Sluggish start, periodically doesn’t start

Blue truck lives under cover next to the house. Sometimes a few weeks without being driven. All of a sudden the truck wasn’t turning over so well. Sometimes just a click.

This happened before and I diagnosed it to bad ground wires.

This time the battery voltage was actually low though. Water level in battery is fire. I put truck on a charger overnight and it starts great, then a week later its not turning over again.

Eventually it gets pretty bad, starts great, drive somewhere, doesn’t want to start… the fact that its so periodic makes me think its wires. But I check the wires, they all look good… I remove them, grind the ends, nothing seems to help.

Given that there’s a bunch of corrosion around the batteries and they were old when I bought the truck 3 years ago, I’m thinking might as well get new batteries. I head to Costco and get a pair of 27DC batteries for $80 each. Change into truck in the parking lot and what do you know… the truck is still sluggish to start! And they are charged. Ok, not the batteries then…

New batteries but truck still has trouble starting

At home I check each battery again, undo all the cables and wires. I notice that the positive wire to the starter solenoid has a pretty loose end. This is a cable I haven’t touched. Actually the end is attached well but the wire at the end of the head is unusually bendy… yeah, seems like maybe that wire bundle is broken inside. It has low resistance if measured with a multimeter but it won’t flow enough power to start the truck.

This is the cable from battery positive to starter solenoid. That wire was pretty bendy right at the inner end of the crimp!

I cut off the end, crimp on a new one and bingo, aggressive start like I remember. I didn’t bother to replace the wire since it seems to be nice flexible stuff.

Can see how outside of cable was burned – it got toasted trying to flow too much current.

So… bad cables… evil!

New crimp from west marine, pounded onto slightly shorter cable. Is good! And no need to spend $20 on a new cable.

 

 

Debugging Electrical Problem

Symptom One:

Funny thing. My wife drives the blue bomber, comes back 5 minutes later because forgot something. Back in truck and it won’t start…

What the heck? What did she do? She broke it!!

Symptom is that voltage drops to nothing when ignition is turned.

I fiddle and play around, determine that something is amiss with the glow plug relay. I buy a ford diesel glow relay and wire it up. Works great, problem solved…

 

See that grey plastic cylinder with the 4 bolts on top? That is the glow plug relay. Small amount of current goes from batter to glow button under dash. When button is pressed that small amount of current goes to the glow relay, causes it to open which causes a large amount of current to go from the battery to the glow plugs in the engine. Reason for this is you don’t want lots of current going through a little button…

 

Symptom Two:

And then about a month later a very similar symptom occurs, voltage drops to zero when you try to ‘glow’ or start the motor.

Now I’m spending hours with the multimeter, and searching the internets for advice. The best thread I can find on ih8mud is:

IH8Mud Thread On Problem Starting 3B

Previous owner was impetuous and seemed to have extra speaker wire. Lots of spare wires zip-tied together. Lots of unplugged things (mostly from auto-glow system.)

Truck developed problem after sitting undriven for a few weeks. For in-car readings I used a cigarette lighter volt meter. Symptoms were all over the map but primary problem was:
– turn key one click, inside voltage is 10.4, yet batteries show 12.5 volts.
– turn key another click, voltage drops to 6-7 or below, yet batteries show 12.5 volts. The inside voltmeter barely displays at such low voltage.
Other times (seemingly randomly over 2 hours of exploring.)
– turn key one click, 10.4 volts
– turn key another click it stays at 10.4… woo!
o Hit glow switch and voltage dives to zero. Battery voltage never changed.
o Hit brake pedal and voltage dives to zero.
o Try and crank and voltage dives to zero.

After diving to zero the truck is dead for 30 seconds or so, then voltage recovers. The entire time the battery voltage is stable at 12.5.

I measure voltage and resistance across many places in engine bay. All seems fine. 0.3 ohms from starter to battery, from starter solenoid to battery. Cleaned battery posts and all cable ends. No difference.

Used jumper cables to ground all sorts of stuff (starter, block, frame) back to the – battery terminal. Made no difference. Jumped right battery to my… other… bj60… inside voltage shows 12.4. Try to glow and voltage goes to 6-7. Try to start, it cranks! A few seconds. Almost starts. When I stop cranking the inside voltage goes to 6-7 again.

