Today, I got to drive home without windshield wipers in a rainstorm.  Fortunately, no crashes and no tickets.

The problem has been a lingering problem and even slowed my drive to work last week because I had to stop and shake the connector to the wiper’s pulse board.  After the drive home today, I decided it was time to fix it.  I knew there was content out on the internet and I found this video from Road Rage Customs that basically said to replace the board.  I also knew that there was a resoldering fix.

Lemme think here… drop $21 on a new board or touch it with a soldering iron?

This is the top of the board. Not much here, just some resistors and capacitors.

This is the problem.

BEFORE. This is before I soldered the pin, with the camera lens looking through a loupe. Notice that the solder has pulled away from the pin a little.

This is the cleaned, resoldered and cleaned (again) pin. Looks way better.

I also cleaned the grease off these. I’m not sure what they are for.

After re-installing the board, I tested the wipers and they worked except the driver’s side wiper was a little loose.  I removed the cover and tightened the bolt holding the wiper arm down and tested again.  Works!

-73-

After reading Russ’s comment on last week’s post, I decided that he’s right.  There’s no good reason to keep the FT-7800 in the truck when I’m installing a better, more capable radio.  So it came out.  Below are the gory details, all in pictures.

This is the reason why people like K0BG says on his website (which is the Oracle of Mobile HF) to NOT use cigarrette lighter wires – these things are around 16 gauge. Pulling 20 amps through this for an extended period of time would cause a fire.

There’s a little problem with fitting this thing in…

So if I turn this over and bolt it in upside-down…

It’s in and that’s that!

I zip-tied the mic cable to the foot on the bottom of the rig to keep from pulling too hard on the cable and damaging it. The modular cable ends are a pain to replace because the mic wire bundle is not really made for those (unlike network cable which is simple to terminate).

I also zip-tied my cellphone charger to the mount to keep the plug from pulling out (which I wouldn’t be able to fix while driving, obviously).

With all that said and done, all that remains is dealing with the antenna side of the equation, and removing the one below, which certainly feels like a dummy load… on a stick.

Someone gave this to me. I’m considering giving it back once I have a better alternative.

I had a problem in the truck recently.  The air conditioning went out.  Right as the sultry steamy 90º Cincinnati summer started.

As I started looking into things, the lone (obvious) symptom was that the fuse had blown.  The air conditioner would run if I replaced the fuse, but would go out quickly.

It didn’t help when I let my XYL drive my truck one evening, and she didn’t use the ham radio and had A/C the entire trip (roughly 20 miles).  This was after I read something about a wire being stuck under the intake on a forum.  However, it went out on me the next day.

So I took apart the truck.  It didn’t take long to realize that the intake was smashing the air conditioner compressor clutch wire (in the first pic – with the blue plug going to that thing with a belt on it).  The second pic shows what that smashing really did – it wore the wire insulation down to the point where it could complete a circuit to ground via the air conditioning line (thus causing the fuse to blow).

A/C Compressor Clutch Wire with Intake Removed

Wire Break - Leak to Ground

So now the truck is fixed and I can operate! 73.