General Maintenance
There are plenty of times when you want to run a 12-volt automotive piece of equipment outside of a car. You could be developing an electrically run system (eg a water/air intercooler where you want to bench test the pump) or even running a car sound system component (with the price of used AM/FM CD players, taking this route can make for a very cheap workshop sound system!) Or maybe you just want to do some quick tests to confirm that something car electric works - an electric radiator fan for example.
Well, since no one has done a how-to on this subject, I figured I would since we always see this question...The following pictures were taken while we we're working on Grappler's 95 2 door Blazer (www.vettel.org/andy). We completed both his doors and my front passenger side door. (www.pghconsulting.net/teal). All told we averaged 15-20 minutes per door for this repair. The bushings on all 3 doors were cracked and at the beggining of being egged.
This applies to all 95 and up trucks
Tools and Parts required:
Parts:
GM Hazard switch repair Kit part # 15174447
Tools:
Needle Nose Pliers
The hazard Switch kit will come with a small tube of dialectric grease. Smear this on the entire thing before installation.
For a while I had some general colored bulbs in my cluster, you know, the crappy APC ones. The problem with these incandecent bulbs is that over time they fade...(In the case of the blue one, they faded to green, and the reds faded to pink).... So I finally got off my arse and decided to upgrade my cluster to LED's. Yes, I know, some of you say..."Why don't you go with EL Glow gauges?" Well, unfortunatly, we with the 94-97 clusters have a hard time getting the right gauges for that. (Some of you know what I'm talking about). Besides, what I ended up doing was cheaper and looks pretty decent. This how-to also applies to 98+ clusters as well with the exception of the gear indicator. So let us begin...
This to-do was basically done to show where the Zerk fittings are. It's a really easy project. It took me probably 30-45 minutes total, only because I had to find all of the fittings myself. Next time, I can't see it taking more than 5-10 minutes. This would be the easiest to do during an oil change. It's supposed to be done every 3000 miles anyways, and you're already under there to change the oil.
This applies for the sealed beams, but may apply to the later headlights as well.
Please be careful when doing this modification. This is not complicated, but it does take some understanding of what you're doing, as well as some ability to solder.
