Tower Nav light housing needs to be replaced on 2011 21V.

[blackout_58]

Hello all, I have a newly broken tower nav light on my 2011 21V. While I should have just spliced the wires to provide additional length for an easier replacement, that was definitely hindsight. Having tried running the wires back up the tower, I keep running into a snag and cannot get the wires back to the hole at the top of the tower. Not to be outdone, I tried running the wire from the top down and ran into the same snag. At this point I have accepted my initial mistake, and need some input on how I can run the wires back up the tower.

[pap]

Do you have any idea how far up/down the "snag" is? I ran a snake recently to pull new speaker wires and it was tough to get past the top "90" bend, but other than that didn't have much problem. You already pulled the old wire out?

[blackout_58]

The snag appears to happen at the junction on the tower where the lower support is welded onto the main bar. I tried running a wire from both ends and they both stopped at the same spot where the lower support attaches. What type of technique did you use that maybe I am missing? It is a very tight fit going from the bottom to the top so moving the wire around was almost impossible once at the joint, is there some sort of secret technique that I am missing or is it just a matter of patience?

[iwakeboard]

Blackout, when we run the progressive towers for wire we feed string into the top of the tower tied to the wire. Take a vacuum to the exit hole and voila, you have string to pull the wire out. Hope this helps.

[blackout_58]

Iwakeboard, that is absolutely genius........I will try this as soon as I get home from work today and let you know how it worked out. I really appreciate the feedback.

[pap]

I didn't realize you had the progressive tower,. I've got the "normal" tower, so I'm probably not going to be helpful. Just for the record I tried the vacuum trick and it didn't work on my boat, had to pull a fish.

[blackout_58]

Alright, so I was unsuccessful running the string through the tower using the vacuum, but I did see how it should have worked. The string definitely went up the tower, it just starts to snag at about the same location as everything else. I think I may have to take it to the local boat shop and see what they can do as I do not want to cause any damage. Thanks for all of the help with this guys, definitely pointed me in the right direction.

[blackout_58]

After seeing a number of suggestions for how to run the Tower Nav light wire, I finally had to buy some flexible wiring and drill one hole in the tower. I tried the vacuum method for a few hours with no success along with a failed wire hanger attempt. After drilling a hole below the main joint, I noticed that there was a large amount of overlap when the tower was welded together, this caused the hangups that I kept running into with the hanger. After drilling the hole I was able to run the flexible wire(taped to the Nav wire) up the tower to the hole and pull it out. I was then able to fish it up around the overhang inside the joint while some string was taped to it to pull it out of the exit point for the Nav light. After that, everything was a piece of cake, just taped wire to the string and pulled it through and connected the wire, SUCCESS!!!! Diagrams and photo's to follow.