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Wednesday, August 4, 2010

A Very Bad Day

I successfully reinstalled the A/C controller in the Corvette a couple of days ago--then I noticed the dashboard button that pops the rear hatch had stopped working.  Odd.  Could I have disconnected that?  It's on the far left of the dashboard, far from where I was working.

On the way to my daughter's place, I stopped to gas up--and now the fuel door unlock button inside the console wasn't working.  That, at least, I could easily have failed to reconnect.  There was a spare connector when I was done (you know, like doing a 500 piece jigsaw puzzle and having 10 pieces left), but I rationalized that perhaps this was for an option my car didn't have.  By this point, I had so little gas that I just parked the car in front of my daughter's place, and planned to return in the morning with my tools.  (No, I don't carry a 10mm socket wrench and T8 Torx with me.)

So this morning, I ran down early to disassemble, and reconnect the "spare" connector.  But that didn't solve the problem--and I wasn't sure that I could get to All Things Automotive with the amount of gas that I had.  I was told that there was an emergency release cable under the rear carpet--but everything that I could find seemed more like an electrical connector than a release cable.

I had to reschedule the conference call with attorneys dealing with the Righthaven suit because of not being sure that I was going to be able to drop the car off, and get into work in time for a meeting.

Fortunately, All Things Automotive immediately found the problem--apparently while reconnecting things, the fuse responsible for the remote hatch release and the fuel door release had blown out, and it was a quick fix.  (And now I know where the emergency fuel door release is.)

By itself, this wouldn't be such a big thing.  But on top of this absurd lawsuit, this has been a very bad day in a very bad week.

1 comment:

  1. Sorry you had a bad day. One of the first things to check when something automotive electrical stops working is the fuses. They can pop for the silliest reason, like a very transient contact to ground.

    That's why the service manuals all say that the first thing to do is disconnect the battery ground when doing electrical work. Of course, most people ignore than and mostly it doesn't matter, but sometimes it does.

    It's one of those things you learn the hard way. Or I should say it's one of the things I learned the hard way.

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