MacGregorSailors.com

Can anyone tell me if the main house wiring to the Macgregors is Black for negative and White for positive?
Reason I ask is I have set up my house batteries with black as the ground and everything works Ok. All the cabin lights work, all the anchor lights work, the running lights and even the radio's I have wired in work OK.

However, I purchased new LED bulbs to replace all the original house light bulbs and none of LED's work once installed?
I tested the LED directly on the battery and they work fine, if I reverse the polarity of the LED on the battery I get a dead short.
I am not blowing any fuses in the house light circuit when I install the LED's to the lights, but I can't get them to work either?

I was wondering if I have the house wiring working in reverse polarity as for normal bulbs I don;t think it matters? But I'm kind of surprised I haven't blown fuses on the radio's etc if I have their polarity arse about?

Any ideas?

Cheers

Barry

Barry
Your battery terminals should tell you if you have the battery around the right way as one terminal is smaller than the other
If you reverse polarity you could damage any electronics you may have on the motor
You may have to reverse your wiring at the light socket or at the switch panel

Allan

Sounds odd, as I have used about three different kinds of LEDs I'v bought from ebay and they have all worked as drop in replacements on the stock wiring.

But as Allan says, reverse the wiring at the sockets I guess.

I'v never been happy with the stock lighting and I put strip LED lighting in which lit the place up like a Christmas tree but it kept falling down and I went back to the house sockets. The LEDs I finally found which I have been happy with in the amount of light they give out and the colour of the light is these:
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/2x-102-SMD-L ... 2a20a44489

Thanks for the feed back. The wiring harness is all attached to the wing nut terminals at the batteries, so the size is the same on all the terminals.
The main house wiring harness comes into the battery as two wires. One is black the other is white. I took it that the black was the earth?
When I connected everything up everything that works off the standard MacGregor power board such as anchor lights, cabin lights, running lights all work fine. I have since added a VHF radio powered up from the Aux switch and even that's working fine and not blowing any fuses. So I don't imagine I have the polarity around the wrong way.

I'll pull the panel tomorrow and have a look at the wiring behind the panel again I should be able to see what colour wire is on the main positive input for the 4 switch panel and work it out from there?

Today I've fitted the new brake caliper pistons, new brake shoes and made up a stainless sleeve to go over the pitted area on the axle where the grease seal runs. Installed new bearings to the hubs and flushed and bled the brake circuit. I've got a little more work to do this week to finish of the stereo install and mount a couple of speakers and we're right to take it out for our first sail next weekend. Getting excited!!

Hi Barry, I put LED bulbs in my factory lights a year or so ago, they didnt work so I did some testing and found that Macgregor wired them with positive earth, go figure, so I reversed the polarity of the light fittings and they worked fine, normal bulbs aren't polarised but LEDs are. Just reverse the light fittings wiring, it isn't hard.

Cheers, Dennis.

Thanks Dennis. Is it only the light circuits that are positive earthed? That has to be the problem.

barryst1300 wrote:Thanks Dennis. Is it only the light circuits that are positive earthed? That has to be the problem.

Yes it appears to be, which is why everything else works ok. I have no idea why you would do that but they did.

Thanks for the tip Dennis. That was the issue. I reversed the polarity of the lights and the LEDs all work fine now.

Guess the PO must have done it on mine then..

When in doubt use a multi-meter across the terminals, saves letting manufacturers smoke out .

Fair Winds
Glenn

Think ours were positive to earth as well, I do remember something odd but it was a long time ago and I just changed the whole fittings in the end anyway, you can buy fittings now almost as cheap as replacement globes.