strange low voltage issue "08" R25

[shawnpb]

Has anyone ever found detailed schematics for their ranger? I have an "08" R25 with a 12VDC issue. Very recently, my Nav lights and my cabin lights dont come on. Dining area lights work fine from the DC panel. There's a switch to the right as you enter the cabin and a Cabin Lights switch at the helm dash. Both switches used to switch on all the cabin lights, but have stopped working. There is power at all switches and the physical switches work fine. I see no issue with fuses & measure 12VDC on both side of the 15A fuse on the DC panel. I popped the Nav light cover to measure the DCV at the bulb and nothing. Very strange that both nav lights and cabin lights are not working. Would welcome any thoughts. Thanks

 

[Salty7]

As both lighting circuits are not working I would look at the ground side first. Go to one side of the light circuit and see if you can measure zero ohms or something close to that to ground. The other possibility is on the switch side. On mine, there is a daisy chain of wires running to the light switches, the push on connectors corrode and I even had one switch fail, pull the connectors on and off a few times and see if that cleans them up. When you say the switch works fine does it measure zero ohms with a good meter when closed? The switch I had fail, felt fine, worked sometimes but eventually went to high internal resistance. Good luck, these electrical gremlins can be really aggravating.

 

[shawnpb]

Thanks for the response. Yeah, I agree, it's got to be a grounding issue. when I check the voltages on the NAV switch while referenced to a solid ground, the 12VDC gets switched on and off through the switch. I wish I had a schematic so I could see the relationship between the NAV light and the Cabin light circuits. It seems like all the DC lighting circuits would share a common ground, but who knows. My next step will be checking the continuity of the physical NAv light wires back to the power distribution point. I need my NAV lights!!