Small Fixes While Waiting for the Big Fix

The replacement contactor, precharge resistor and relay are on the UPS truck scheduled for delivery by end of day tomorrow. In the mean time, I've tackled some of the smaller chores that needed to be done to get everything ready for the road.

I installed the tail light assemblies on Saturday. They use a tar-like windshield seal instead of gaskets. The windshield seal comes in a roll with a wax paper separator between the 3/8" thick seal. It's pretty messy, but should be water tight. Once cleaned up, it looks as if it just came from the factory.

I spent most of Sunday afternoon working on the hood release cable, only to realize that it was frayed with a halo of strands making it impossible to snake through behind the carpet. It's replacement has also been ordered and should arrive midweek as well.

The tail lights don't light yet, I'm thinking they need the front running lights and turn signals to complete the circuits. I did solve the mystery of the pop up headlights, though, and probably cured the intermittent nature of the power windows. All it took was crawling into a heroically contorted position on my back under the dashboard. Oh, and finding the correct fuse reference charts online. These look like they came from the owners manual. How did we ever get by without Google? 

Now that I know where to look for the retractable headlight fuse, here's what I found:

It's obviously blown, and the fact that it's an 8 amp fuse in a 16 amp circuit might have something to do with that. Checking the rest of the fuses lead to the realization that they were placed pretty randomly. These ceramic euro fuses are the same as the ones used in the VW Beetle, not surprising given the close ties between VW and Porsche back in the day. I picked up an assortment of the fuses and used most of them.

Some were just questionable. The new one's on the left - what's with the narrow fuse link in the old one?

Others were just scary, but creative. Kind of like putting a penny behind an old fashioned screw-in house fuse (if you're old enough to remember such things), someone improvised this replacement fuse by cutting a piece of wire and splaying the uninsulated wire strands over the fuse ends. It certainly would complete the circuit, but defeat the purpose for the fuse. This one was in the power windows slot which calls for a 16 amp fuse. Easy to see why the power windows only worked occasionally. Now they'll actually go up and down twice in a row and then do it again!

Almost 30 years of wear and tear have taken their toll on a lot of the convenience items. It looks like I'll be replacing all the interior light fixtures - they're all the same - and only one out of four lights up and dimly at that.

Tomorrow, more clean up and Wednesday we'll hope to get this thing on the road!