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Post by privatepaddy on Jan 27, 2013 3:47:45 GMT
That's a poor policy, because they will take terrible advantage of you. And they expect a lifetime warranty. Well my family only extends to my Mrs, kids and Grand kids so its not that burdensome.
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Post by the light works on Jan 27, 2013 5:58:33 GMT
all the trailers I use tend to be backed up to things. I just look for the reflection of the light in my mirrors. interestingly, due to the fact that the service body on my truck uses LED lighting, the flasher slows down when the trailer turn signals are working.
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Post by silverdragon on Jan 27, 2013 7:25:14 GMT
But how can you check the brake lights?
Find someone..... or back up to a wall.... Of course its easier in the dark. I have used a brick before as well....
Some wagons these days have a light that comes on if the circuit doesnt take full power... as in your missing a bulb?...
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Post by privatepaddy on Jan 27, 2013 11:25:04 GMT
Firmly apply the Handbrake put the autotrans in park if fitted neutral if a manual. Open the boot/trunk take out the emergency handbrake (a brick lump of wood or chock) place same on the brake pedal so as to activate the brake light sensor/switch, proceed to the rear of the vehicle/ trailer and observe the results.
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Post by The Urban Mythbuster on Jan 27, 2013 13:44:31 GMT
That's a poor policy, because they will take terrible advantage of you. And they expect a lifetime warranty. The problem with helping family is that they always want the work done cheap & quick, when I prefer to do it right...which is rarely cheap or quick. If possible, I try to perform work work relatives when the more troublesome ones are out of the area.
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Post by c64 on Jan 27, 2013 16:17:19 GMT
all the trailers I use tend to be backed up to things. I just look for the reflection of the light in my mirrors. interestingly, due to the fact that the service body on my truck uses LED lighting, the flasher slows down when the trailer turn signals are working. In Europe, you need a special turn signal relay. The classic relay had a heat sensitive switch and a heater. B+ -> heater -> double-throw switch -> bulbs -> B- The turn signal indicator in the dash is connected in parallel to the heater. When you flip the switch, the heater heats up a contact which shorts out the heater and turn signal indicator. The turn signal indicator in the dash turns off and the bulbs in the turn signals receive enough power to glow. Without the heater, the switch cools down and opens again. The resistance of the heater prevents that the bulbs keep glowing, the turn signal indicator in the dash comes on again. The beauty of the system is that the heater current keeps the filaments warm so the bulbs last a lot longer! When the circuit is broken (or all bulbs are out), the indicator in the dash won't come on. When a bulb is missing, the current in the heater is lower so it produces less heat. The residual heat in the switch is lower so the switch turns off faster. The pace of the turn signal is increased. So the turn signals, the indicator and the clicking of the relay is faster than normal when a bulb is missing. The pace of the turn signal also depended on the temperature of the relay. Until the cars interior was warm, the off-time of the turn signals was very short. When you add a trailer, the relay becomes a little bit slower but not by much. You can't know if one bulb (trailer or car) is missing. So if you have a trailer hook and socket installed, you need a special relay for trailers. It has an output which comes on when more power is drawn than the car itself requires and a "trailer turn signal indicator" is flashing alternately to the the ordinary one. When you turn on the hazard lights, both sides of the car are on at the same time which doubles the current. The relay can't tell why so the trailer indicator comes on as well, an easy way to check if your trailer relay is good. Farming tractors may pull two trailers, here you need a very special relay with two trailer indicators. Those turn bad very often failing to tell the amount of trailers correctly. ut you can check it without trailers by turning on the hazard lights, check if both trailer lights flash and then take out one bulb and check if only one trailer light is flashing. Usually you had to buy at least 3 relays to find one which works good with your wiring. Either the pace isn't correct or it fails to report the correct amount of trailers. Farmers often had a briefcase full of relays and traded them since one which won't work properly on your tractor might work on an identical twin of another farmer. Then came the electronic relays in the late 80s which kept their pace temperature independent but they require a ground connection. They use the car's bulbs as part of a voltage divider. The resistance of the bulbs set the charging speed of a capacitor. The relay uses its own timing but switches to fast mode when the charge in the capacitor is too low. They fit into the old sockets but you need to pull a wire to ground their casings. But you can tell if a classic car was retrofitted from the perfect 50:50 duty cycle. But all modern "classic relays" are pure junk, they fail very often and when you find one which works good, it stops being good after just a few months. That's why I have invented an electronic relay which fits into a classic casing, don't need the ground connection (I am proud of this trick) and they mess with their duty cycle temperature dependant. They are not legal but without cracking them open, nobody could tell and they are far more reliable than any retro relay I have ever seen or heard of. Since they are not legal, they are for friends only - but I've made over a hundred or so already since friends have friends, too after all. The casings I have got from a dealer trying to find a classic relay and I had returned relay after relay because they were dead. They were made in China and were missing a critical part! So I had got the whole shipping crate since they had to be dumped anyway and I use the good looking casings which are a good copy of a real classic relays for my electronic versions. Nowadays the car industry uses computers to control the lights and the outputs have current sensors, they also crank up the pace and even report which bulb is broken on the dashboard "mice cinema". Since they are solid state but the clicking is mandatory by law, some have a piezo disc connected in parallel to a bulb circuit (plitch-plop) or they use a sound module which emulates the original relay click over a speaker. I wonder if it wouldn't be cheaper to install a real relay connected in parallel which just does the clicking without switching anything.
