Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Coming Soon II

Manly? Yes

Well electrical any way. One of the things we noticed when we first bought Tilley was that the tail lights were very dim and one lens cover was cracked. A little research showed that the dimness was a common complaint.  Our choices were to replace the lens cover and maybe work out something with the existing bulbs, or go with new LED tail lights. Bolers have always been a little quirky and one of these quirks is that they use School Bus size tail lights. Big monster 7" tail lights. Big monster LED tail lights the size of small dinner plates with 31 LEDs and the ability to leave streaks of blood red light behind Tilley like something out of a TRON re-make as she boots down the midnight road.....

Ahem - for safety's sake we decided to go with new LED tail lights that would maximize safety and would make Tilley safer to tow safely. So off with the old lights (which will be kept in case we ever want to restore to original specs). What were these monsters held on with? Four little 1/4" long screws into the fibre glass shell. That's not going to work on the new lights - the mounting holes are 1/4" wide. So it's back to the hardware store for some nice 1/4" stainless steel bolts. Sadly brass was not available in a long enough length. So it's stainless bolts with big acorn nuts for Tilley - she's beginning to look a little butch.

The new reading lights were a different story. They were designed for household use so I bought all the right mounting plates and other bits required. But a fibre glass trailer cupboard is not 1/2" drywall so a re-think was required. Upon disassembling the Italian brass light bases, I found a Y shaped mounting yoke in solid brass. Perfect - 6 brass screws and washers and we are in business.

Next up - putting it all together.

Coming Soon...

In our October 24, 2010 post "....And the Votes are In!", I mentioned that we had decided on the light fixtures and had ordered them.  Well, just before Christmas they arrived.  They are more beautiful in person than online, and heavier too.

Now that the holidays are over, it is time to get back to work on Tilley. During the next few cold months the goal is to work on the electrical components - incorporate a 12v battery, redo quite a bit of the wiring, add in the lights we had custom made, as well as replace the old and broken tail lights with new LED ones. 

For more details I now pass you to the mechanical/electrical minded half of us - Pat - who will post The Manly Explanation of what we'll be doing next.