Ever since I got my Sailfish 2660, one of the things that I've been looking to do is to replace the T-top deck lights that come with the boat. I find them rather ugly, but most disconcerting is that they just gobble up battery juice like there is no tomorrow.

I've done a lot of looking at LED floodlights and at the Taco Marine booth at the Miami boat show I saw some new LED flood lights they were introducing. I thought they were attractive and they only burn 1/4 amp per light fixture.

So I went online and saw the best price at about $42 per light. Went to West Marine where they were selling them for $69 in the catalog, but they price matched so went ahead and got them.

I did have one issue you should know about so if you buy them, make sure to inspect the lights before leaving the store.

There is a collar nut that helps cinch down a waterproof grommet in a threaded, molded-in extrusion where the power cable comes out of the back. In two of the three lights I received, there were hairline cracks in that extrusion, because the Chinese factory worker likely used a wrench or pliers to tighten down to a couple of hundred-foot-pounds of torque. OK, I'm joking, but it was really tight. They only need fingering tightening. Installing them with the cracks might have caused a problem down the road, if salt water eventually seeped into the circuit board.

I took the defective units back to West and they ordered replacements. The West sales guy told me of another customer who had the same problem.

A week later the replacements came in and they apparently had cracks in the same place.

I called Taco and made them aware of the situation. Taco UPS'd overnight two new lights and told me to discard the ones that were cracked. Once again, it's nice when a company backs up their product, doesn't give the customer the runaround and efforts a speedy solution.

I mounted them earlier today.

Although they are probably 75 percent as bright as the factory provided "headlights," they produce plenty of light, are not as blinding, have a cooler color temperature, look much better and, of course, use substantially less amps, thus you run less risk of emptying your batteries.

If you get these, you will want to change out the small Starboard mounting spacers from 1/2" to at least 3/4" to allow lower tilt movement for the two stern lightheads. The single bow is fine with the existing 1/2" spacer.

You'll also need to enlarge the center mounting hole on each bracket so it accepts a 3/8" stainless steel bolt which you'll need to get, because the bolts on the existing lights do not work well with these.

Installation is pretty easy. I simply removed the old lights, cutting off about four inches of wiring harness. Used Ancor #18-22 wire butts with  built-in heat shrinkable tubing and adhesive to splice the joints. Normally, I prefer soldering and using heat shrinkable tubing to make wire-to-wire connections, but there's not very much room to work with in the T-top and the wire butts were the way to go on this one.

Get a stepladder to make things easier. The polarity is exactly the same as factory-provided lights. White is positive with these and don't ask me why, because I don't know. It defies common electrical protocol.

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LED1.jpg (94KB - 8 downloads)

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Looks great!

I did research as well and decided I will go LED on my next set.