Daily Archives: May 25, 2011
Tail lights and Lemon Bread . . .
Today was looking to be another “Fix things that Nick broke” day, so I knew I had to have a big pot of coffee to get the day started.
Then a little later Jan fixed a great lunch of her egg and cheese sandwiches on Miss Terry’s bread. After I did some Internet stuff I went next door to Nick’s to finish up on his entertainment center problems.
My main task was to try and find which of a dozen or so unmarked cables was the one for the roof antenna. I had already traced the cable back to the antenna amplifier, so I shorted the cable end at the amplifier and then started checking all the other cables with an ohmmeter. And, luckily for me, it turned out to be the second cable I checked. So I was able to put the amplifier box back together and finish wiring up the system.
Since we’re located down in a valley, we still couldn’t get a good picture, but we did see enough signal noise to be pretty sure it was now working. The only thing left is to ziptie some of the cables back out of the way, but I’ll do that in the next couple of days. But before stopping I gave Nick an in-service on his DISH DVR. I did find that some of his confusion is understandable.
Compared to my DirecTV system, Nick’s DISH DVR is much harder to use. Things that I can do in one button push take 3 or 4 on Nick’s, but I think I finally got him on the straight and narrow. Or at least as straight and narrow as Nick’s ever gonna get.
Next I wanted to get started on his tail light problem. I noticed coming here from Las Vegas last week that none of the lights on his Explorer toad were working, except for when it started raining. And then only the left side started working.
And as soon as we were out of the rain and things dried up, the lights slowly stopped working again. Based on this alone, my first thought was that the problem had to be in the toad, since only a single wire feeds the tail light signal itself back to the toad. So if the left tail light is working, and if the right one isn’t, it means the problem is in the toad where the signal splits between the right and left lights.
And it also means that there is probably a loose or intermittent connection that can be affected by getting wet.
But before I started to look at the Explorer I wanted to confirm that I was getting signals at the plug coming from the coach. And I found out I had a problem there too.
Like many coaches, Nick’s Winnebago has separate lights for brakes and turn signals. But many toads don’t. They use the same light for both brakes and turn signals.
So to interface the two different systems, you use a converter box, and this converter box requires a 12 volt line to power it. And it looks like there’s a problem with the 12 volts feeding the box, in that it seems to come and go. But that’s about as far as we got today since we ran out of time.
It’s not unusual when troubleshooting a system, any system, to find more than one problem causing the trouble, and if you’re not on the lookout for it, it can give you fits.
And for what it’s worth, it’s also not that unusual to replace a bad part with a new one, and then find that the new part was bad out of the box.
After troubleshooting systems for over 40 years now, it’s a wonder I still have any hair at all.
The reason we had to quit working on the lights is that it was time for dinner. So we headed out about 5:45 to give El Cid, a local Mexican place another try. We had really liked it last year, but our first visit this year was a disappointment.
We hoped the 2nd time was the charm, and in this case everything was much better. Maybe we just hit them on a bad night.
After dinner we drove a couple of miles up the road to check out the RV parking at the Oakhurst Elk’s lodge. They advertise 30 amps and water for $10 a night.
Nick and I both agreed we wouldn’t want to try and get our rigs in there. Especially in the upper section where we might not be able to get them back out.
The whole park is very hilly, with bad roads, and the $10 is not that cheap when at Park of the Sierras, where we are now, we get 50 amp full hookups for $13.75 a night plus electricity.
And if you’re using one of their First Week Half Price coupons, you’re looking at $6.85 a night.
Heading home, I stopped to get gas. Only $3.93 a gallon, and it was $4.09 about 10 days ago. Nice!
Then we had to stop and feed Nick’s cappuccino addiction. He starts to get surly and cranky, or maybe that’s snivelly and whiney in his case, when he doesn’t get his fix.
We’ve created a monster.
Getting back to the rigs we went over to Nick and Terry’s to watch Big Bang Theory and try some of Miss Terry’s lemon dessert bread. I already knew it would be delicious since I smelled it baking earlier in the afternoon when I was working on the lights.
And it was!
Tomorrow we’re taking a logging train ride.
More about that later.
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Thought for the Day:
“A nation that forgets its past has no future.” – Winston Churchill
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