Lite Brite

Last weeks jaunt in the little whaler 

made it obvious our lighting system needed refinement.

Coming in using our emergency cellphone flashlight was a bit ridiculous.

It seemed like the little closed cell battery

should have lasted much longer than a short couple hours.

Sure I should and could have charged it,

but that would have been too easy.

I was expecting this to be maintenance free.

There are a couple wires that could possibly be charging wires in the outboard,

but since it's a pull start only,

there's no rectifier,

which converts AC to DC.

I'll have to test this when running.

My solution for now were these trick LED bulbs.

Rather difficult to find,

they finally arrived in the mail last night.

This style was packages specific to a boat light,

although it's a typical auto style bulb.

Here's a before and after.

The top shot is the 12 watt incandescent,

a warm yellow burn.

The bottom shot is the new .85 watt LED,

a cold blueish tone about 3/4 the bright level.

Since amp=watt/volt,

than the original 2 bulbs at 12/3.3 watts took 1.275 amps,

and the new LED's at 1.7 watts total only take .14 amps to shine.

Theoretically it'll take 9 times longer to kill that little battery!

Updates soon.

TP