The Moonshiner's Mischief, Madness & Mayhem

[ShrekDawg]

Someone I know just got a new vehicle and was all excited that the spare was a full size tire and not one of them donut tires. This thing has the spare up underneath in the back like a pickup truck so I decided to look under there fully expected a donut spare. Nope no donut, no spare at all. Just a rusted broken dangling piece of cable. So no spare tire and no winch assembly to hold it up there. That sucked. I eBay'd a used rim that matches the wheels it has. That's what I was waiting on yesterday to be delivered. I also ordered a new matching Tire but it probably won't be here for 3 days. I haven't decided if I want to buy a new winch assembly for $60 or not. I might just throw it in the back because I'm not a fan of the spare tires being underneath the vehicle like that. Our gravel roads and gravel dust builds up terribly on them.

Oh wow that sucksssssss

 

[The Moonshiner]

@ShrekDawg I'm gonna need more enthusiasm out of you.
Better move on to the what I've done that wasn't needed but it's cool. Have the fuel gauge issue and for a minute the temp gauge didn't work. Found a guy on Marketplace that tests and repairs instrument clusters. And for the dash apart and pulled the cluster and took it to him. Figured I better have it tested and make sure it wasn't the gauges before I started jumping into mechanic work. Everything tested fine and worked as it should but he also does LED lighting. Mostly backlighting gauges. I figured what the hell might as well start swapping things to Blue. I think blue will go good with the black theme.
I had him Swap all the needles to Blue. Blue backlighting for the gauges and swap every other light to Blue.
Here's the before and after...

 

[The Moonshiner]

Then I swapped all five dome lights to LED blue...

 

[notabitail]

First thing was that the fuel gauge doesn't work. That's not good but the issue is a connection that's inside the fuel tank. They say it's a common issue with these vehicles that the fuel level sensor fails at the connection. And that sensor is connected to the fuel pump so they say it's best just to replace the whole thing as a unit. That's a 150 bucks or more and involves dropping the gas tank to even get started on replacing it. I think that's something I'm going to have to live with for a while. Sounds too much like work. The bad thing about it is it's sets off the engine light so every now and again I have to use my scanner to make sure there's not another issue that's setting the light off.
It's got the tire sensor crap that tells you when you got a low tire. The light for that is also on and it gives me no readouts for pressure in any of the four tires. New sensors all the way around are about 60 bucks and then 25 per tire to put them in. I might mess with that at a later date when I have to get new tires and the ones it's on it our damn near new now.
When I got it inspected I had a backup light burnout and it has the side blinkers on the bottoms of the mirrors. Those are smoked lenses so you can barely see them when they were on. Neither of those issues affected passing inspection but I replaced both back up lights with some good LED lights. When I leave for work in the mornings and it's dark I back out of my driveway across the road into the neighbors driveway to pull out on the road. I like to see to make sure I'm hitting his driveway and not the ditch or something. Don't need another dent in the back of it. I swapped the blinker lights for LEDs so you can see them really good now. I think I'm going to swap the brake lights out to LED and eventually all the lights.
It has 205,000 miles so I don't know if that's good or bad. I heard it's a lot but then again I've heard it's not for a vehicle that old. My truck is only 2 years older and has 327,000 miles. It's still going strong so...

From what I've heard you should tune the LED lights so they don't blind other drivers.

 

[notabitail]

Then I swapped all five dome lights to LED blue...
View attachment 4104574

That looks like something from the mid 2000s.

 

[The Moonshiner]

From what I've heard you should tune the LED lights so they don't blind other drivers.

I don't think my dome lights or mirror signal lights are going to blind anybody.
My headlights aren't LED but my brights are. I always click them off when I see a car approaching. Backup lights are not going to be an issue and I don't know if brake lights would or not. I just don't want someone hit me from behind from lack of seeing me.

 

[The Moonshiner]

That looks like something from the mid 2000s.

Well it's a 2007 so guess it's fitting.

 

[ShrekDawg]

@ShrekDawg I'm gonna need more enthusiasm out of you.
Better move on to the what I've done that wasn't needed but it's cool. Have the fuel gauge issue and for a minute the temp gauge didn't work. Found a guy on Marketplace that tests and repairs instrument clusters. And for the dash apart and pulled the cluster and took it to him. Figured I better have it tested and make sure it wasn't the gauges before I started jumping into mechanic work. Everything tested fine and worked as it should but he also does LED lighting. Mostly backlighting gauges. I figured what the hell might as well start swapping things to Blue. I think blue will go good with the black theme.
I had him Swap all the needles to Blue. Blue backlighting for the gauges and swap every other light to Blue.
Here's the before and after...
View attachment 4104513

Then I swapped all five dome lights to LED blue...
View attachment 4104574

That is AWESOME!!!!!! Looks like you could have a rave in there lmaoooooo

 

[notabitail]

Well it's a 2007 so guess it's fitting.

That checks out. I have electronics from around that time and blue lights were a big thing.

 

[WallyG74]

I like the blue dash lights. If I could find someone local to do that, I would definitely make the swap.