Mechanical mysteries of the Universe explained

The service manager stood there with a serious look on his face and told me that only the very senior mechanics did that type of work. They operated in the back of the shop where it was quiet and the rest of the place was told to leave them alone while they performed their magic. He further explained that it took years to learn how to do that kind of work and occasionally, a bright young man with a promising future and very high scores on his SAT exams would be allowed to apprentice with this senior craftsman/swami until his death when the torch would be passed along in high ceremony and 3 days of public mourning approved by the Governor himself. I bought this academy award winning performance hook, line, and sinker and decided I had best leave well enough alone or pony up the bucks and let the “technician” do it for me. I suppose at this point it would be sporting to let you know exactly what flavor of service I’m talking about. Today’s technical mystery of the universe is automotive instrument panels. What’s behind the dashboard, anyway?

Before I tell “the rest of the story” let’s hit a tangent and talk tires for a moment. I got the same “you can’t do that” story from the guy who worked on my motorcycle. Tires, it seemed, were only able to be changed and balanced by the professional who had invested $100,000 in tooling and knew just how to do it. And I was assured that even if I could change the tire, there was no way on God’s green Earth that I was going to be able to balance it. A couple of years ago I paid $800 to get two new tires and have my wheel bearings serviced. This lit a fire under my happy ass to find a way to do it myself and save some money in the process. I’m world renowned as a cheapskate and futhermore I was sick and tired of being held over a barrel by somebody who was really enjoying it. I bought my bike due to it’s reputation as being easy to work on and here we are with the “you can’t do that” from the very guy who recommended it to me. The little grin on his face didn’t help either. Well, in order to not turn this paragraph into chapter 5 of “War and Peace” I did my research, bought the necessary equipment (less than $400) and now I change all my tires myself. It’s already paid for itself and I not only save the labor cost, tires are about $40 less apiece when I buy them direct from a mail order place. So there.

Now, back to instrument panels. I was already determined that going to the dealership and having them tell me to turn around and bend over when the bill got there was out of the question. The instrument panel lights were all out on my son’s car. A check of the fuse panel revealed a burnt 5A fuse so I replaced it with a spare that was in the box cover. Still no soap with the new fuse. I faintly remembered the wife telling me that when this was her car, some of the lights weren’t working and could I look at it. Obviously, that was the point where I had the conversation with the dealership and decided it was easier to just tell her that it would cost more than it was worth (she got a new car shortly afterwards anyway). This time I decided I was going in, come heck or high water. Armed with resolute determination and a Haynes service manual, I proceeded to rip that dashboard apart into 1,000 easy pieces. I laid all the parts out neatly on a towel. The hardware was carefully organized into piles according to size and type. I nearly choked when the directions said to disconnect the speedometer cable at the transaxle but I found that dude and took care of business. When I got the panel down to it’s short and curlies, I had a heck of a time getting it pulled out from it’s lair but after further checks with the service manual and a couple of extra steps, it was in my sweaty palms. I turned it over and there they were, all exposed and vulnerable;  about 20 tiny light bulbs asleep in their ¼ turn housings. Each one was methodically inspected and tested with a voltmeter. I thought it kind of strange that out of all those bulbs, only 1 was bad. I put everything back together with a surgeons precision and care, even taking the effort to use glue to piece together some plastic parts that had broke during the extraction. This car is 17 years old and I expected to have a few casualties so the glue was pretty much factored into the repair as necessary.

After it was all together (6 hours later) I gave it a try and still we had a dark panel. I thought that perhaps there was another fuse that I had missed so I proceeded to check every single one of them, in orderly fashion of course. When I got to the new one that I put in that morning, it was bad. Uh oh. My spare had let me down. I managed to turn a 2 minute job into 6 grueling hours of brain surgery. Nevertheless, I felt vindicated that I had beat the dashboard, the car dealership, and my own fears of the monsters that lurk behind the speedometer cable. I think I’ll drive by there in the morning and thumb my nose at that service manager.