Batboat Rebuild: Day 50 November 8, 2009

On this day I started refurbishing the Batboat's trailer turn signals. The wiring was a twisted mess and the lights stopped working while I was using the Batboat to move my things from the old house. Had to leave it parked until I found time to fix them.

Later, somehow the plug got squashed while the boat was in the drive way!

The trailer lights had two sets of cables spliced together at the end with crimps and electrical tape, each with their own plug. It all had to go.

As you can see over time this became a tangled mess hanging under the trailer with too much length.

Ripped it all out but I kept the lights, which were perfectly reusable.

A new set of lights was something over $35. To save a few bucks I rebuilt them. The lights would be rewired with this new harness I found at WalMart for $12+.

There was trouble running the wires through the trailer's main beam. Wouldn't go in more than a few feet before getting stuck. Looking round the yard I found a simple solution. Take a garden hose and run it through the beam out to the other side, stick the wires into the hose a few inches, wrap them together with tape, and pull the house back out; A quick way to thread wires through a hollow beam.

It was getting dark and I continued two days later by taking apart and rewiring the signals.

I got the lights into the house and worked on them with the soldering iron for a few minutes, put them back on the trailer, connected the harness ends, put in new bulbs, and they worked perfectly.

BEFORE

AFTER

I never did anything like this before and probably spent two hours over the two evenings reverse engineering and working on it. They are now as good as new and I had lots of fun.

BEFORE

AFTER

The next job is to replace the trailer coupler. It is bent all to heck! I could never back the Batboat into the water without it veering in strange angles.