left on my list.

One of them is the under gunnel courtesy lights.  Both the cockpit & courtesy lights work off the same rocker.  The cockpit lights illuminate as they should when the rocker switch is turned on.  The courtesy lights come on maybe 5% of the time.

Some simply troubleshooting informed me that the ground for the under gunnel courtesy lights is bad.  I.E., if I ground either of the lights manually both of the lights come on brightly as they should.

My problem is finding where the grounding wire which feeds both of them has corroded or is loose.  Does anyone know if grounds for the cockpit and under gunnel lights are both connected to the grounding plate to the same terminal on the circuit breaker board or if they are connected to separate terminals or if there is a branch connection somewhere further down the circuit?

Thanks in advance for any help.

Best regards,

Alex Craig

[jim33042]

There should be one grounding wire on that rocker switch, which you should be able to trace to the grounding plate.  For the amount of time and effort you have put in already and age of boat, I would also suggest changing the switch (and if not right away, you may consider the grounding plate as well).  Being on the dash, the rocker switches get all the bad - weather, salt, rain.  A change out is easy enough.  You may see that when you pull that switch there will be some corrosion on the tabs- which could be adding to your issue.

I would add that age alone isn’t necessarily the culprit of a bad switch. After hurricane Irma, I had to replace all of my rockers within a couple of months.  That was with a console cover in place.