CHIEF OF THE ROAD

 

KING OF THE ROAD - ROGER MILLER

The trailer is full again
Weeds and junk up to the top

I hope I don't meet a cop
I ain't got  a current woff
Ah, but two hours of fiddling then
I got the wires working again
I'm a man who's got a way to fix things
King of the road

Actually my trailer's brand is Road Chief not Road King but, hey, poetic license OK.

Yes, the trailer needs a warrant of fitness - a woff. I re-registered it so it's legal and when applying that sticker I noticed that the WOF had expired. Bummer! I did a quick check over and all seems OK but - the electrics were a bit stuffed.

The rear lights seemed to work on both sides but the brake lights and indicator only worked on the right hand side. I set to fixing this.

Now, my idea of fixing things, learned from my dad is to take a hammer or the biggest spanner in the tool box and hit everything in sight. Sometimes this works. With delicate equipment like auto electrics though I thought that a hammer might be a bit OTT. No problem - I got out a pair of pliers and squeezed and pulled every wire in sight assuming that there were those plug-in/plug-out connectors. I was wrong. All I managed to do by squeezing and pulling was to squash the connectors and to munt the electrics.

A quick check on the result showed that instead of the rear lights working on both sides but the brake lights and indicator only working on the right hand side - now none of the lights worked.

"That's strange" I said to myself. "I'd better do this again".

I abandoned the pliers that I was using - admittedly they were of the industrial size variety and rummaged around in my disordered tool box (I'm not allowed to go near The Old Girl's orderly toolbox) for something that offered a bit more finesse. I found a set of 'needle nose' pliers but these were rusted (some fool had left them out in the rain at some time). I liberally sprayed these with CRC and left them to dry and get better. I searched around in the house and selected a nail manicure set (mine thankfully and not The Old Girl's) and an old antique dentist's pick. I managed to lever open, with the dentist's pick, the connectors that I'd mashed with the big pliers but in the process broke off the point. That done however I was able to use some cuticle scissors from the manicure set to free up the wires inside the connectors. I then made sure that there was good contact between that various wires and the whatchamathingies that they are supposed to connect to and, taking the now reasonably functional needle nosed pliers I squeezed them all again to lock them into place. Job done. OK, not actually job done yet - I still had to make sure that they worked. To be honest I wasn't very optimistic but turned on the ignition, turned on the headlights, put a brick on the brake pedal and nervously went round to the back of the trailer to have a look. Voila! The brake lights were working. The tail lights were working and the left indicator was working. I went back to the car and moved the indicator to the right and went back to have a look. It was working!.

Yippee!

I immediately, while leaving the electrics on, got out some plumbing tape that I'd fixed the leak from the washing machine with and liberally wound it around and around all of the connections which were still working.

When I went inside I casually mentioned to The Old Girl that I'd fixed the problem with the trailer's electrics. 'Good man" she said. I was pleased.

The trailer at this stage was half full of weeds, branches, flax and other garden trimmings. I set about  pulling out more convolvulus, monkey apple, old flax and all sorts of other stuff to totally fill the trailer (overfill actually, I'll have to jump up and down on it to squash it down).

This coming week I'll drive the trailer to the dump and empty it and on the way home call in to VTNZ to get a new WOF.