Hmm. If jumping sort of works? Took batteries in for load test, supremely uninformative test machine gave them ‘pass’ light when set to 700cca.

Figured based on this thread to just build new ground cables because the old ones were so ugly. Worst case I have nice new cables.

Nasty old cable end

More nasty cable end.

What a pair they make, more nasty old ground cables.

 

Built new ground cable from 0/1 cable I got from Napa ($7.5/foot), and some other 0/1 cable from Lowes (napa ran out). The napa stuff was flexible, lowes was THWN-2 and is much harder to bend. Expensive fittings were $2 each at Napa. I crimped the ends on using a big vice. For kicks I also replaced the ends on the hot wire from ‘+’ of right battery to alternator.

Cables replaced:
– left negative to left battery tray bolt
– left battery tray bolt to left engine block
– right negative to right battery tray bolt
– right battery tray bolt to right engine block
– ends on that alternator cable

Passenger side engine ground attachment.

New ground wire from driver side battery to body.

 

After bolting the cables on… success. Everything is perfect and back to normal.

Woo! 12.73 volts!

 

In all of this the only thing I found wrong: I noticed that the – battery terminal clamp for the right battery was quite loose. Resistance of old cables seems fine so must have been that slightly loose clamp on the right side? When playing with jumpers I only grounded to left battery (battery + are connected with cable but negative are each independently grounded to body and block.) In hindsight I’m guessing the truck would have started working if I’d just jumpered the left and right – terminals (because I believe the left ground was good.)

Advice for building your own ground cables: After building and installing the new cables I did some research. The cheap cable from lowes is made of fewer thick sold copper wires. It is too stiff and will not age well given the motion of the diesel motor relative to the body. Marine cable is zinc coated, is the most flexible and has the best temperature and chemical resistance, and 0/1 is sold locally for between $4.50 and $7/foot. If I ever do this again I’m using that stuff. Also I’m going to get some good copper battery terminals.

Building Cables:

Well, that success lasted all of a day before I realized I couldn’t live with that hard conduit cable in the truck. No way would it last, its too stiff and will break.

I head to west marine and buy 6 feet of their ANCOR 0/1 marine cable, in black. It is very flexible and has terrific fuel safe, self extinguishing insulation. Also it is tinned so corrosion resistant. I also head back to Napa for 4 more of them $2 fittings.

Lastly I go to amazon and look to see what is available in a cable crimper!

Looking at all the crimpers on amazon, and on the internet in general I realize that a simple “Hammer Crimp” is all I need. That’s what folks used for 80 years, what old service stations used forever and ever. It ought to be fine for me, and make a better fitting that what I could achieve by squishing the ends in a vice. Further benefit is that they are ~$25.

On amazon I look at all the crimpers, all look similar, can’t tell them apart. Luckily one of the crimpers is made by Temco! Temco is BAD-ASS company that builds large industrial transformers, inverters, BIG electrical stuff, stuff that architects take into account when designing buildings. Stuff that costs $50k to $500k. They make a range of crimpers from the simple hammer crimp up to $1k pneumatic/electric crimpers. These guys make crimpers because they know what they’re doing and need good crimps. Nice that they think of the little guy, take the trouble to build a cheap reliable crimper.

They even have a photo on their site of what a proper hammer crimp looks like. The crimp with hammer hits so hard that the copper strands are welded into a solid under the crimp. BAD-ASS!

Link to Temco Hammer Crimp on Amazon

I cut new lengths, put on the shrink wrap, crimp the ends on. Wow this stuff is flexible. Never thought much about ground cables before. These are sweet!

 

Cigarette Lighter Repair

My cigarette lighter was coming loose from the dash. Kids were giving me heck because their devices wouldn’t charge reliably while on long trips (like to school, or 10 minutes to the store.) I tried to fix it from the drivers seat but no go. Really I tried but something wasn’t right.

Finally took the dash plate off and took the thing out. It had simply unscrewed itself. Reassemble and install, it is as good as new now.

Anne-Tenna

Not much to say here but that I finally put in a radio antenna. Bit of trouble threading the wire through the engine bulkhead, I piggybacked on another wire but it was tight. Now I’ve got radio reception, just in time for the big trip.

It is a Porsche part made by Hirchmann: 921-060-004-M50.

