www.iFourWinns.com

Can a rheostat (or other electronic device) be used to control the brightness of the helm instrument lights?


Steve

I take it that they are too bright, and you want to dim them. That's a tough one. Unlike a car, most boat gauge lights are always on. The ramification of this is subtle. While the wiring could possibly be chased down to a single feed, some gauge manufacturers may incorporate incandescent bulbs, and others leds. Some pull power from the dash lights power feed, some may not. If you have a mix of incandescent and led lit gauges, I doubt that you'd be able to achieve a uniform dimming, if you were able to get dimming to work at all. If it were me, I'd try pulling the blue dash lights power feed from the helm fuse panel (FW typically uses a blue wire in their harnesses, check the Gauge Panel assembly wiring diagram in the back of your owners manual) and temporarily wire in a fader control as a test. If it doesn't work it's easily changed back. If it does work, you can determine if the results are acceptable and then mount it. If all else fails, I've seen posts where some resorted to pulling the bulbs one by one and using a sharpie marker to 'dim' them. Others have had success with swapping bulbs to a less bright bulb in one or two gauges that were too bright. Good luck!

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2007 Horizon 200
4.3L GXi/ SX 225 HP

Every boat that we've had .... the instrument lights are too bright for night running (can't see out on the water as well, due to the bright gauges). On each one, I've thought about adding a dimmer to the lights. I will be doing this on the 268 (it's better than a towel thrown across the dash .....).

The lights on our '03 268V are, indeed, incandescent and I'm sure I can dim the whole group as a whole. Once I get into it, I'll report here. I'll also look into changing the illumination to red through coloring the bulbs or changing them.

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Gordon Arnold
New Hampshire

2003 268 Vista ..................................................................Prior: 97 245 Sundowner

The only gauge that's LED on mine is the Faria depth sounder, ever other faria gauge is incandescent. I think it could be done with minimal hassle.

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Brett DiMichele

You don't specify what model you have, but on my 378 Vista, the instrument lights are wired to 3 position switch (hi-off-lo). The dimming is accomplished with a very large power resistor wired into the harness. I also changed all the bulbs to red bulbs and it really makes a difference at night. Sorry I don't remember the value of the power resistor, but all the wiring diagrams are available on the Four Winns website, so a little looking through the site for the wiring diagram for a 2004 378 Vista should be a good starting point.

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Jerry
2004 378 Vista "Escapade", T-Mercruiser 8.1 SHO
2003 Maxum 3300SE
1987 Wellcraft San Tropez
1991 Chaparral 2550SX
1987 Bayliner 2150
!967 Caravelle 1751

Since my last post I have used a Radio Shack rheostat to add dimming control to the Helm Instrument lights on my H200. Fairly easy upgrade, and works very well for dimming the lights, which I considered to be far too bright. Details can be found towards the bottom of this thread:

http://www.smwebhead.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2146

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2007 Horizon 200
4.3L GXi/ SX 225 HP