Weekend Part 3: A do it yourself project
| September 16, 2009 | Posted by Melinda under Uncategorized |
Maybe.
In exchange for the morning’s race (see part 2), Tristan spent his afternoon helping me wash and wax the truck and clean my trailer.
Much to Matt’s dismay, my truck is always dirty, and I must admit I’ve never waxed one of my vehicles. In fact, I think the last time I waxed a vehicle I was in the first grade and helping my Mom wax my Dad’s car as a welcome home present when he was in the Navy Reserves.
My trailer is dirtier than my truck. It’s usually organized – I’m too OCD to let that go to far – but to scrub with soap and water? Doesn’t happen.
While Tristan was busy making my vehicles beautiful, I settled down with another project – repairing my trailer plug.
I knew the connections were corroded in the old one, and Matt had discovered (see Part 1) that the corrosion was causing the wires to pull out of the internal connections when I pried the plug out of my truck.
I do have some limited electrical experience (my very first presentation as a 4th grader in 4-H was how to “switch a switch” – how to change out a wall flip electrical switch) and this looked like a project just about my level.
Below are the supplies needed. A new plug, screw drivers, a pad with a pen. Needle nose pliers and a pair of wire cutters from my Dad’s shop completed the ensemble. I wanted a pair of wire strippers, but I couldn’t find a pair so I was going to have to strip the wires with the wire cutters.
Here’s a close up of the old plug. You can see where the internal part is pulled away from the outer casing because of the pressure applied when I pull it out of the socket. There is so much corrosion in the plug, the truck “holds on to” the plug.
Here’s the outer casing removed. You can see that the white wire is not attached – a result of prying the plug out. Earlier on Saturday when Matt opened it up, the black and yellow wires were disconnected.
I took careful digital pictures of the wire arrangement in the plug. It’s VERY important to get it exactly right or your lights don’t work, your brakes don’t work and you may just fry all the wiring…..
Another picture showing the plug from another angle. (I was NOT going to get those wires in the wrong order!)
As another safeguard I also wrote the wire order down on the tablet. Another trick is to snip the wires off of the old plug instead of removing them from the connections, leaving a bit of the colored insulation on the wires. That way you have a physical representation of the colored wires in the old plug.
I have removed the wires. I’m cutting the wires down to the insulation and restripping them so brand new shiny wire goes into the new plug.
Here’s the new plug, fully assembled and ready to go.
Looks pretty easy right? Take off wires from old plug and put on new plug. Make sure the order is correct, or at least the same as the old…….
There’s my weekend story. Looking back, I don’t think I would have done anything different. Changing out a plug is a easy and simple task and is quicker and cheaper to do yourself. I pay others to change my oil, pack bearings etc so I DON’T take short cuts when it comes to the safety and wellbeing of my truck and trailer. However, this was one of those little tasks that just seems silly to pay someone else to do. I’ll be VERY interested to see what the issue was, especially because it worked for 1.5 hours!!!!!! And THEN decided to malfuntion!!!!! I’m very confused.
How do you think Cork got so handy fixing things on the fly? A lot of situations to practice in.
haha, i am SO OCD with my trailer, tack and all horse stuff. My room is in complete dismay, cant really see the floor, only clothes i have folded neatly away and in their own place, is my riding clothes, and SOME of my school clothes 🙂
Several friends looked in my trailer at a ride and laughed when my mom set a brush down, in the middle of the floor, i stared at it before putting in its rightful place 🙂
I do NOT scrub my trailer with soap in water though 🙂
You amze me at how calm and collected you seem to handle these situations.. I guess it was a great learning experience, thanks for sharing.. now I think I will go disassemble something…hahaha!
Really interesting but scary story! I doubt the problem was your wiring, for exactly the reasons you said. Hope when you get back from vacation you update us on it!