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Post by c64 on Jan 27, 2013 16:35:24 GMT
But how can you check the brake lights? Find someone..... or back up to a wall.... Of course its easier in the dark. I have used a brick before as well.... Some wagons these days have a light that comes on if the circuit doesnt take full power... as in your missing a bulb?... And you do that every time you start a trip with your car? E.g. when returning to your car from the supermarket? Well, I change bulbs every 2 years when I push my car through the TÜV inspection so they are very unlikely to fail and if they fail, I pretend I just did the check and change the bulb while the police officer is waiting.
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Post by the light works on Jan 27, 2013 16:37:31 GMT
here it was a much simpler progression. the original mechanical relay used a bimetal thermostat strip to carry the bulb current. the higher the current, the faster it would flash, and if you were missing a bulb, it would not flash. thus when you plugged in a trailer, it would flash faster, and if it had multiple turn signals, it would flash too fast and you would have to buy a trailer rated one - which had an internal timer which would always flash at the same rate.
I'm sure the modern ones are a solid state control - but I have always thought the actual switching was still done by relay.
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Post by c64 on Jan 28, 2013 2:23:48 GMT
I'm sure the modern ones are a solid state control - but I have always thought the actual switching was still done by relay. The electronic relays did have a mechanical relay built in to do the switching work since you need the clicking anyway. The modern cars don't have any relays any more - not like the classic way where you have a box full of relays. Everything is connected to various ECU units located everywhere in the car and those usually don't contain relays but MOS FETs or just tell the device what to do by CAN-Bus. LED bulbs which have a built in resistor to waste power to draw a current like the filaments are called "CAN bus compliant" although they are never connected to the CAN bus, they are connected to an ECU which does the switching but in most cars, they monitor the current.
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Post by srracing on Jan 28, 2013 3:38:35 GMT
On one of my wife's Camrys a brake warning lamp came on. The car was under warranty so I had her take it to the dealer. They tried to charge her almost $300 for the repair. (A brake lamp and 2 hours of labor.). Turns out that when the center brake lamp (on the rear window dash) burns out, it turns on the brake warning lamp. This was not covered in the owners manual and it took the dealer 2 hours to figure it out. I advised them I would pay for the lamp (not covered under warranty) but was NOT going to pay for their diagnosis time. They agreed. (Probably only because we had bought 3 Camrys from them.) I wanted them to understand that due to lack of technical publication on this they should not be charging customers for what SHOULD be a owner able diagnosis and in the owners manual. The only thing it said in the owner manual was if you get a brake warning light, "Drive slowly to the nearest dealer.." The manual did not say, "wait 2 hours for the techs to figure out a bulb is burnt out and then give them $300. "
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Post by silverdragon on Jan 28, 2013 8:00:47 GMT
No, I check before I leave for the supermarket, and my car is backed up to a wall at our house, so I know they are working before I leave home.
Yes I do check lights on a daily basis... dont you?....
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Post by alabastersandman on Feb 11, 2013 6:45:55 GMT
I know a friendly Garage that is happy to check over any wring changes I make..... I do however only have a Domestic Sparks certificate, and not a Vehicle certificate, so to pass any MOT, my work has to be checked at some point by a Vehicle sparkie. If you D-I-Y, its ALWAYS best to get someone else check over your work.... Especially if it is connected to "safety" equipment?... I know I am good, but an I THAT good?... I would rather someone else tell me I done a good job as two pairs of eyes often spot one tiny mistake... Good idea, it doesn't hurt to have it looked at by someone else. I know I have had a bit of experience strapping my daughters car seat in, but when I brought my little boy home from the hospital, I had the nurse double check to make sure I had his car seat secured properly. You can get it right a thousand times, but you might only get one chance to do it wrong.
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Post by silverdragon on Feb 11, 2013 7:32:21 GMT
Car seats, when the nurse went to double check mine for MY kids, she laughed.... She knew I was a Transport driver, and the kids seats had had the usual thin tie-down straps pushed out of the way and replaced by HGV load rated ratchet straps four times the thickness..... I wasnt taking any chances.....
