Posted by COAINY on Sunday, August 21, 2005 at 4:03PM :
In Reply to: Re: Tail light update posted by Tom Petroff on Sunday, August 21, 2005 at 3:40PM :
TGP Jr.:
I guess he forgot to give me the same warning. Too bad. It could have saved some of Joe's bandwidth. Thanks for letting me know that he's aware of the problem.
My fix was a bit more complicated, as the wafer had shattered, the wire ends were bent, and the springs were inadequate to provide enough pressure against the wafer. The wafer kept fetching up against the sides of the socket, which was out of round. The rear of the socket is open, and there is some sort of tin cap that is supposed to close off the rear of the socket. There is no apparent method of keeping the cap on. No hardware, no friction, no tabs. The wafer spins in the socket, so that the contacts do not reliably line up with the bumps on the bottom of the bulb.
When I make the new socket out of sheet metal, to replace the distorted one, I will Dremel the correct pin spacing.
I have taken wafers from old signals. Then I will enclose the base with a formed end cap, and provide a suitable spring. The wires with tabs will come from a Signal Stat repair kit, and the 6-volt lamps (#1158) will have the correct off-set pins.
The signal cups and lenses are terrific products. Whoever did that part of the reproduction did a good job. It just is in the electrical details where they slacked off a bit.
apb
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