Power hour

An early start at work today so I could have an early finish, and it was more or less straight into the garage.  For about four hours!  Basically this project amounted to tapping into the existing wiring in six places.  My plan had been to solder onto the spade connectors, but my first attempt ended in dismal failure, with solder refusing to adhere except inside the connector which then wouldn't fit onto the switch tag.  That meant crimping a new one on anyway, but for the others, as oilyrag had recommended, I had to splice into the wires themselves after all.  Soldering is the easy part, it's cutting back the insulation first that's tricky.

Put back together and with 12 volts applied, goodness me but everything works!  The rearranged layout is great: it's more ergonomic for my long fingers and the old layout had annoyed me for over ten years.  The lighty-up switches just look totally cool, although the irony is that two of them – the blue and white ones that control the new auxiliary power sockets – are redundant: right now, anyway, I don't have anything that needs plugging into them.  But isn't it nice to know that I shan't have to muck around when I do?

By this time I was much too cold, so finishing the job, including preparing the light that will plug into that big six-pronger, can wait for another day, and I escaped inside for a huge cup of tea and some pie.