Replacing the Break Light

While Sonya was following me the other day she noticed the drivers side break light on the Fuse acting up.   About half of the LEDs were working and about half were not.  Some were blinking on and off as well.

I did not want to wait for a service appointment, so I called Winnebago to see if they would send a replacement LED bar.   Well I tried calling.  I got sent to voice mail and since I actually like email better, I just sent them an email with all of my pertinent information and what I needed.

A day later, I had a response that the part was in the mail and three days later the part was in my hand.  A LED light bar nicely packed in a tube wrapped with bubblewrap.

When the next nice day came along, and I had some time, I replaced it.   It was not a very hard job.  I am not the greatest with a screwdriver and it only took me 15-20 minutes.  A big chunk of that was trying to figure out how to get the LED bar out of the holder and documenting what I was doing.

The process was fairly straight forward:

• The LED bar was held in with two screws.  One on each end.   I needed a phillips screwdriver and that was pretty straight forward
  

• Then I ran into a problem.  It would not come straight out.  Looking at it closely it needed to be slid over towards the backup light and then tilted out.
• To get the room needed to slide the LED bar over I had to remove the round backup light.   Three more phillips screws removed and an easy tug or two and and the backup light was out
  
• Now I could slide the LED bar over an inch, tilt the end and lift it out
  
• The LED bar is spliced into the wiring so I got some butt splice connectors and the crimp tool.  Another thing to notice is that the LED bar has a red, white and black wire.  The wires coming out of the Fuse were yellow, yellow and white. I really wanted to get this right the first time and I have been to this rodeo before.  I needed to go very slowly.   I cut one wire at a time and spliced on the replacement before I went to the next one.  
  
• The procedure was to cut off the old butt splice on the Fuse side as close to the old connector as possible.
• Strip a 1/4 inch of insulation from the wire coming from the Fuse.  The new LED bar wire was already stripped. 
• Install the new butt splice connector by putting the ends in the splice and crimping down hard on each end (several times)
• Sonya then tested the breaks - Success
• I added some tape (I used silicone rescue tape since I had it handy) to make sure the splices were watertight
  
• Then I put it all back together.  I discovered that the LED bar only goes in one way.  The wires on the back of the bar are designed to fit in a slot in the Fuse.  If the bar is upside down, the slot is off and you can't slide it all of the way over for the screws to align with the holes.
• Once the LED bars were screwed down, I put back in the backup lights. I screwed those three screws back in and  everything was back together.
• I called Sonya again.  I wanted to test one last time.  That way I would be sure nothing broke while I was putting it back together.
• Success
  

If I knew what I was doing this would have been a 10 minute job.   It took me 15-20 minutes since I was learning.

Things I needed:

     Phillips head screwdriver

     Crimp Tool.   (used to crimp, cut and strip the wire)

     3 blue butt splice connectors 

     Waterproof tape.  (this was probably overkill)
     A chair to sit in -  A necessity for the bad back and knees