One More Task Completed

Another task completed. One or more of the five clearance lights on the front of the truck cab have been leaking for years. A very small leak as in a couple of drops after a heavy rain. It turns out that four of the five lights had cracks in them radiating from the screw holes. I was thinking of swapping them out for a set with LEDs for quite a while. The last time I looked for a set, it was over $100. Now, a quick search on Amazon yielded quite a few options all around $25 with free shipping.

I simply removed the old lights and cut the wires. I decided to solder the wires together and cover the splice with heat shrink tubing. After verifying polarity (current only flows one direction through LEDs), I made all of the connections. To help ensure no leaks, I used some silicone caulk on the roof opening and the screw threaded inserts. The bottom of the new lights have a thick gasket so it should seal pretty well.

They work pretty well and seem to be brighter than the stock incandescent bulbs. I like the smoke grey lenses of these replacements. I can't really fault the bulbs as they are still the ones that originally came with the truck in 2005. In fact, in the last eleven years, I've only had to replace the headlight bulbs once. Hopefully these last as long and the leak stops.

While I had all of the electrical repair stuff out, I decided to finally repair the wiring in the right rear door. I had repaired the drivers rear door about 7 years ago so I knew exactly what the problem was. The rear doors open about 80° so there is a lot of movement in the wire loom from the body to the door. With our cold weather, the insulation gets brittle and cracks resulting in some things not working. In this case, the electric windows worked but the power locks didn't.

I spliced in a 3" length of wire into all of the wires and covered the solder joints with heat shrink tubing. Even the wires that weren't broken I cut and spliced so they would all be the same length. I taped it all into a nice tight bundle and scratched one more project off of the list. (Even though it had never made it onto any "list") Like most tasks, this one took most of the day.

On another note, the suspense was killing me. I had to try some of my sauerkraut. I picked up some bratwurst and cooked them in a mixture of caramelized onions, apples, garlic, sauerkraut, brown sugar, a grainy mustard and a nice beer. In this case Deschutes Black Butte Porter. The sauerkraut turned out pretty good. It could've fermented a bit longer but the flavor was right on. I paired the bratwurst with a nice warm sour potato salad.