Ed Hughes

Report on a couple of nice clean projects.

I got my 2HD festoon 42mm LED bulb today for the map light above the mirror. I've got 44mm 9 festoon LED's in all of the other courtesy lights, providing a bright, low power-consuming interior. They are all the white version, which is pretty cold and sterile as others have noted, but it does look fresher than incandescents. I'm curious as to whether the yellow LED bulbs would offer a warmer tone?

Then, I joined the red tail lens club, and painted my rear lenses with the Testors red tranlucent enamel. I've got them drying in the kitchen, and will post pics of the car tomorrow with them in.

Mike Frye

Ed,

Sounds cool. Can't wait to see the pics. Nothing like checking off a few little projects to keep you going between 'biggies', eh?

Ed Hughes

Yep, the next one (maybe?) is an X-Pipe. 928srus.com just got a new shipment in, and I need to go check them out. It will probably put me over the edge.

davek9

Hi all I wanted to post this sooner but now after reading this thread I felt compelled.

Please be extra careful when removing or replacing the overhead interior lights with the battery connected.
There is 12 volt power on the RED cable and a lot of bare steel all around them!

The one over the rereview mirror and the one in the rear hatch (they rock to turn on/off) and can break at the rivet.

As the plastic ages it gets brittle and if one of the end tabs break as did the one in this photo... you get a real good (bad) +12V to ground short

That is what happened to a friends 84 Euro 928 as we were working on his HVAC blower and aux driving lights.

I smelled something burning, saw smoke coming from the seat belt return hole on the passenger side... and yelled pull the GROUND CABLE.. NOW!

Two hours later we had isolated the fried lighting harness at the fuse panel and drove home from the shop. The following weekend we pulled the passenger rear seat and quarter panel, pulled down part of the head liner, fabed a new wire harness to the light over the rereview mirror (~4 hours).

You can see from the photo(s), when the part broke, the lose contact was able to touch the roof/celling and the Red wire started acting like a toaster filament (glowed red and melted anything it touched). Luckily it never reached the fuse panel.

After this experience I think I am ordering two new light housings over the winter.

Hope this helps and can avoid someone an even bigger melt down!

DaveK9

worf928

Dumb question: but did you check to see that the fuse for the circuit was the correct rating? (As in did the PO stick a 30 AMP fuse in an 8 AMP circuit?)

Ed Hughes

+1 on the question posed by Dave. I actually took my ground off when I put the 9 festoon bulbs in, and had no problems. Today, I put the new HD LED in the overhead, and guess what, I touched metal putting it back in, but it popped the 7.5 amp fuse, with no problem. Sounds like something in your friends car was amiss. That IS the purpose of fusing circuits so that you don't get physical damage to wires or worse yet, a fire.

davek9

Not at all, a great point that I omitted, correct.. check your fuse locations for the proper rating.

As we were not working on the lighting we had not checked it BEFORE the melt down, but did note afterwords that the fuse did not blow, we replaced it for good measure.
As this took place over the summer I do not recall what amp fuse had been installed.
Your correct the book calls for 8amp.