What One Will Do For Tunes

Long ago I got good advice from “Kelsey” at Best Buy. She told me how to install a headunit and where to go to buy connectors. For that I’m grateful. I went back to Best Buy but she had moved on to Car Toys. Car Toys are the worst sort of rapist. The sort of place you go for an estimate and they tell you it will cost $2000 to put a new stereo in your car. I imagine 90% of their profit comes from ripping people off. But Kelsey is there now… let’s see what Kelsey says.

I happen to arrive at Car Toys on Black Friday, the biggest shopping day of the year. A day with lots of sales. What you know they have a nice Kenwood X397 for $75. Kelsey says it’s a good unit and a good deal so I get it along with a harness and a dash frame. Comes with “free installation”. Sweet.

I make an appointment for the install, before I leave Kelsey warns that I need to check all the speakers and make sure they work. The Kenwood has a feature where it will detect shorts in the speakers and will shut down if load drops below 4 Ohmns…

Ok, I’ve a job set out, I know for a fact the cheap awful speaker cable under the mats in my car doesn’t connect to anything, and I think its 18-20gauge, probably fine but just so awful and scrubbed up. Need something better run from the rear speakers up to the front. I hit up Vetco for some good thick cable. They have a reel of 12g with 28feet left on it, they let me have it for the price of 24 feet which comes to $24. This is seriously nice thick stiff cable, very easy to run by just pushing it through.

Spent a few hours running the cable from the rear speakers, out the seatbelt slots, under the carpet, along the rear door, across the base of the B-Pillar, along the base of the front door, through the paneling, under the front carpet to the center console. Lots of bits of plastic to remove and reinstall and of course many many little screws. In the end there are two nice ends all ready to go.

I don’t have time to check the fronts but trust they’ll be fine… what could go wrong. L

I bring car in for an appointment and Kelsey takes almost 3 hours to do the install. Lots of figuring out what the wires mean given she’s organizing a random old harness into a modern one. The bad news is that the front speakers are toast and I need new ones. She recommends some Pioneers as they are very shallow, I promise to measure and get what is appropriate. But while waiting and listening to their selection I buy a pair of JL Audio C2 400X 4” speakers, $90 on sale. The silk tweeters are very warm and they sound great to me though have little bass as one would expect from a 4” speaker. They’re 1.8” deep which seems shallow. Finally the install is done, I’ve a stereo that takes an iPhone, finally rockin’ tunes after 11 months. Yeah, it is just coming from the rear but it sure sounds good. Can’t wait to get those front speakers installed.

Take off the passenger door and find a 6” Kenwood speaker. Whoa! I don’t need to settle for puny 4” speaker, I can get 6” for much better bass. Back to Car Toys the next day and return the C2-400x for a pair of C2-600X. That night I attempt to install and find that the shape of the magnet and housing on the 600 makes them impossible, much too large and deep to clear the window. The speakers didn’t even come out of the bag. I really want to keep the stock speaker grills so they’ll need to go back. The whole time I’m super happy with the tunes coming from the rear speakers. Can’t believe I went this long without!

One sad moment, I arrive at work to find a strap of metal plumbers tape and a screw sitting on the floor, the stereo is loose… looks like it wasn’t attached very well and has fallen out.

Next day I return the C2-600x and get the C2-400x again. The next morning I wake early and install the new speakers. I seem to be making a lot of dumb mistakes, mixing up the leads, etc but I finally get everything mounted and connected well. Wow I have good sound now. Just delicious. I’m super happy with the choice of front speakers. Driving to work its freezing cold. I turn on the heater blower and in about a second the head unit is flashing “protect”. Uh oh. That wasn’t happening before. Perhaps something is wrong with the front speaker wiring?

Drop back into car toys to get a more secure install of the head unit. Not acceptable to have it fall out. They agree and it takes 45 minutes for the dude to find a better way to secure it, that includes removing and reinstalling the dash and its 11 screws.

I return home to experiment with that pesky protect mode. I find several odd data points:

–          Protect occurs if blower is set above level 2, but the blower works at level 1 and 2, that means it is not the blower switch resistor.

–          At idle the car voltage drops to 12 when blower is on, pretty big drop…

–          With fade set to send all sound to front speakers, the passenger side speaker is louder than the driver’s side. Oh, and the driver’s side speaker makes sound when balance is full right…. There is a connection between driver and passenger side… ?

