Workin on the truck

This one is easy to see, or is it?


9/22/07 Saturday
I’m working on the truck, trying to figure out the electrical problem. I don’t have a clue what I am doing. Might have found a problem but might not. Using the ohmmeter everything on the truck seems to be shorted but that has me confused. It’s hard for me considering I was trained as a crew chief on B-52’s responsible for the whole aircraft including some complex electrical, and then I was chief engineer at a radio station. Granted I wasn’t qualified but I could still do a lot. Now I am unsure of everything as it doesn’t seem to line up with how I think it should. Went online and looked automotive electrical and couldn’t follow everything there written for those who weren’t familiar with the subject. Right now I am tearing the dash off to correct the mistake I made while putting in the CB radio and electric brakes. I drilled a hole through the firewall to run the wires from the engine compartment. I didn’t use a rubber grommet to protect the wires from the sharp edges and they cut through some insulation. But there still seems to be problems. I was hoping to work on the tiller so I could use it to “Mow” the lawn as it’s the best way to deal with the weeds that are our lawn right now. Will work on the truck till it gets fixed, hopefully. It’s already getting hot out.
The type of cactus we dug up on the way home from New Mexico
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I’ve spent five hours working on this. Probably an hour or two of that getting the wires threaded through the firewall hole. Filed down the rough edges as best I could and then looked for something I could wrap the wires with to prevent them from getting cut again. Electrical tape didn’t work. It’s a 3/8 inch hole and four wires are snug in it. I found an old pen that was a tight fit in the hole so I cut it off and drilled out the inside as much as I could. Then I worked to get the four wires through it. Sprayed the wires with silicone but the spray’s solvent started to dissolve the plastic pen. That glued the wires in. I finally had to cut the pen tube length wise with my razor knife and open it up to remove the wires. Tried to drill the firewall hole bigger but couldn’t get the drill in there. Don’t have a clue how I drilled it before. Finally got it all done. Just came in, took a pain pill cause this has killed my back. Will lay down till it relaxes. Then I’ll go see if I can hook the wires all up. Wrote down some of where they go because I know I won’t remember.

Hey Janie, if you read this give us a call. Hope you are doing OK.
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Well, I may or may not have fixed the truck. The alternator is charging now and the strobe light on the back is now working. However the readings of the ohm meter have me confused. They seem to indicate a short still exists and when I hooked up the positive side of the battery it sparked indicating something somewhere was pulling juice. I ran the truck down the road to charge up the battery. We will know more tomorrow. Hope everything is OK. This was an all day affair. Started on it early this morning and just got done at 8:00. One thing for sure is that I did fix something. It was all from the work I did on the truck in Toledo while preparing it for the journey to Texas. I put in the trailer electric brake controls, a CB radio, and installed the wiring for the trailer lights. That was just as confusing for me as working on it today was but I got it done. Just didn’t protect the wires where they went through the firewall. That’s all it takes, just one little oversight. Maybe I will finally get to the tiller tomorrow. We’ll see. It’s Sunday so we may have a chance to fellowship with folks after church. Won’t pass that up. I think I’ll look over the Sunday school lesson and call it a night