Giving good ole’ Abbie some new parts
A couple of months ago, Christine was following me in her car when I was driving down the road, and she noticed that my brake lights did not work. Well, sometimes they worked, but sometimes not. Naturally, this is a major safety issue, so I decided to check it out.
Of course, if your tail lights are not working, the first place you look is at the tail lights, right? After an hour of so of crawling around in my trunk testing bulbs, tracing and testing wiring, I determined that everything in the back of the car was kosher. Then what was wrong?
After a little more thinking and online research, I realized that the brake lights in the rear are actually controlled through the turn signal switch, located on the steering wheel. See, the turn signals and brake lights share a light bulb, so there must be circuitry that turns off the brake light when that light needs to blink for the turn signal. So great, I’ll just replace the turn signal switch myself. I like electronics, so surely I can figure this out. Plus I’m way too cheap to take it to a mechanic to do it.
Step one is to figure out how to do the repair, along with confirming that this is the correct part to replace. I buy a Haynes repair manual online for cheap and study the procedure when it comes in. Ooh, since that switch is on the steering column, that requires taking off the steering wheel. Oh, and to take off the steering wheel, you also have to disable and take out the airbag. This could be tricky. I should recruit Dave to help me.
The process of this replacement began Monday. We went to AutoZone to buy the switch (~$50) and to borrow a steering wheel puller (AutoZone has a great free Loan-A-Tool program). We go back to start working. Step one is to disconnect some wires and the battery, which is nearly impossible without taking out the wiper fluid container. Instead, we just pull out all of the fuses. Hopefully that works. Step two is to undo two screws, that happen to be Torx. Duh, all car parts use Torx screws. Dave and I make a quick trip to Sears to buy some Torx wrenches and vice-grips (always useful). Sears trip costs $40. We get back and successfully remove the air bag. Dave is worried in the process, so holds the airbag with a pillow and oven mitts (wish I had pictures), but nobody dies. Next step involves taking off the wheel, which is held on by a very large nut. So large, that my ratchet isn’t big enough. Calling it quits for day one.
Tuesday, after getting more tools at Sears (~$30), we get back to work. The socket I bought is the correct size, but my ratchet isn’t. Phooey. Luckily, I also bought a crescent wrench (just in case), and we were able to use that to take off the nut. Wheel comes off after stressing some about bending my borrowed tool. We pried at a retaining clip for a good 20 minutes before tearing it off. We then see this large gear thing. It’s actually a lock ring. One that requires a special tool. One that we don’t have. But AutoZone does, so we got borrow it and get dinner. And that ends day two.
This brings us to today. Today, we needed to buckle down and get this stuff done. And get it done we did. The lock ring came off, and … wah la … there was the switch. Some twisting, pulling, and squeezing later, the old switch was out and the new one in. Now, the test of truth … it works! My brakes work!
The next good question … can we actually put my car back together. As you can see, the car isn’t exactly drivable at this point in time, unless you put a vice grip on the steering column. Anyway, we magically managed to find all of the pieces and put everything back together. Except right at the end, when we were trying to put the airbag back on the steering wheel. There were three wires that I had pulled out, just as I thought I was supposed to. However, one of these wires just didn’t seem to fit anywhere. I tried to jam it in a couple of spaces, and it just didn’t fit correctly. Then, at a breaking point of frustration, we figured it out! It was supposed to fit next to this other connector. We squeezed it all together, reassembled the wheel and we were done! Testing … the brake lights work, the turn signals work, the radio works, everything works! Except … for the horn. This wire that I wasn’t sure where it was supposed to go evidentially didn’t end up in the correct location. I’m leaving this for another day.
But hey, we fixed the problem! And I learned how to take off an airbag, steering wheel, and some other stuff. And I ended up with some new tools. Not a bad deal at all!