Today: Clearance lights installed.
They say one thing leads to another, and that's never been more true than it has been building Lil' Queeny.
See, originally Lil' Queeny suffered from a sort of inadequacy - her words, not mine - as she came out of the factory with only a small 14" vent over the upper bunk. And then a PO ran her roof into a tree branch! Yikes!
Yup, gash city. You may remember that. So I decided to repair that roof gash by expanding the upper bunk roof opening to install a large 28" square escape hatch. That opening came up to - and placed under its sealing flange - that gash. But 28" is bigger than 14". And to seal that correctly on a rounded roof, I gave her a flat top. And that pulled down the front leading edge of her profile - kind of a custom chop job.
Well - what THAT did was relocate my clearance lights locations - on the front wall, from where holes in the metal siding existed. Another thing I found, was an original installer who didn't measure, but just held lights up wherever, and said to himself, "that looks good".
So back ago I measured, and re-located all clearance lights placement, to both cover those sheet metal holes, and to "appear correctly balanced, one to another". I like balance in my life. I know - I'm weird that way. Swimming upstream my whole life!
But my new 3" round LED clearance lights needed some help in that task, enter homemade bezels.
Now I had planned to make my own, with some thick enough aluminum stock to have substance. And that would have been a lot of work! Cutting each piece in it's rounded-ness and then filing, smoothing, polishing, etc. I actually had them scratched out on a piece of 3/16" flat.
But around Christmas time, while DSIL (dear son-in-law) was over, he mentioned he knew a guy, who knew a guy, who knew a guy, and maybe for a limited amount of IPA we could get these cut-out on a Plasma cutter. I said, "Let's do it!"
He had recently bought thinner than 3/16" sheet for a snowmobile trailer job, and showed me some scrap. I thought it might be a good choice. Thicker than cheap thin stuff that won't retain its flat, but thin enough to form a little bit. Like the metal on Tow-Mater's replacement
LED clearance lights from Vintage Trailer supply - maybe just a bit thicker.
When delivery day arrived (actually I went and picked them up, but it sounded cooler that they were delivered), DSIL was disappointed, so much so that he even sent me a link for how to polish aluminum. Bless his heart! He hasn't read my pages and pages and pages has he? ;)
Yup, lots of splatter. I picked a best side and started sanding. 150 grit, then 220 and finished with steel wool. Lots of work, but a lot less work than if I'd also had to cut them out. He wouldn't even let me buy the beer!
Then I started into a plan. Holding them up at each hole, I decided on mounting screw locations, and drilled the holes.
Here's what we're talking about.
First I twisted wire and then installed crimp connectors.
Modern LED lights are grounded via wire (the white). Old clearance lights ground through the mounting screw. For my situation, I stripped back about an inch of bare wire, and stuffed the ground wire up under the aluminum sheet metal near an area that a mounting screw would pull it in tight. If that isn't secure enough, and the lights flicker or something, I'll address it. But for now, it seemed to work well.
Each location was a custom install, and even a fresh decision on screw placement to best hold the bezel and the light, tight for butyl tape ooze, as well as missing the underlying wires.
Then crimped into circuit.
Bingo!
Oh yeah! That's what I'm talking about baby!
