to replace my original which I assume is a Forespar, need I drill out the rivits and replace with screws? Any advice on how to approach?
Cliff : Your original deck/steaming light is probably a Forespar. If you are replacing it in kind, just drill out the pop rivits. The wire in the new one and using the same holes, remount it with pop rivits.
Ron is correct. I did mine last year,replacing the one on a 1990 C34. Only difference is the new ones are plastic and the old one was aluminum. The plastic made matching up the holes very easy.
I wanted to replace the Forespar with a better unit such as an aquasignal. Unfortunately, I took my mast down last season and will have to figure out how to do this in a bosuns chair.
Here's the guts of an AquaSignal. Better unit? All I recall is that the bottom doesn't fall out of these units, but they still need care. Mine is screwed on. Dave went up to do brain surgery on it, 'cuz the steaming light wasn't working. It was the wiring in the incredibly tiny pressure fittings. Silly design. We left the body on the mast, fixed the wiring and replaced the lens housing.
The year of your boat has absolutely NO correlation to the fixture you may have. When you have to replace anything, figure out what fixture you have FIRST. Get binoculars or a camera, look it up in a WM catalog, and go from there. The three major brands are Forespar, AquaSignal and Hella.
you convinced me. I have serviced my old Forespar many time and water just gets into the small 10w deck light and the steaming light keeps going out in spite of constant cleaning of the contacts etc. So is simply replacing the old
Forespar the way to go?
By the way Steve we are only a few hull numbers apart. Mine is 1022
Cliff : I've told this story before, but it's worth telling it again.
I was completely ticked off at my Forespar deck/steaming light and was just walking out the door for a trip to Boat US and purchase an Aqua Signal unit.
The postman was delivering mail and I had to take a peek at my new Practical Sailor. In there was an article about an feller that was PO'd about the number of time that he had to go up the mast and change out bulbs to keep his Aqua Signal deck/steaming light to keep it working! So I stuck with what I had.
I found that if you replaced the glass lens on the deck light, put a dab of caulk on the steaming light cap(to keep it on) and sprayed BO-7 on the wiring connections it'll work for many more years than with out those things being done. A thought