Plus I could never quite work out how those thin straps were supposed to work?... My method was to go over and under the seat back and tie down through the framework of the seats to load retaining eyes in the boot... sort of "Rally style"... They were not moving anywhere, you can trust me on that.
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Post by alabastersandman on Feb 11, 2013 7:49:26 GMT
The funny thing is that if you have a broken light, you get a ticket because you are supposed to check all lights before you start driving. But how can you check the brake lights? So I made a little gadget which plugs right into the trailer outlet. It hotwires the lights and beeps when one of the circuits won't take enough current. If it beeps, how do you know which circuit had failed the test? I didn't bother to add LEDs to the plug so I came up with a real clever way to let you know, it flashes the lights on the problem circuit - guess how often I use this thing? I am so proud of my little invention that I have burried it under a ton of junk in my cellar since I have never bothered to fix that issue. Good idea, just needs tweaking. I don't get why manufacturers haven't addressed this issue. It would be pretty simple to run fiber optics from each light to a panel on the dash. It would be a direct, and bar a breakage of the fiber, foolproof indicator of the problem bulb. I think Cadillac did use this in a couple of models for a couple years. I don't think any of the manufacturers have used it since. Speaking of do-it-yourself electronics... I have bought several different switchers for audio-video equipment. I was never happy with any of them. For some reason I always had issues with them. Things like they wouldn't work the same way twice, I liked to do recordings from several sources to videotape (pre-digital age). I had a lot of issues with one source bleeding through when I didn't want it, and lack of signal when I did want it. I decided to make my own. I bought several stereo three way switches. The switches would be "Off" in the center position, "In" in the up position, and "Out" in the down position. I linked the "In" positions and wired them to the "In" RCA jacks for input components, then all of these connected to the "Out" for recording devices. I played around with this until I had it working like I wanted it to. Then All I needed to do was copy the wiring for the rest of the system. This was 30 some years ago, it still sets in that same state of incompleteness. I think much of the reason for doing it was just to work out how to avoid the downfalls of the units I didn't like. Once I did that, I lost interest. I proved I could make it better and that was enough. Fortunately as I have upgraded equipment, such as an AV receiver, I have been better able to hook up multiple devices without the need for my switcher. I should finish it, just because.
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Post by GTCGreg on Feb 12, 2013 1:30:16 GMT
Speaking of do-it-yourself electronics... I have bought several different switchers for audio-video equipment. I was never happy with any of them. For some reason I always had issues with them. Things like they wouldn't work the same way twice, I liked to do recordings from several sources to videotape (pre-digital age). I had a lot of issues with one source bleeding through when I didn't want it, and lack of signal when I did want it. I decided to make my own. I bought several stereo three way switches. The switches would be "Off" in the center position, "In" in the up position, and "Out" in the down position. I linked the "In" positions and wired them to the "In" RCA jacks for input components, then all of these connected to the "Out" for recording devices. I played around with this until I had it working like I wanted it to. Then All I needed to do was copy the wiring for the rest of the system. This was 30 some years ago, it still sets in that same state of incompleteness. Better finish that project soon. You don't see too many RCA jacks on video equipment anymore and I have no idea how to solder an RCA plug to an HDMI cable EDIT: And with this post, I noticed I became an official "Full Member." Aren't I supposed to receive some type of reward or something for that? ;D
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Post by The Urban Mythbuster on Feb 12, 2013 3:48:19 GMT
*Grabs the "Initiation Paddle"*
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Post by silverdragon on Feb 12, 2013 7:12:05 GMT
Send him to the Librarian...........
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Post by the light works on Feb 12, 2013 14:49:44 GMT
the tire center I have been doing some repairs for has a toolbox with a moderately light duty battery in it, a series of push buttons on the top and a trailer connector in the side. along with an extension cord long enough to reach the back of the trailer. they plug it in and poke the buttons in order to see if the lights associated with the buttons come on.
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Post by The Urban Mythbuster on Mar 4, 2013 13:54:30 GMT
Hoping to get to this project soon.
Last night, I was installing a new dishwasher instead. (Two hours, 9 pm - 11 pm)
I love finding the ghosts of renovations past when I do repairs & upgrades around the house.
Next weekend is installing a new kitchen sink. Upgrading from a single basin to a double basin. Acrylic composite? Guy at the store said it's just about indestructrable. I have two kids, we'll see who wins...
Then again, anything's better than enamel coated cast iron...
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Post by GTCGreg on Mar 4, 2013 14:20:37 GMT
I love finding the ghosts of renovations past when I do repairs & upgrades around the house. Doing plumbing repairs in an old house is always exciting. You may as well just plan on replacing everything between the kitchen sink to the sewage treatment plant.
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