New Turn Signal Switch for John’s Truck and a Pump Repair

Wednesday January 27, 2016 Guerneville CA.

We work on John’s truck

John was coming over this morning to finish installing the new signal switch for his Ford trucks turn signals that don’t work.

He arrived around eleven. The first thing we did was made plans how to attack the job as we had a lot of wires that needed to be replaced correctly the first time.

We needed to finish taking the steering column out of the truck. I found a chair and sat and just helped John keep moving in  the right direction as he did all the work.

Keep track of those wires

We had to disassemble this wire connector to get it out of the column once we had the steering column out of the truck.

We had to identify and make a diagram of the wire colors and where each wire went in the connector.

John’s checking the wire colors out on the socket. The column tube is out and we are working on the tailgate of his truck.

Removing the wires from the column

Once the old socket wires were recorded, the old unit could be pulled out of the steering column. We tied a wire onto the wire assemble before pulling it out of the steering column so we could use the wire to pull the new wire assembly into the column. It was good thing we did that as it made reassembly much easier.

Two tries

As it was, the new assembly was a bit different, as we noticed once we had it back together here, so we had to disassemble it again and redo it, but that made it all work out.

Here, John is feeding the new wires into the trucks steering tube.

Getting it all back together

John got the new switch into the column and then we worked on getting the column back in his truck. Ok, I let John do the get down and under part and sat in  my chair and gave advice.

Tidy up some old wires

Once we had it all together I had John cut off some old wires in the back of the truck where the trailer lights hook up. The wires were bare and dangling down and could cause a short, so I had him trim them up and put some sealer on the spot he cut them off so they couldn’t short out.

Next he was to hook up the battery, but I noticed his battery posts needed some work as they were real dirty so I had John clean them up.

Fixing one last problem

We tested the lights and got more then we had originally, but the left rear was everything was dead, so I had John remove the plastic cover on the lights and take the ground wire screw out and clean and replace the screw with a larger one.

That made all the right rear lights work and now it looked like all the turn signal and brake lights were working now, so John was a happy camper and so was I knowing that job was done.

John left and I went in the house for a nap.

After I was all rested up, I tackled another repair.

12V water pump repair

My brother Tom’s 12 volt pump had frozen up and he wanted me to repair it if I could. It turned out he had left it out in the rain and it’s not sealed for that so the steel rusted, so it froze up. This might be the same type pump RV’s use in them to pump their water?

I cleaned up the rusted metal and reassembled it and found a new fuse and gave it a try. It ran, so I think that’s fixed.

Another nap was in order after that and that was my day.

Eagle video

Here’s a short video of the two immature bald headed eagles I was watching yesterday.

Immature bald headed eagles