Friday night I wait until family is asleep and move truck into the garage in order to keep myself a little warmer and take advantage of the lights in the garage. Remove the dash and head unit. Remove driver’s door panel since that speaker is acting strange. Out comes the MultiTester. Exploring the harness, reading the Kenwood wiring manual, all is going well until around 11:30pm… the head unit cuts out entirely. Shit. Is that protect? No, the head unit won’t power on. It is too late I need to sleep. Dreams of a shorted head unit and needing to buy another…. I wake early and worry. Dang, did I toast it by doing something stupid? Worry, worry.

Afternoon I have another few hours to diagnose. I find no voltage coming to the stereo from the harness, which is good news. Turns out there’s not even power to the Radio Fuse. I look in engine bay but nothing wrong there. I check the relays in the fuse box, they’re good, as are the rest of the fuses. Fuse in head unit is good. What can it be? Finally I find continuity between one side of fuse and yellow, but there the ground is gone. What the heck? Head behind the fuse box I see an odd red wire coming from the radio fuse.

Digging all over everywhere I finally notice a loose wire behind the dash. Shit! Last night I remember finding a bare red wire not connected to anything, I’d taped it up and away since it served no purpose. Well 5 of the wires I taped away had no purpose, the 6^th was the ground and needed to connect to the harness. I confirm the red wire is the dead side of the radio fuse plug. I recrimp the previously bare red wire into the empty crimp and now the head unit will power on again. Phew! Not a good use of 90 minutes but I guess I learned to trace voltage and continuity to figure out what I have here.

So back to the speaker with my new found debugging skills I test continuity between the harness and the driver’s side speaker plugs. Negative wire is fine but positive wire is NOT FINE. It connects to both the positive and negative of the passenger side speaker… and not to the left negative terminal… I guess it was being driven out of phase with the positive wire which is why some sound came out. The problem wire can’t be traced since it goes into the 1.5” thick wire bundle behind the dash. Solution: I enlist some speaker cable I had around the house that came from my friends truck before it went to the junk yard, I wire the driver’s side speaker with new wire back to the dash. I’ve no doubt this will work and sure enough it does.

Now there is still a potential issue. Given that the left negative wire was previously connected to both positive and negative passenger side wire, doesn’t that mean the passenger side is shorted positive to negative? Well it seems to be playing well, I’ll leave it for now but that is something to watch. Maybe I can fix in my free time. I’ll need a symptom though before I bother it: reopen dash, open the passenger door and diagnose, that’s a very busy hour, not counting time to run a new wire and splice into the existing wire before it reaches the door.

I turn ignition and get wonderful tunes from every speaker. Toggle heater blower and no issue, yay.

Reinstall everything and put the mass of tools and parts back and away. Car stereo installers earn their pay.

After all of that, I’ve got a single photo of success:

At long last. What a huge pain that was. Def Worth It!

LED Brake Lights

Brake light burned out. Went to store and they had these Kool led lights at the checkout. Shoot. No heat, bright, last forever. Expensive ($16).

Installed one for comparison. It really doesn’t get hot. It appears very bright to the eye but when I took the pics it doesn’t seem so bright. I think the light from the LED is very intense but not wide like the standard bulb. You can see in the photo below that the LED doesnt’ seem to use the reflector, it emits light straight back at you.

Wife and kids all agree its brighter so I’ll keep them. Burned my finger removing the old bulb on the left.

Light pattern on led seems to come straight out at camera, doesn’t use reflector so much.

Comparing left and right, the left is the stock light, right is the new fancy LED. Seems dim, eh?

BJ60 Battery Replacement

Yeah, I left the lights on:Mountain biking at some distant location last weekend. Arrive back to the frankencruiser in the afternoon, load the children into the car and lo, the car doesn’t turn over, just a “Click!”

 

Oh jeese. I left the lights on. Couldn’t see them shining in the morning light. Good thing this car doesn’t need electricity to run and that I parked on a good slope. Release the brakes, back the truck out, then roll forward under the courtesy of gravity. Pedestrians walking side by side up the parking lot are loath to give way to a silently accelerating land cruiser. Shift into 4th, pop the clutch and engine catches instantly. I suppose startup was helped by being warmed all day in the blazing sun.

