Lighting coils or charging setup?

[fshnfun]

I would like to have the option of running lights on my 14' Hewescraft but have a manual start 15hp Merc. I've been to the Merc Express site and see there are lighting coil kits and battery charging kits. The cost seems relatively close, and the charging kit would allow me to keep my trolling motor battery fresh while on the water.<br /><br />Any pros/cons to this? Or should I just buy portable battery powered lights for when I need them?<br /><br />I don't think I would use the lights much, but it would be nice to be "legal" if I'm on the water after sunset.

 

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Re: Lighting coils or charging setup?

A cheap alternative, if you happen to own one of those cordless drills, is to buy all the 'lectronics and 'lectrical you normally would, and build a recepticle for the rechargeable battery the drill uses. I know a niegborhood HS kid,who rigged his 12foot john boat in this manner...And I helped. It werkz great,and gives him an opertunity to 'exercise' his dad's drill battieries. The hardest part, is building the recepticle for the battery to plug inta.<br /><br />We used fiberglass 'relief-molding', like they use for boat hulls, as we were somewhat set up for that process,and therefore, cheapest and neatest end-result.<br />But you could concievably make this recepticle outta a block of wood, clay mold, or just battery clips. But whatever you use, dont forget to protect the boats lighting circuits with a fuse or breaker box.<br />This will end-up costing a great deal less than the lighting kit at any rate.<br />A typical Ryobi 14.4V bettery pack will run a nightime setup all night, with ocasional 100K candlepower spotlight used to navigate.<br /><br />An alterantive may also be a ridin lawnmower battery,but these probably wouldn't last all night ( i dunno).