Al_C
03-31-2019, 04:27 PM
Saturday afternoon got off to a good start. I had all my weather pack connectors installed on the harness ends and on all of the lights. Time to test them. Dim headlights, bright headlights, tail lights, parking lights all work. Not so for turn signals or the brake lights. Let's focus on the brake lights for now, shall we?
They were on. All the time. As you would expect, it was a problem with the brake light switch. Let's start with this photo from the manual:
https://thefactoryfiveforum.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=104810&d=1554066087
That's how I had installed the switch. (when it was easy to get at it, by the way). The issue is that as installed, the plunger wasn't pushed far enough in to break the circuit, so the light was continually illuminated. So I took the switch out and removed the inside locknut. Put it back together and with the switch body pushed all the way to the bracket, the plunger was far enough in to turn the light out.
Now the fun began. With a locknut on either side of the bracket, it's reasonably easy to keep the switch tightly in one place. With just one nut on the pedal side of the bracket, who knows. So, the logical thing seemed to be put both nuts on the pedal side and tighten them down as much as possible. Which I did. I happened to have Magicmarto on the phone and we concluded that it would be good to have something on the threads to keep the nuts from loosening. He suggested nail polish; I decided to use thread locker.
So I get everything just about tight and I hear "snap!" and the brake lights don't work anymore. Terrific. Did I just fry my switch from tightening it too much or putting thread locker on it? Actually, no, the switch tested out fine. I just blew a fuse. I must have shorted something, probably with the pliers when I was trying to tighten it down.
FINALLY, I'm getting to my question. Is my approach the best way to solve this problem (getting the switch closer to the pedal arm) or do you have a preferred method? Everything is apart and sitting on my workbench for now. Nothing is going to happen until I replace the fuse.
As a post script, I did something else that turned out to be less than smart. The tail light was dangling from the frame - with the lens sitting on the floor. I decided to put a towel under the lens to protect it. Bad idea. The heat from the continually illuminated brake light melted the lens. Do any of you who decided to use single rectangular tail lights have a round lens hanging around that you'd like to get rid of?
Once this is done, I can start messing around with turn signals!
They were on. All the time. As you would expect, it was a problem with the brake light switch. Let's start with this photo from the manual:
https://thefactoryfiveforum.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=104810&d=1554066087
That's how I had installed the switch. (when it was easy to get at it, by the way). The issue is that as installed, the plunger wasn't pushed far enough in to break the circuit, so the light was continually illuminated. So I took the switch out and removed the inside locknut. Put it back together and with the switch body pushed all the way to the bracket, the plunger was far enough in to turn the light out.
Now the fun began. With a locknut on either side of the bracket, it's reasonably easy to keep the switch tightly in one place. With just one nut on the pedal side of the bracket, who knows. So, the logical thing seemed to be put both nuts on the pedal side and tighten them down as much as possible. Which I did. I happened to have Magicmarto on the phone and we concluded that it would be good to have something on the threads to keep the nuts from loosening. He suggested nail polish; I decided to use thread locker.
So I get everything just about tight and I hear "snap!" and the brake lights don't work anymore. Terrific. Did I just fry my switch from tightening it too much or putting thread locker on it? Actually, no, the switch tested out fine. I just blew a fuse. I must have shorted something, probably with the pliers when I was trying to tighten it down.
FINALLY, I'm getting to my question. Is my approach the best way to solve this problem (getting the switch closer to the pedal arm) or do you have a preferred method? Everything is apart and sitting on my workbench for now. Nothing is going to happen until I replace the fuse.
As a post script, I did something else that turned out to be less than smart. The tail light was dangling from the frame - with the lens sitting on the floor. I decided to put a towel under the lens to protect it. Bad idea. The heat from the continually illuminated brake light melted the lens. Do any of you who decided to use single rectangular tail lights have a round lens hanging around that you'd like to get rid of?
Once this is done, I can start messing around with turn signals!