Drive 2 hours back to seattle and put the batteries on the charger. Batteries accept the full 6 amps. 3 hours later its still taking 5.5 amps. Oh boy, maybe the batteries are toast.

Next morning the batteries are taking 3 amps. On starting the voltage is very low, like 10.5 volts but dropping to 6 when I hit the glow button. Such low voltage after charging all night is a bad sign. I notice that the left battery has a crack in the plastic near the positive terminal, oh man, wonder if its leaking? Out comes the baking soda, distilled water. I fill the 2 cells that are low, scrub the batteries down with water and baking soda. The baking soda boils ominously, especially down the side of the battery and into the battery tray. Boilage means there is acid all over the thing. Not a good sign, its leaking…

I leave the charger on all the next day but signs are not good, looks like I’m in for a new pair of batteries.

Sure enough the engine starts right up the next morning. I drive to work and back home. That night I attach the charger again. 2 minutes later, walking past the rig I hear an odd hissing or buzzing. Hmm. Scan around with the ears and zoom in on the left battery, the one with the crack in it. The battery sounds like its boiling or off gassing something serious. Smells bad. This is not good, not something that should happen when only 2 amps are applied. Now I’ve no doubt. I disconnect the charger with plan to get a battery the next day.

The old batteries:

For the record the batteries in the truck were 3 year old Energizer Deep Cycle 27DC. The side of the battery said “Marine Deep Cycle” but I doubt they were truly deep cycle as they listed 850 CCA each which is high even for a starting battery. Also amazing they list 180 reserve capacity, which is huge and probably optimistic. These batteries are both dated 1/10, so dead after only 3.5 years and they did not age well, I suspect the high CCA came from thin plates and they didn’t survive the deep cycling that previous owner applied.

Cracked case to the right of the positive terminal, leaking acid all over everything.

The new batteries:

First temptation is to get the super awesome excellent batteries that the previous owner had installed. Searching old messages they were Optima D27M, “Blue Top” deep cycle batteries. “Spiral Technology”. They’re also $215 each. I search a little more on the internet and learn something about batteries. First that the optimas are really expensive and don’t seem to last longer than regular batteries. Really the longevity of batteries depends upon their usage.

Research online, perhaps the best overview of batteries is this solarpower web site:

http://www.solar-electric.com/deep-cycle-battery-faq.html

By Wikipedia CCA is cold cranking amps, means (from Wikipedia):

Cold cranking amperes (CCA) is the amount of current a battery can provide at 0 °F (−18 °C). The rating is defined as the current a lead-acid battery at that temperature can deliver for 30 seconds and maintain at least 1.2 volts per cell (7.2 volts for a 12-volt battery). It is a more demanding test than those at higher temperatures. This is the most widely used cranking measurement for comparison purposes.

This value matters as a starter needs sufficient current to turn the engine over. There is not much benefit to actually having huge CCA, but often a higher valued battery will be able to deliver more current when the battery is drained. The CCA has to do with the amount of surface area of the plates in the battery.

Downside of CCA is that the plates will be thinner, will corrode and wear more quickly, so there is a tradeoff.

Another orthogonal measure of battery performance is Reserve Capacity (again from Wikipedia):

Reserve capacity minutes (RCM), also referred to as reserve capacity (RC), is a battery’s ability to sustain a minimum stated electrical load; it is defined as the time (in minutes) that a lead-acid battery at 80 °F (27 °C) will continuously deliver 25 amperes before its voltage drops below 10.5 volts.

This matters if you are drawing current over a longer period, for example running a fridge in the back while the engine is off.

These two battery properties are balanced against each other to form 3 categories of battery:

Starting Battery: used for starting, short draws of high amperage. These batteries will be quickly ruined if they are discharged more than about 2-5%.

Deep cycle battery: used for continuous low power draw these generally tolerate a 50% draw without damage.

Marine battery: these are a balance of deep cycle and starting. They provide sufficient CCA to start a motor, but otherwise are built with thicker plates or lead sponge to survive a deeper draw.

Replacing the batteries:

End of the day I was convinced by a set of posts I saw that generally suggested:

Get the biggest heaviest battery you can find that has the Lowest Sufficient CCA

That is, CCA must only meet your needs, unused CCA compromises durability. An example is Golf Cart Batteries, or forklift batteries, which have CCA of 30-40 and which weigh 100 pounds. Those batteries tolerate deep discharge to almost 20% because their plates are so thick.

