Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

A Glass Half Full

A Glass Half Full

Well, I have two student outlines now that I think will fly and one student that dropped out. I know what a struggle it is to develop a good outline that has the potential for a viable stage play. In order to better feel my student’s pain I’m being subjected to a measure of it myself as I discover that installing a speedometer is much like the hurdles to writing a stage play. Huh? You wonder…what could the two ever have in common.?

First of all I had to find a good source of power. Like a speedo a stage play needs energy. There was something squirrelly with the first wire I chose, so I went to the battery and got a stable source that quit blowing my fuses. Still I couldn’t get the darn thing to work. So I called the Tech-Help line and talked to a technician.

Now I am sure my conversation with this gentleman was analogous to the conversations I have been having with my students. I was caught up in what I was doing and the TECHREP was trying to take what I was telling him and explain what I had to do to correct the situation. It was sort of like we were on different wavelengths which is exactly what was happening with my students. Finally I understood where he was coming from. There were two different diagrams and I was reading from the wrong one and in the process was sending power to the sensor. Instead I should have been sending power to the appliance (Speedometer), attaching a ground to the appliance and hooking the sensor to the appliance signal terminal.

Ah Hah! I thought once that was sorted out and hooked things up exactly as instructed. Now here is the frustrating part. The sensor I located on the transmission and thought was the sending unit for the speedometer was actually a pressure switch for the shift light and the sending unit sensor was at the very back of the transmission almost obscured in grease and oil… both had two wires.

I hear you chuckling….it wasn’t funny….three wasted days trying to hook to the wrong sensor and make the speedometer work. This was pain and similar in many ways to the frustrations my students were facing as they tried to get all the ingredients and rules of thumb into their outlines.

Anyway the way I discovered my dumb-assed mistake was I removed the pressure sensor and took it into the parts store. The owner took one look and told me I was trying to hook to the wrong sensor and showed me what the part should look like. That was when I went back and found the proper sensor. In frustration I came in the house where Linda had a good dinner waiting.

After supper I asked her to come out to the shop and pump the brakes while I bled them. While I was occupied with the Speedo I noticed that the rear break line was leaking and decided to fix that as long as I had the truck on the hoist. I told Linda to get in, slammed the door and sent the truck towards the ceiling. She wasn’t expecting a lift ride and became indignant sending some harsh words in my direction.

Anyway the brakes work now and tomorrow I’ll take another run at the Speedo….oh the silver lining to that whole dark cloud is that the TECHREP said I had probably fried the sending unit by sending power to it…. Since power to a pressure sensor is supposedly no big thing, I saved myself some cash by not destroying the speed sender. Is that a glass half full or what?