Today I finished putting my interior back together.
Yesterday, early in the morning, I was following a coworker to a place called Solar Shade, where he was dropping his car off to get the windows tinted (on company time
). On the way there, coming to a stop, I looked in my rearview mirror and saw a sport bike that looked like it was going to bash into my rear end. But instead he rolled up to my window and informed me that I had no working brake lights...
Great. Not this again.
It happened to me once before during the spring. After about 5 hours of electrical diagnosis that time, my technician buddy and I decided, with the help of a wiring diagram, that there was only one connector left to inspect. It happened to be on the inside of the driver's side rear interior panel. So, we had to take the seat bottom off, unclip the panel and bend it out of the way so we could get in there to check the connector, Yup, it had burn marks on the ONE wire that controls the brake lights.
So, this is the second time we've done this. This time there was a volcano-looking ooze of dried black plastic coming out of the wire's hole. So what we did was take the wire out of the connector, get some good single-wire connectors and hook them up, and connect and tape that wire separately from the others, with a good, new connection. Problem solved. The solder job we gave it almost ensures it'll never go bad or cause too much resistance in the line. Damn thing.
But hey, at least this 140,000 mile car has a shorter record of electrical problems than
most brand-new cars. Seriously. New cars might be quite and leather soft, but that Mercedes wire connector is just as cheaply made as the ones from Chinese cars. Believe it. My, the difference from 1999 Honda to 2008 Honda. You realize how many new cars Donovan gets in with electrical problems? It's ludicrous.
the carbon stickers added an extra 20bhp.
