Installing a Masina Festoon LED Light Replacement Into A Stern Running Light on S/V SHANGRI-LA

Of all of the LED running light replacements that we sell, the Masina Kuaka* festoon (looks like a fuse) light bulb had to be the easiest to install. Although I 'cheated' and used the grub screws within the fixture, the installation took less than 15 minutes, including the photographing, but excluding digging my caulking gun out of the tool locker. I'd image that a port or starboard running light would mount in a similar manner.

Unchanged Stern Light Showing Us It's Stern. For those curious about the PV panel mounts, the panels were first attached to aluminium hinges with aluminium rivets along the center wooden rail to allow a limited of aiming. The other edge of the panels are held by sacrificial strips in the event of getting pooped by a wave. The theory (born out, by the way) is that the strips will break, preventing the force of the water from either breaking the panels or tearing the davits loose from their mountings.

Although not strictly necessary, I chose to remove the light from the base. On this light, that amounted to removing 2 #10x3/4" sheet metal screws and lifting straight up.

Next, loosen the two #6 lens mounting screws and pull the lens off. The lens crazing is after only six years in the tropics!		Lens removed. Please note that the burned out festoon bulb in the picture is a problem that you will never see again with an LED product!

Kia Island off our stern. When we have a day off, we'll have a picnic and go fishing there. Remember, you're doing all this work so you can see this off your stern also!

I cheated here and just pushed the wires under the grub screws. A MUCH better attachment would have been to sweat the wires together, then put them under the grub screw for mechanical strength.

Sa Oti (English=all finished) A big dollop of Selley's, a rubber band as a temporary clamp, and a few hours to cure completes the job. I've been asked about Selley's, so I've shown a picture of it in the tube for those outside of Oceania. A much more benign product than RTV silicone, as it does not require acetic acid to cure.

*Kuaka is the Samoan 'borrowed' word for quarter: The number, not the currency. A 25 cent piece, which an American would call a quarter, is a seleni in modern venacular Samoan. Seleni is also borrowed from English, but from the word shilling, whose size the American 25 cent coin closely approximated! Masina Kuaka, of course, is a quarter moon.