Tuesday, January 26, 2010

And Then There Were NOT Lights


When we got ready to pull out of the park at Fort Sam Houston we were doing our safety checks which includes checking to make sure that the lights on the tow dolly are working.  Well that morning they weren’t working and it was foggy and we were suppose to be leaving for Corpus Christi.  This is not a good situation.  We checked all fuses and connections and couldn’t find the problem.  Michael finally convinced me that we couldn’t stay at Fort Sam Houston as there wasn’t a spot in the park and we had a paid reservation in Corpus Christi.

So with a really sick feeling in the pit of my stomach we headed out of the park without lights on the trailer.  Funny the police that followed us didn’t stop us, so off we headed into San Antonio traffic.  We made it to Corpus Christi without incident.  We knew we had to fix this problem before we leave Corpus Christi.

This was a true mystery.  The plug on the rig had continuity and all the fuses were working.  There wasn’t any continuity on the plug on the trailer.  However, when we applied 12 volts to the lights directly they came on.  Hmmmmmm…Michael is looking down any available hole on the trailer and checks all the wire.  Finally Michael saw a boat plug inside the tongue of the trailer that wasn’t connected to anything.  I could feel around and was able to pull one end out, but the other end was inside too far and I couldn’t get my fingers in the hole.



Through some ingenious, but dangerous elevation of the dolly I was able to lay under it and with some sponge forceps able to reach deep into the tongue and found the other end.  We connected the plug and voila we had lights!!!


The plug is now taped with rescue tape so that hopefully we won’t have that problem again.  Just another job well done.

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