Needing to address a few issues on Lucy, I pulled her into the garage last night. First on the list was removing the right side rocker trim that had been flopping for a few weeks. Due to rust, the attachment screw at the front had no decent metal to thread into, so it fell out. Since I’m going to weld in a patch in the near future with my new-to-me MIG welder, I decided now was a good time to see how severe the decay was. Not too bad considering the significant patch I had to buy and have welded in the same place on Heidi’s fender.
Second, I needed to fix the unreliable wiper switch. I pulled it out of the dash and disconnected the leads. Since Lucy originally had a one-speed wiper motor, I had put in new wires with separate connectors when I upgraded her to a two-speed motor. This meant I would need to pay attention to which connector went to which lead on the switch. I didn’t. Discovering my error, I re-plugged the connectors to where I remembered them going and tested the switch. Lo-and-behold the switch worked reliably for a dozen or so actuations. I re-installed the switch into the dash and all still worked wonderfully.
Finally, I needed to deal with the intermittent turn signal switch. Thinking it was corrosion in the switch, I pulled it out, cleaned off all the grease, lubricated with bulb grease, reassembled and tested. All appeared to be functioning correctly. I plugged the switch into the harness and ran a test. Right turn worked fine, left did not. Now I needed to find out where the break in the circuit was. With voltmeter in hand, I verified 12 volts at the blinker module, then 12 volts at the back of the connector, then 12 volts at the connector in the trunk, but no lightbulb lighting with everything plugged in. Walked over to the right front socket and gave it a jiggle – light went on. Cleaned the ground contact and it stayed on. Still wouldn’t blink though. Walked around to the back of the car – no light on the right side. Opened the engine lid and jiggled the connector – light went on. Everything worked at that point. Who'd have thought that both right side lights had problems at the same time.
With all the problems supposedly solved, I put the tools away and went inside for the night. This morning as I opened Lucy’s door to drive her to work, I noticed the dome light was not on. Hmm. Then I turned the key and the engine barely rotated. Double hmm and a "ah crap" thrown in for good measure. I wondered if all my fixes resulted in a short that drained the battery. No time to deal with it then. I hooked up the charger and took a different car to work. Tonight I’ll play the put-a-light-inline-with-the-battery-cable game to see if something’s draining the battery. Hopefully, it was just all my testing last night drained the battery.
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