Toyota Highlander Door Panel Lights

I was driving the other night down a dark road and I tried to adjust the mirrors of my Toyota Highlander. I couldn't see the mirror adjust switch, I know more or less where it was but it was so dark I couldn't find the switch. A similar experience happened to me after I got in my car in a parking lot and wanted to lock the doors, I couldn't see the door lock rocker switch and although I knew where it was and I pressed it I wasn't sure if I had locked or unlocked the doors. The Toyota Highlander switches aren't lighted! Today I fixed that by adding a couple of small lights to illuminate the dash area to the left of the Toyota steering column and the drivers side door panel. This little project was a pretty straight forward thing to do and it turned out pretty nice. I only wish that Toyota had added lights to these switches on the base model so I didn't have to do this.

   

The first thing that I did was lift up the switch panel in the drivers door using a guitar pick to pry up the panel. A guitar pick (or a the corner of a credit card) works nicely to lift up car trim because it won't mark of mess up the plastic panels. The switch panel lifts up and unsnaps from the rear.

    

2009 Toyota Highlander Drivers Switch Panel

Once I had the switch panel lifted up I removed it and released the harness from a plastic retainer inside the door. Releasing the harness didn't disconnect it from the switch panel, it just freed up some slack in the wired so I could pull the panel out. The switch panel has a bunch of wires of various gauges going into it and I probed around with my meter to find a couple that had power when the engine was running.

Happy New Year (Merry Christmas too)

I have not posted here in a couple of weeks because I have been really busy with the holidays and working. Those two things have prevented me from doing any experiments, projects or writing new posts. This weekend is of course New Years and Last weekend Christmas so I just want to say Happy To You for both those events. I'll have something new next week, so check back then!

Meanwhile you can always read about some of the other things that I have built by clicking HERE. Enjoy!

 - Otto

GD&T Concentricity, Is It Round?

I want to write about several simple Geometric Dimensioning concepts that I have seen misused, misunderstood and misapplied over the years. It all boils down to things that are supposed to be round. Concentricity, Roundness, Cylindricity, Axis as a Datum and the list goes on and on... Is it round? I think that a lot of folks get these concepts wrong because "round" seems so simple on the surface but when you get into the details it's not that straight forward... or is it? Actually it is pretty simple if you slow down and think about it. The first idea is: Where is the axis of something that is round? Take a look at the picture below and let me know if this makes sense.

 

A Right and Wrong way To Establish A Datum
(Click on the image for a bigger view!)

     

In the top of the picture there is Datum A that is placed incorrectly on the axis of the part. I have seen this done so many times and it makes no sense! In the lower picture the datum is placed on a diameter. Why is it wrong to place the Datum on the axis? In the real world there is no ONE center axis of any part with multiple diameters and there is no 'Datum Axis' in this case. Which axis is the datum? In the lower part of the picture above it is clear which axis is the Datum because the Datum is on a round surface. That surface is creating the Datum axis. Because there are several surfaces on this part there is no way to know which axis is the datum in the top picture. Have a look at the picture below to see what I mean.

Eucalyptus Walking Stick With Epoxy

I spent a lot of time this week doing things other than working on my projects so I'm going to write a brief post about a walking stick that I made not too long ago. This is a stick that my son and I found while walking around a creek near our house. There are a lot of eucalyptus trees in the area and also a lot of sticks naturally. This stick is about an inch in diameter (more or less) and about 4 feet long. The end that eventually became the handle was "crackled" and dark as if it had been used as a poker in a fire.

   

My son and I thought that it looked neat and we walked around with it all day. Since there are so many sticks around the creek area there we figured that taking one home wouldn't be a problem. Once we got it home we sanded it smooth and got all the loose bark off of it.

   

Walking Stick With Epoxy Back Fill

Once we got all the loose stuff off with rough sanding and a stiff wire brush we did a bit more smooth sanding with #200 grit sandpaper. There are a lot of neat little crackled features (and a few big cracks) in the stick that made it a bit rough ever after the sanding. To fill those in we mixed up some grey two part epoxy and smeared it all over the wood, working it into the cracks and leaving it as smooth as we could leave it with gloved hands.

    

Click the jump below to read a little bit more and for a close up picture of the handle end of the stick.