I see Costco sells the Interstate 27DC under its own Kirkland brand. They’re $88 each, rated much more conservatively at 600CCA and 115 amp hours. Seems a good price compared to the other stores I visited and both Interstate and Costco have a fine reputation. It seems to meet my “heavy and low cca” requirement.

New batteries from Costco, made by Interstate.

Canadian BJ60 with Arctic Package comes with two batteries. As a 1984 it is still 12 volt, same as nearly every other car on the road. The two batteries are connected in “parallel” meaning that the batteries are connected: positive to positive, negative to negative. By connecting the batteries in this way the voltage remains at 12 but the capacity is roughly doubled, double the CCA, double the reserve capacity.

I put on my gloves and disconnect the batteries, pull them out of the truck.

View of the two batteries, one on each side, with connector cables.

Out with the old, in with the new.

The new and old batteries

Once the batteries are out its an opportunity to inspect and clean the battery tray. They look amazing and new, until I tapped the base with a screwdriver. Uh oh, looks like the rubber coating has detached from the metal, no doubt there is rust underneath:

Oh yeah! Classic Rust in battery tray. Battery acid is nasty stuff! This is right before I peeled that rubber coating off the metal.

Turns out they are both pretty rusted, the one with the leaky battery maybe a little more so. I peel and scrape, then sand. Then clean with degreaser. Even scrape from underneath. Let the water dry and then apply a coat of zinc galvanized repair paint:

Galvanized paint to the battery tray.

Yes, this is not a professional job. I should take the trays out and media blast. That would take days though and I need this done by the weekend.

After an hour for the first coat to dry I pull up any remaining loose rubber coating and apply a second coat.

Coat of zinc galvanized paint.

Later that evening the paint is dry to the touch. I find some awesome black epoxy suspension paint and recoat everything, also sand down and repaint the battery hold downs. Let it all dry overnight.

I also put the new batteries on the charger.

In the morning the epoxy paint still smells toxic but is dry to the touch. I pull out the pail of Fluidfilm and coat the battery trays top and bottom, all over everywhere including the frame where the washed out battery acid had dripped.

Connectors are shiny after buffing

I also take out the sander and buff all the cable connectors in the car (seriously corroded and nasty) so they’re all bright and brassy.

Install the new batteries, recoat the terminals and everything with more Fluidfilm.

Fluidfilm caked onto battery terminals. Prevents corrosion and arcing.

Result:

Holy moly! Since I first laid eyes on this truck the voltage has dropped from 12 down to 7 or 8 when the glow plugs are activated. Even when the engine is running the glow plugs would drop the voltage. Now I turn the key, voltage meter rises to 12. When I hit the glow plugs – The Voltage Doesn’t Move! Man that is some additional capacity. I’d no ideas those batteries were so dead.

Retrofitting H4 Headlights (poor conclusions and wasted effort)

Sealed beam light is a large conical piece of glass, vacuum inside. Heavy. When the bulb goes you replace the entire thing. This is the sort of headlight that the car came with new. Since the glass must withstand a vacuum inside it’s quite thick.

Long ago in Europe they started using a new kind of bulb where the reflector and lens were separate from the bulb. This allows you to replace just the bulb. I don’t know why but the H4 bulbs tend to be brighter than the sealed beam type. A common upgrade for sealed beams is to replace the bulb with an “H4 assembly”, it’s an enclosure that fits the same as a sealed beam.

I did this upgrade on my Porsche and was very impressed with how bright they were (and also liked the European beam pattern which focuses more light on the road).

My left headlight dead, and they’re sort of dim anyway. Wouldn’t it be great to put in some of those bright H4 headlights to replace the stock sealed beams? Bright sealed beam is $15-20. A pair of H4 enclosures and bulbs is $75 and is brighter. Time to upgrade!

I order off Amazon, package arrives in a week. I hurry out after work to install:

7″ H4 Retrofit Kit, includes 2 enclosures, 2 55/60w bulbs, everything you need to install H4 lights on your old vehicle:

I turn on the headlights. It’s the left one that doesn’t work. I take it out only to find…

Oh jeese. These are H4 Headlights, already installed in my car… 🙂

Yeah, you see where it says “H4”?

