Showing posts with label truck. Show all posts
Showing posts with label truck. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 8, 2022

Going LED in my truck

Seems I had to change out my headlights, again... Let's go back in time, March of 2015, I had an encounter with an elk cow, did a bit of damage to the front of my truck. PB managed to get everything put back into place, mostly.

Of course after damage like that, unless you are willing to get things professionally repaired ($$$), things are never really back where they belong, and the fact that I drive on unpaved mountain roads, my truck takes a beating every time I drive around my neighborhood. Things vibrate and bounce much more than they did before on the front end. 


I have had to replace my headlights once or twice a year ever since that encounter, regular halogen lights with their spring filiments, they just keep breaking, going out, specifically the passenger side, the bright light on that side blows out over and over, it will last around 6 months, then bam, it stops working. It did it again a few weeks ago, I decided to go with LED bulbs, something with no moving parts. I expected them to be more expensive than the lights I had been using, which weren't cheap, I tended to buy the more expensive lights because I wanted the brightest lights I could get, the better to see the critters with... 

I was pleasantly surprised to find a set of LED lights that were a 1 to 1 replacement for my lights, no need to make any changes to my current system. And they were significantly less expensive that my previous go-to lights. These are for any vehicle that uses the H13 9008 style bulbs, these fit my 2008 Ford F150 perfectly.

 
I just got to put them in this last week, haven't had any real chances to give them a good night-time test. They do light up, are significantly cooler in color, leaning heavily to the blue side of white. I can tell they are brighter than my former headlights, I can also tell that I need to adjust my lights better. Before it  didn't matter as much, but with these very directional lights, it does matter. Another thing I noticed, there seems to be little difference between the dims and brights, much less that my former lights. I have always thought that on some vehicles, as they were driving toward me with their brights on, once they turned off their brights, it didn't seem to go much dimmer, just a pattern change in the lights. Mine do that now. There is definitely a difference in the light pattern as more LEDs are lit, but little change in the actual brightness, meaning the dims are a lot closer in brightness to the brights.

One thing I definitely need to do next is replace the entire headlight fixtures /assembly. These are the ones I'm looking at, they look nice, I like the dark color, and more importantly , the price is right...
 
The ones I purchased right after the elk encounter have served me well but are showing their age, the lenses are scratched and look yellowed, I know you can polish them, and I have, but they are getting to the point where that isn't helping as much. One of the fixtures has a broken piece bouncing around, that little metal dome that covers the end of the light bulb, and no, it isn't on the same side as the bulb that kept going out. For now, it's functioning well enough, once more money comes in, I'll be replacing all of those parts. 

Hope your day and week are going well!!!




All written text from this blog are copyrighted and owned by Wretha unless otherwise stated. All rights reserved, You may download or copy for your own personal enjoyment, but please do not distribute without written permission. You may post a portion of this (or any) message from this blog on another site as long as you include a link back to this site and the original message.

Wretha,

Thanks for visiting!

Friday, June 1, 2018

One More Radiator

I had an "encounter" about 3 years ago with an elk cow while driving my truck at about 50mph. Fortunately the damage was not severe and I was able to drive home. It did rearrange some of the front end of my truck, my air conditioner condenser was ruined and it pushed my radiator about 4 inches back toward the engine.

My original radiator wasn't damaged to the point where it wouldn't work, PB did some work to corral the things up in front that were no longer properly attached where they should be. The repair lasted quite a while, then last January my radiator finally sprung a leak and had to be replaced.

Now, fast forward to this week, Tuesday to be exact, I was heading to work, I stopped by the mailboxes by the main highway, it's a near 6 mile drive to get that far. I saw a friend there, I hopped out to speak to her and check my mail. About 10 minutes later, as I was about to get back into my truck, I noticed green fluid dripping from under the front end.

That meant only one thing, I wasn't going to work that day. I pulled a U-turn and went straight back to the SkyCastle to get PB. The leak wasn't major so I didn't lose too much fluid, but I definitely wasn't going to be driving around west Texas, especially in the heat we are having right now.

I couple of phone calls later, I had another radiator lined up 2 towns over and scored a ride with a friend to go pick up the parts. I will admit that it was nice to be riding in big truck with air conditioning! Some day I'll fix mine, but for now, I'm just not willing to part with the $$$.

I spent the rest of the day watching about half of my neighborhood working on my truck, it truly was a group effort! I greatly appreciate my neighbors/friends, they really come together when it's time to help. The photo shows 3 of the 4 men who worked to get my new radiator installed.
It was Darryl, Dale and PB, Rex showed up later, everyone had a part in working on the truck (Thanks everyone!!!!). The reason the first and second radiator failed was because of the frame that holds the radiator secure had broken at the bottom (from the original damage caused by the elk), it allowed the radiator(s) to move and rubbed a hole in the bottom. A bit of reconstructive surgery on that part and I don't expect my radiator will move like that again.

It was imperative that my truck be running by the end of the day, I had a "date" with my glasses boss the following morning at 8:30 in the next town over. We had some work to do in a couple of stores and he was coming from Lubbock, I couldn't bow out of it.

Fortunately, I was able to get on the road the following day with nary a drip, the gauge read in the perfect range (it's the upper gauge)

I feel very blessed to have a great hubby (PB) and great friends. I did have to rearrange my jobs for the week, but got everything done with no problems. Now it's time to enjoy the weekend.

All written text from this blog are copyrighted and owned by Wretha unless otherwise stated. All rights reserved, You may download or copy for your own personal enjoyment, but please do not distribute without written permission. You may post a portion of this (or any) message from this blog on another site as long as you include a link back to this site and the original message.

Wretha,

Thanks for visiting!