Ridin’ Dirty

Jess and I just got back from Ouray, where we attended the 14th annual (our 8th) Ouray Ice Festival. As always, we had a great time, but I’ll leave the details of the festival weekend for Jess to write about. Instead, I’m going to focus on the drive to and fro.

We were planning to leave a bit early on Friday in order to get to Ouray in time to see Raphael Slawinski speak at 8:30. About 2 days earlier, the dashboard lights in Taco, our sturdy but aged auto, had stopped illuminating. Now, you might expect this to be the result of a burned out lightbulb, but all of the interior lights (stereo and heater control backlights included) were similarly dead. This was true in either daytime running lights mode or full-on headlights. Immediately I connected the dots and determined that the flaky dimmer switch that allows you to adjust the intensity of the backlighting had finally given up the ghost. The dashboard lights had been alternating between extremely dim and fully illuminated for a year or two. While it had seemed a bit annoying at the time, we were now wishing for such luxury. Driving without being able to see the speedometer, and more importantly the fuel gauge, was quite an exercise in faith. Since there wasn’t time to address the issue prior to our trip, we didn’t give it much thought.

Fast forward to the drive to Ouray. As we were ascending Monarch Pass, it began to get dark outside. Jess always carries around a small orange LED light that you squeeze and hold to turn it on. Princeton Tec makes them, and the latest generation has a little switch to allow for long-term illumination. I found that you could read the gauges pretty well with the light sitting on the dash just in front of the speedometer. By the time we were leaving Gunnison and heading towards Montrose, we were fully engulfed in darkness. While listening to “Thug Angels” from Wyclef Jean’s album The Ecleftic: 2 Sides II a Book, I saw the flashing lights of the police in the rear-view mirror. It was quite a coincidence, since the song includes police sirens. Jess quickly turned off the hip-hop and I switched off the orange light and turned on the dome light to deflect attention from our obvious automotive issues. When the Colorado Highway Patrol office arrived at the window he informed us that we had no tail lights. Who knew! He checked our brake lights, along with my license, registration, and insurance, and begged us to check all of the fuses when we reached Montrose.

I knew that the fuses weren’t going to be the problem, but we checked them all dutifully anyway, glad not to have been stopped, detained, or ticketed for ridin’ dirty. Of course, now we knew we had no tail lights, so it required a bit more caution when driving, and made us, or at least me, a bit more paranoid anytime someone approached from the rear. (I should also mention that driving without tail lights is a bit shy of the standard of ridin’ dirty, but when am I ever going to be carrying enough drugs, guns, or both to warrant a felony conviction?)

We made it the rest of the way to Ouray without issue, where we promptly got the car stuck in several inches of fresh snow-over-ice, half in and half out of a parking spot along one of the town’s side streets. As we had exactly 3 minutes to make it to the theater and see Raphael the Rockies Rat speak, we abandoned the car to return later and excavate it from the street’s icy grip. Interesting note: Raphael is probably the only Ph.D. phyisicist to have won the Ouray Ice Climbing Competition and have competed in the X-Games and Ice World Comp.

The drive back to Lafayette was pretty snowy with snow-packed roads most of the route. It was a generally slow drive, but the worst part was driving after dusk again without tail lights. We ran the hazard lights most of the way, which was a bit weird, but it saved us from being rear-ended. When I got back to work on Tuesday morning I called the Dodge dealership in Boulder and ordered a new multi-switch unit for the Neon. It took a day to arrive, so I picked up the new switch on Wednesday after a trip to the dentist.

Wednesday night, after work, I planned to install the new switch. Armed with the Chilton repair manual for the 2000-2005 Dodge Neon and blessed with mild temperatures, I set forth on the latest auto repair adventure. According to the manual, there were 3 screws holding the two halves of the plastic cover behind the steering wheel together. The first two were easy enough to find and remove, but the third was impossible to find. I ended up removing a lot of extra plastic from the dashboard in my search for the elusive third screw, but it was nowhere to be found. Eventually I’d removed enough plastic to get a pretty good view of the inside of the steering wheel column cover, and it became apparent that there were indeed only two screws. All that remained was to pull a little harder to separate the plastic catches that held the two halves together.

Once the plastic had yielded access to the switch, removal should have been pretty straightforward; however, the locking keys on the multi-pin connectors that plug into the switch unit were just about impossible to operate. Compounding the issue was the fact that the main connector had become brittle with age, and the space was far too cramped to pull on the connectors effectively. Eventually I unscrewed the mounting hardware that fastened the switch to the column, and that allowed for enough movement to get a better grip on the connectors. With the plugs disconnected, the switch lifted easily from the column, and I took it inside to check it for malfunction.

Using a digital multimeter, it was pretty easy to identify the malfunctioning switch. Indeed, the main light switch was not closing all of the proper connections when moving through the various positions. Since the dealership wouldn’t take the part back after I had installed it on the car, I was quite happy to confirm the problem before using the new part. I disconnected the flasher relay from the unit and the windshield wiper control arm from the right-hand side, transferred them to the new switch assembly, and returned to Taco to begin installing the new unit. I was a bit concerned by the state of the main plug, but it seemed to be sufficiently intact to avoid replacement. There is so little extra cable, I’m sure I would have needed to replace the entire wiring harness. At the very least, I’d have needed to remove it in order to attach a new connector. Neither was an appealing option, so I decided to try using it as it was. The reinstall went pretty easily, and while I had unprecedented access to the steering column, I took the opportunity to re-tighten the yoke for the steering wheel’s tilt mechanism. This problem first appeared last summer before a mountain biking trip to Fruita, when the steering wheel spontaneously began to flop around and wouldn’t stay put. The local repair shop was able to remedy the situation in a few hours by tightening some nuts through the steering wheel opening, but there had remained a little wobble in the mechanism that I wasn’t totally happy with. Now I’m glad to say the whole steering wheel is as sturdy as the day Taco drove off the lot! All I had to do was remove most of the dash assembly.

The new light switch has indeed solved the problem with the dashboard lights and the tail lights. Taco is again a joy to drive, and we hope this car lasts forever. At 230,000 miles and counting, it’s well on its way!