Keyhole Surgery

Established readers will remember that last year, the lovely Jackie and I bought a brand new camper van featuring a bed that disappears into the ceiling using an electric motor.  Obviously the designers got a bit carried away at this point, because they also installed an electrically height-adjustable table.  I suppose they thought that the "touch of a button" concept shouldn't be compromised by having to actually do anything to get things out of the way underneath the majestically descending 4-strapper bed.  Anyway, for some reason they chose to fit a keyswitch to operate the table.  Here is is.

Keyswitch

After a while, this switch got so loose that you had to use two hands to operate it - one to hold the switch, and one to turn the key. 

At this point, any normal person would have just taken it back to the dealer to get it fixed, but obviously being me, I had to have a look first.  The switch is attached to the box it sits on by a screw installed from behind - there's no retaining ring on the front - and the box is, as you can see, it pretty much filled by the water tank. You can see the switch through that hatch, and even just about touch it, but you can't get your hand to it properly. The box has some brackets holding the sides together that you can't get at.  None of it comes apart in any obvious way.

And so, unusually, I did the sensible thing.  I booked it in, and drove it back to Marquis at Lee Mill, and showed the nice service man exactly what the problem was, and left it with them for and hour or two while I had breakfast at Tesco's (Eggs Royale: like Eggs Benedict, but with smoked salmon instead of ham.  Very good!)  Then I had a long discussion with the nice service man about the subtleties of the operation and resetting of the automatic frost valve, which stops the heater freezing up, but also (if you are unwary) dumps all the water underneath when you turn the pump back on.  Then everybody thanked each other for being so nice, and I drove home again.

It wasn't until some weeks later than I noticed that the keyswitch, now firmly attached to the van, no longer actually operated the table.

At this point, any normal person would have got very irate on the phone, demanded immediate special treatment and driven to Lee Mill for another excellent breakfast, but obviously being me, I had to have a look first.  It turned out there were two problems:

1. The nice service man had omitted to reconnect the plug connecting the switch assembly to the harness.
2. There was a loose wire hanging off the switch.

After a bit of yoga-assisted groping around the end of the water tank though the hole for the seat belt (not shown above) , I managed to reconnect the plug.  And by touching the loose wire against the empty terminal on the switch using braille, I was able to prove that reconnecting this wire would make it all work again.  But how to reattach it?  Here's the switch seen from the hatch (you can see the loose black wire too, on the right)

Here's the scene from the top, including my size 11 foot for scale, with the switch under my heel.

You can see that the switch is a long way down the rabbit hole.  You'd need a very long screwdriver.  But there's no chance of holding the wire in place and doing up the screw and seeing what's going on, all at the same time, without some kind of special tool...

I like it when you need a special tool.  Here's what I came up with, shown here grasping a rubber band:

And now in slightly closer-up:

grasping a rubber band

The other thing in the picture is my newly acquired extra-long #2 Pozidrive screwdriver.  One should have one for just such occasions, no?  Meanwhile, here's the business end of the special tool:

business end

And at the other end:

leisure end? pleasure end?

When you pull the wire back, the prongs retract and clamp whatever is between them at the time against the end of the Biro. This design isn't my invention, it's shamelessly stolen from the tiny little clips that Tektronics and others supply with their logic analysers, for connecting to the tiny little legs on tiny little electronic components.  Those ones have a spring inside, but mine has a ratchet clip to hold it shut; the wire loop at the back clips over the head of the carriage bolt.  The carriage bolt and the Biro are stuck together using the hobbyist's favourite tool, the hot glue gun.  In my view, there is only one sort of wire for this kind of work - stainless steel locking wire.  It's used on racing cars and aeroplanes to stop things coming undone, and it's designed to stay where you bent it, whilst being quite strong and a little bit springy.  When I had a microlight, I bought a reel, and it's been extremely useful for all kinds of things ever since.

Anyway, here is the tool in operation, seen from behind the head of the carriage bolt

approaching the command module

OK, so you can't really see anything at all in this picture, but you can take it from me the clamp is successfully holding the wire in place and the screwdriver is in there too, poised for rotation.  

And in this way, I fixed what the nice service man hadn't, and the van is 100% electric again.

There are a few lessons that can be drawn from this episode.  You can never have too many sizes of screwdriver, for example.  Or perhaps: locking wire is just as versatile as everyone's favourite, fencing wire, but on a smaller, more intimate scale.  Or maybe:  if a job's worth doing, it's worth making a special tool for.  But I suspect the real moral of the story is: don't assume those pesky service people at the main dealers will have tested their own repair before they give it back to you.