 

I take it apart, looks fine but the bulb is cloudy. I must just need a new H4 bulb, I don’t need the full retrofit kit!

Tape the box back up, mail it back to Amazon.

Next weekend I stop by OReilly and get a H4 bulb…

H4 Replacement Bulb goes inside the H4 enclosure.

 

Home again I turn on the headlights to see which one is burned out….

Both work fine. I guess it was a loose connection. The light must have started working when I took it apart.

I look more closely. What I thought was “cloudy” was actually a metal piece inside the enclosure:

This isn’t cloudy, it’s a metal shield inside the H4 enclosure.

 

Lesson for the future. Take it apart, clean and inspect before buying a new part.

Oh well, its reasonable to carry a spare bulb. I put it in my tool box:

Tool Box

Brake Lights Don’t Work

Stopped at a light in heavy traffic last week. Guy gets out of his truck, runs up: “Hey! You’re brake lights don’t work!” “Thanks!” I yell back, sincerely.

Dang, wonder why?

Drive truck to san juans the next day. I bring my tester, expecting to spend a few hours to debug and fix.

Beautiful morning I take account of the lighting on the truck. Hmm, quite a bit wrong!

• Parking lights are dead. All of them.
• left reverse light is dead.
• brake lights dead.
• right headlight out.

First I check the fuses, the parking light/dashboard fuse is done. I use the spare and that is “fixed”. I put quotes there because fuses blow for a reason. Probably the bulb sockets are corroded and are arcing, need to rub them down with dielectric grease:

• Dielectric grease is silicon insulating grease. Rub it on the metal to prevent corrosion and electric arcing, the magic of it is that a tight metal connection permits full contact. So non-obvious solution: put an insulator on the connection to improve the connection.

Second, there is a bullshit trailer module still attached to the lighting in the rear. I’ve left it connected for one and only one reason: it has labeled inputs.

• The trailer lighting module takes power from the car to drive lights on a trailer. The trailer has parking lights, brake lights, reverse lights and left/right turn signal lights, so module needs a way to know what to do. The module has 5 “signal” inputs, spliced from the cars wiring. When the car puts power to a bulb the module detects it and powers the corresponding bulb on the trailer. The module is a multi-way switch, where the switching comes from the cars own lighting.
• I call it bullshit because when I first went to drive the truck home from Canada there was a problem with the brake lights. Owner fixed it by cutting a wire to the trailer module, so that module is suspect.

As part of investigating the numerous lighting issues I planned to extract the module from the car, at the same time taking the opportunity to label that rats nest of wiring in the back, made even nicer by the enormous amount of fluid film that I sprayed back there.  First I made labels with paper and clear packing tape. As I clipped each wire from the module I tied the label to the corresponding car wiring with some floral wire. I also took the time to explore the power going to each wire, to verify the labels. Clipping the wires I find that a super ANNOYING wire that trails across the back of the truck is actually a trailer signal wire from the right turn signal, I clip it and stow it in the right wheel well storage compartment.

Module extracted the brakes still didn’t work. I removed the rear light covers and see that the bulbs are all good, except for the left reverse light which is cloudy and burned. Ok, that is easy. I swap the bulb with the parking light bulb and it works fine, so just need another bulb.

Brake lights are still dead though. They are dual filament bulbs, so something else is wrong.

Check the fuse panel and see there is no juice to the brakes at the fuse. That is terrific news, no bad wiring between the dash and the rear brake lights.

Next I trace the brake power line leading from behind the fuse box. It goes to a switch above the brake pedal, and there I see a wire has become detached. It looks like a previous repair soldered the wire to the switch and that solder came free.

It takes some doing to get lighting and soldering iron positioned well, with my head at a funny angle to peer through the dash, but then its 15 seconds with a soldering iron and the wire is attached and the brake lights are at 100%.

Finally I walk around the car with Phillips screwdriver and a bottle of dielectric grease. I remove each bulb, give a quick scrub with a  towel then spooge dielectric grease in there and also on the bulb. Then power up the truck and test all the lights. Everything is perfect now, well except for the headlight and the left reverse light where I need to buy new bulbs.

Yay. That was 90 minutes of time well spent, and the bullshit trailer module is gone too.

Next step:

The headlights are very dim anyway. I could update to better/brighter bulbs but I think I’ll order a Hella H4 upgrade kit.