The search for replacement warning lights for the gear indicators became a black hole....time got consumed, and what should’ve been an easy task, turned into my third attempt at placing lights into those two holes.
All I wanted were two panel lights that would snap into its respective 1/2” hole with two presoldered wires attached...
Because whatever is up under that dash where you need to try and get a nut on the back side of one of those lights does this to your hand.
It was much more bloody while trying to do this the first time.. so I wanted to find a light I could just pop in...
Kinda like this.
.
The damn things are all over the internet,..but try to find one in a freakin auto parts store....
I had to travel all over the place, every damn store carries the exact same inventory. Nobody had what I wanted. I ended up going to a radio shack kinda place that had something that would work. They aren’t exactly as pictured, and they came with their own little trim ring that held the light and gave it a way to snap into a metal hole. I get back home and test the fit....
Just slightly too tight.
I get out the drill,.... install a step bit,...and promptly drill the hole out. TOO DAMN BIG!!!. The light now falls through the hole.
Now I’m in tantrum mode,..it’s 4 o clock, and I’ve spent the past several hours trying to finish these damn lights, and I just made it so I can’t. Now I gotta make a bandaid to fix the fck up that up until 5 minutes before, had me within 10 minutes of being done.
It meant that I had to find something to shim the hole down so a light would fit in the hole.
I find a rubber grommet to fit the hole.....only now, the lights that I spent all day trying to find are too big...remove the little trim ring they came with, and now they’re too small..
The ONLY thing that would fit in the new, now reduced diameter hole...is the same damn thing I had before I ever left the house that morning, albeit needing replaced with one that worked. And since I only had one grommet, I had to go to the AP store for one of each.............Which was only 10 minutes from my house.