Diaryland is for car talk now
Monday, May. 08, 2017 - 18:58

Dashboard LEDs installed! They look super rad. It only took me two hours! It only needed to take half an hour but took longer because of stupidness, which I will tell you about in a very tedious manner now. (Count your lucky stars, I'm actually leaving out quite a few of the tediest details.)

I got the dashboard apart fairly easily, got the old bulbs out, but the sockets that came with the new LEDs wouldn't fit. That was problem 1.

Thought I could use the old sockets. Got the LEDs in using the old sockets, reconnected the panel, turned the key, no lights. Problem 2. Repeat. Repeat. Put the old bulbs back in with the old sockets, same thing - no lights. Put LEDs back in. No. Checked fuses. They were fine. It appeared I'd ruined everything.

Decided to go to the parts store and buy new non-LED bulbs. Put the dashboard back together enough to drive and started the engine, backed out of the driveway and parked on the street. The tach worked, but the spedometer appeared to be dead, and maybe the temperature gauge was also dead. Problem 3. Fucking shit, you know? If the spedometer is broken the odometer's not gonna work and how will I put this on the title if I ever decide to sell? Should I lie? Oh god all I wanted was dashboard lights.

Drove around the block. The spedometer worked. It just doesn't work when you're only going 1 mph. Problem 3 solved!

Drove to the parts store. Turned on my blinker at the light. No blinker. Problem 4. No blinker! I probably didn't have headlights either! Completely broke my car. Ugh.

Bought new bulbs. They didn't have sockets. Fine whatever, I had eight. Got out to the car. What's this? Hmm, the headlight switch was turned off. (I always leave my headlights on because they turn off when you turn off the car and there's a short or something in the blinker/headlight arm and it's best not to mess with it at all. Just leave the headlights on and forget about it.)

So I turned the son of a bleeping headlights on. Half the dashboard lit up! LEDs are polarized, so the ones that didn't turn on just needed to be turned 180 degrees. Problem 2 solved!

Looked at my pulled-apart dashboard. The hazard button was disconnected. Maybe if I plugged it back in I'd have blinkers? Yes! Problem 4 solved!

Got home, used a pair of fucking pliers to twist in the stupid new sockets - they fit but they suck so you have to use a lot of force. Problem 1 solved! Blah blah blah eventually everything worked and I got it all put back together and it looks rad.

I bought three extra LEDs that I have no use for now because they don't fit what I thought they'd fit, and I have to return the four non-LED bulbs I bought, and I have four extra sockets lying around now, and my HVAC lights don't match my dashboard lights now and yeah I'm going to replace those next, so.... it looks rad.

CD player still busted though.