#1156 replacement LED's blow fuses (?)

[Capt'n CRUNCH!]

Hello,

This has me baffled. My old Santa Cruz has all kinds of original fully functional cabin lights - each the standard 1156, 12 volt bulbs and switches that work perfectly. However, when out on the water (like Voyagers Nat'l Park on the border with Canada last week), I am always paranoid about waking up to dead batteries if using the interior lighting in the evening. (One can not paddle 7 thousand pounds of boat 25 miles back to the landing...)

So, despite the ridiculous price of $15 per bulb for LED's, I was enthused to replace the old incandescent bulbs with all LED's (in the 38 year-old fixtures, that take the same bulb base configuration), to benefit from about a 10-fold decrease on battery demand. But, surprise! The lower amp draw LED blew the fuse in the first bulb I installed. And then again, and again. So I assumed I had a bad bulb and bought more, and tried it first in a different fixture. Same thing, immediate blown fuse - not even a twinkle of light, just blew a 10 amp, then a 15, then a 20 amp fuse.

What is going on? This makes no sense.

Thank you in advance for any ideas.

~ Mark

[bud37]

You may have the wrong led's for the sockets.......the bases need to match or you will get a dead short......have a close look.

[Jangocat]

I was facing the same thing on our 1975 Santa Cruz. I opted to replace all the fixtures. They've gotten much more reasonable in price and looked a lot better than the old fixtures. Jim

[Midnightsun]

Can you show a link of the bulbs you bought or a picture of one?

My best guess is you bought the wrong bulb and the contacts are causing a direct short between positive and negative in the fixture.

[buster53]

Source of the post Can you show a link of the bulbs you bought or a picture of one?

My best guess is you bought the wrong bulb and the contacts are causing a direct short between positive and negative in the fixture.

My guess as well. While the bulb may look similar, I’m guessing the contacts are not the same configuration. And $15 for a bulb? I’ve replaced a lot of bulbs on my current boat as well as my last one in the past 10 years…never paid anything close to that. Where did you buy them?

[Phrancus]

You may want to drop a spare battery in the boat and a set of jumper cables. Charge in port, separate under way. You can do fancy stuff with automatic charging/diodes against draining but in essence you'll sleep better if you have a simple starter battery on the side to get going in times of trouble. In daily summer use you won't need a huge battery to get an engine going, simple to test as well.

There are also simple battery watchers that cut off the power to the lights when voltage drops too low. But I'd still prefer to have something rudimentary like a spare battery instead of relying on electronics.

[Viper]

Ya sounds to me like you've got the wrong base. The most that should be happening with the correct base is it not lighting up as they are polarity sensitive. In bases that can go in one way or the other, pulling the bulb out and turning it 180* solves that problem.

$15 for a bulb isn't uncommon for good units manufactured in North America. $25 or more north of the boarder is common for that. We're so used to seeing cheap overseas stuff on line and get used to the low prices but the specs are not the same as the domestic builds. Having said that, I get that replacing 30 bulbs can get pretty pricey using domestic brands and is a deal breaker for most lighting retrofit budgets. For critical systems though like navigation and safety alerts, domestic is the way to go IMO or at least go with a reputable domestic brand that might still be built oversees but has standards that the manufacturer has to follow for that brand. In contrast, there are no standards for the cheap private label stuff you see at on-line retailers like Amazon.

[Midnightsun]

$15 for a bulb isn't uncommon for good units manufactured in North America

Find me one bulb actually made in North America, not assembled in North America with Chinese parts but made here. I have been using LED bulbs for over a decade, never had an issue and most of mine were about 1$ per piece or and even up to maybe $3.

[Viper]

That's why I mentioned domestic brands manufactured overseas. A good brand will set more stringent hardware/quality requirements for their product. It's like anything else, it might be the same manufacturer that also makes cheap private label stuff but you can't compare the quality of those to the higher end LEDs likely made by the same manufacturer. It's in their best interest to make differing quality of the same product to meet a given price point. Will the cheaper LEDs last, sure they can but there's all kinds of negative feedback about multiple failures too. You just have to be prepared for that is all I'm saying. I replaced all my interior lighting with LED bulbs with Amazon private label stuff, it's all I can afford considering the number of units I had to buy. I also replaced rope lights with LED strips, two of which have already failed, and two who's colour (warm white) has changed. But I knew going in that for the money, this might happen. I got a domestic brand from a supplier to try out that is much more expensive but is on a different level quality wise, and so far I'm quite happy with it. No blues in the cool white spectrum like the cheap ones and the colour is holding so far.

[bud37]

Every time you shop cheap it is probably off shore, made for next to nothing. Sometimes ya luck out, sometimes Ya gets what ya gets....

And to add, I hear there may even be copies out there now...