Well, this year I am determined to pass on the first shot and see the look of utter disbelief on Terry's face (that would make my day). I get the inspection criteria from TXDOT website and go over everything myself. The first thing I notice is that the horn doesn't work. Its been so long since I have needed to use it that I'm not surprised to find that it hasn't worked for who knows how long (at least since the last inspection). I check the connections on the horn and they are good, but I clean them anyway. Then I remember some folks saying that the horn button was a place of failure on a regular basis. Sure enough, I pop the button off and there is 35 years of dust, dirt and crap down in there.
I take the ring out and clean everything up, put it back together and Voila...it works...we are horn-y once again.I can hear you saying, "Get to the point, Jeffrey. Two long paragraphs and you still haven't mentioned the freakin' tail lights" OK, OK I'm getting there. So, now that I've got the horn working. I'm going back through the checklist and I find that my brake lights aren't coming on. I turn on the headlights and the tail lights come on, I turn on turn signals and they work just fine but no brake lights.
I open up the trusty Bentley and test the brake light switches on the master cylinder. No dice. According to the Bentley that would mean that both brake light switches will have failed at the same time. Not bloody likely. I check the bulbs just in case both of them have failed at the same time also, yeah right. Nope, both bulbs are fine. So out comes the multimeter and its time to start tracing wires. As you all are probably aware, this sucks rocks big time. Tracing wires is an exercise in patience at best and a royal PITA at worst
The only thing I can think is that when Colin and I yanked the engine out during his visit, we disturbed that rat's nest of wiring that I improvised after my engine fire a couple of years ago. So, testing wires. Power getting to the brake light switches. Check. Power getting to the rear of the bus. Check. Power getting to the bulbs. Check. Now I am officially confused. Off to walk the dogs and clear my head.
When I get back, I pop on to here and the Samba and do a search for anything that might jar a couple of brain cells into place and give me an idea of what's wrong. I find an old post where a guy is talking about hooking up a new radio in his old bus and whenever he applied the brakes the CD player would cut out. Now, after about 5 years I had finally put a radio into Phred and jerry-rigged some speakers so that I could have a tune or two while running around. I would listen occasionally because I like to hear the engine and listen for little sounds before they become big problems. After Colin and I put on the new stock exhaust, the engine was so quiet that I had to retrain my listening, so no radio. Well, I had turned on the radio while I was working so I would have some tunes and I thought what the heck, take a look.
I disconnected the power supply to the radio and what do you know, the brake lights come on. I trace the wire back and it is connected to the same circuit and fuse as the brake lights. Brake lights are on #10 and the ACC fuse from a couple of years earlier was also #10. The PO had used the wrong diagram to cobble in the wiring for the radio. When using the radio and the brake lights together this created too much of a draw for either to work correctly. Hardly noticeable with the radio but the CD player will cut off. Radios from that long ago wouldn't have drawn enough power to be a problem but modern head units draw quite a bit more. So I rewired the radio to the proper ACC fuse (#7) and everything is now groovy.
But Jeffrey, you tested the wiring and there was power getting to the tail lights. What gives? Yes there was power but I had the multimeter on a setting that was too low. Power was getting there but not enough to light up the brake lights. Sort of a trickle of energy instead of the full stream that was necessary. Another lesson learned, use the multimeter in the manner it was designed and you'll get the results you're supposed to.
Off to go get inspected on Monday.
