Archive for July, 2005
Last night I managed to get all the holes for the lights cut out. That was a pain. I don’t think that a dremel cutting bit was the right tool for the job. I then tried to mount the tail light housings on the panel, but the lights don’t want to fit now that I have the wiring on there. It’s a little hard to explain without a picture but I’ll do my best. The tail lights are three pieces. There is the lens, the housing, and an insert piece that the bulbs sit in. One the back of the insert there are connector things to connect your wiring to. Problem is, when I connect my connectors to them, they stick out too far. I almost had it fitting, but when bending one of the tabs to try to make it fit, the tab broke. $%^&*! I am this close to just welding the damn wires to it!
Got a little bit of work done last night. I got my old lady to help too. We started cutting out the holes for the lights. Got two of them done and the bit broke on the third. I’ll have to get a new bit tonight. I worked on the wiring a bit. The wires keep pulling out of these connectors so I tried to make them a little more secure. I cut off the unused sockets and wrapped the wires in electrical tape. Oh, and my turn signals work without me having to dork them up. I thought I was going to have to make it so the brake light or backup light flashed when the turn signals were on. Without having two bulbs in the back they wouldn’t flash. But I found out if you swap the turn signal flasher mudule thing with one for the hazard lights they work fine with one bulb. So I stole one from my other Fiero and everything works great now.
I’ve come across another challenge. This tail light panels has six screws along the top (like stock), and two on the bottom sides. You are supposed to put the panel in place, then reach in through one of the holes and screw in the bottom sides. Problem is these lights will be attached by sandwiching the panel between the housing and the lens. That means the lights have to be in place before I install the panel, so there won’t be any holes to reach through. Not sure how I will handle that yet.
My connectors came in today. They will do quite nicely.
I had to work overtime again today so no work on the formula. I’m starting to consider paying someone to do the sewing on the upholstery. That is my biggest hold up right now. That and my lazy ass.
I had to work this weekend so I didn’t do all I wanted to do. I did rewire the center gauge pod though. The first time around I looked like a mess and wasn’t done very professionally. Plus I used standard connectors which is a really bad idea since they are so close to each other. So I redid it using insulated terminals. This time I looped one wire to the next connector for all the power connections and all the ground connections. Much nicer. Here’s a before and after pic.
Remember when I said I had no excuse for not getting the tail lights done this weekend? Well, I have an excuse. I can’t seem to find any connectors locally so I just ordered a couple from Summit Racing. I should have them next week. I will do what I can without them. I will probably also rewire the gauges while I’m at it.
Last night I finally got back to working on the car just a little. I got some insulated terminals and replaced all the non-insulated ones I put on the tail lights. I will be doing that to my gauge panels soon too. I also figured out a solution to my turn signal problem. Not sure if I mentioned that before or not, but since I went from having two turn signal bulbs per side in the back to one, they wouldn’t flash. So a simple solution to that is to add a jumper wire to one of the other bulbs. So now I will have two bulbs flashing when the turn signals are on, the turn signal and the backup light for instance. I tested it with the brake light bulb but then it occurred to me that the turn signal will probably go on when I hit the brakes. Maybe that’s ok, I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it more. Other than that I have all the wiring figured out. I plan to get some two and three wire connectors to put behind the tail light panel also. That way if I need to remove the panel to replace a bulb or whatever, I only have to disconnect six connectors instead of 22 or however many wires there are back there. I really have no excuse not to have this done by the end of this weekend now.
I haven’t had much to post the last week or so because I’ve been sick. If it weren’t for that I would have had my tail lights done last weekend. Since I was on the couch sick anyway, I took the opportunity to overhaul my website. I re-did this page, my personal page at ricklord.com and I started a new page like this one for my Diablo project. I also integrated an image gallery program I created for KitKar.com into my Diablo page. I think I will eventually use that to replace the image gallery here.
I’ve made some progress on the tail lights. All the new lights are wired for the most part. Problem is these lights only use one turn signal bulb per side. Without two per side they won’t flash. Not sure how I will handle that. I may wire the running lights to flash when turning also. That should take care of it.
I think I will redo the wiring before I’m done. Since I will be getting insulated terminals for my gauges, I might as well use them here too. That should go quickly though since I know where everything goes now. Then I just need to cut the body behind the tail lights so they will fit, cut holes in the panel and voila! If I weren’t going to be out of town this weekend I could have it done in a few days.
I’ve spent far too long messing with my oil gauge. From what I can tell the brand new sender is bad. On one hand I think I should just deal without a working oil pressure gauge temporarily. On the other hand, the threaded insert is now stuck in my oil tube so I can’t put my old sender back in. That means no working gauge and no warning light!
I have to get this done soon, no time to mess with stupid stuff like this. In two weeks the formula has to be out of the garage to make room for a Diablo chassis. Oh yeah, I’m going to rewire the gauges too. The way I did it just looks too messy and I want to use insulated terminals anyway.
