yesterday, after cleaning house and doing laundry, i hit the garage to get some projects done on the pig. first, i started torching out some 1/4 steel to make a mounting plate for my roller fairlead so it would fit the "universal" mounting bracket.
while that cooled, i pulled the dash apart and figured out why the rear window switch doesn't work. the solder is gone and needs to be resoldered. so i dug through every drawer in my box looking for my little soldering iron...can't find it anywhere. next break out the ancient weller to find it doesn't have enough life left to get hot enough to melt the solder. so, rob one from the pickle for now. presto...rear window works from the dash switch.
when i put the led in the dome light, i never bent the tabs correctly so on hard bumps, it would fall out, so break out some small pliers and bend those correctly...now, dome light no longer works...spend a half an hour figuring out that i have the led in backwards...d'oh.
while the dash was apart, i figured i'd swap the radio with the ford since the pioneer didn't have a user friendly remote nor a jack for my ipod. i'd tried in the past to get it to pull out with the multiple stereo tools and never could, but now i could see how it locked in place. got it out and pulled the sony from the ford, then tested the pioneer in the sony's mounting sleeve...won't lock in place. so, fight with small picks to get the mounting tabs all bent out, slide the sleeve out, try it again...works with the pioneer. now have to bend everything flat, put it back in and rebend the tabs to lock it.
since the pig doesn't have the standard radio colorcoding, i decide to swap the plugs on the 55 first. one wire at a time, i cut and crimp. get it all done and go to plug in the sony only to realize i just crimped the pioneer harness back on cut and crimp all over again.
back to the fairlead bracket...get it all ground down and looking good, all that's left is to drill the mounting bolts. as i'm marking the bolts, i realize the winch sits to close to the front of the plate...there's no way it can be bolted on. all i needed to do was weld the fairlead directly to the "universal" bracket...i don't even need the bracket i just spent a large portion of the day making
while that cooled, i pulled the dash apart and figured out why the rear window switch doesn't work. the solder is gone and needs to be resoldered. so i dug through every drawer in my box looking for my little soldering iron...can't find it anywhere. next break out the ancient weller to find it doesn't have enough life left to get hot enough to melt the solder. so, rob one from the pickle for now. presto...rear window works from the dash switch.
when i put the led in the dome light, i never bent the tabs correctly so on hard bumps, it would fall out, so break out some small pliers and bend those correctly...now, dome light no longer works...spend a half an hour figuring out that i have the led in backwards...d'oh.
while the dash was apart, i figured i'd swap the radio with the ford since the pioneer didn't have a user friendly remote nor a jack for my ipod. i'd tried in the past to get it to pull out with the multiple stereo tools and never could, but now i could see how it locked in place. got it out and pulled the sony from the ford, then tested the pioneer in the sony's mounting sleeve...won't lock in place. so, fight with small picks to get the mounting tabs all bent out, slide the sleeve out, try it again...works with the pioneer. now have to bend everything flat, put it back in and rebend the tabs to lock it.
since the pig doesn't have the standard radio colorcoding, i decide to swap the plugs on the 55 first. one wire at a time, i cut and crimp. get it all done and go to plug in the sony only to realize i just crimped the pioneer harness back on cut and crimp all over again.
back to the fairlead bracket...get it all ground down and looking good, all that's left is to drill the mounting bolts. as i'm marking the bolts, i realize the winch sits to close to the front of the plate...there's no way it can be bolted on. all i needed to do was weld the fairlead directly to the "universal" bracket...i don't even need the bracket i just spent a large portion of the day making
