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-

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.

I installed a Yaesu FT-1900R in my truck yesterday.  It was quite the experience.

The first part was figuring out where the transceiver would go.  After much looking and taking apart half the interior of the truck, I figured I would remove the ashtray (since I don’t smoke, it was a coin tray).  I had to modify the ash tray holder and the radio mount to hold the radio mount from the sides.

Radio Mount in Ashtray Frame

The second part was actually installing the rig.  Getting the antenna wire and the power leads through the firewall sucked – I ultimately pulled the grommet for the radio antenna, cut it a little (from the edge and a + in the center), got the leads through it, got it back in, and caulked the heck out of it with silicone caulk.  Fortunately, with its location, I would have to be driving through a monsoon before it would leak even if I didn’t caulk it.

After all this, I placed the antenna on the hood (its a magnet mount for now, but my next change is going to be a hood mount), and went to a local park to test things out.  I did hear a little bit of engine noise (I’ll have to put a filter in the power line), but I was able to hear quite well and even (somehow) picked up some guys talking about locations in California on 146.5 Mhz… it was S9.

View of the radio installed in my truck