Ford F-150 Taillights Have A Feature Previously Unknown In All Of Taillightdom

Jalopink ^ | 13 Oct 2021 | Jason Torchinsky

[LizzieD]

Used to know a guy who ran a steel stud operation, turning sheet steel into building studs. One night thieves tried rolling a coil of steel off a flatbed into their pickup...it didn’t go well; the steel coil annihilated the pickup. Don’t think this gadget would’ve helped...

[MrLucky1966]

After a month the dash went dark, covered under warranty, the replacement cost was about a third the cost of the car. He showed us all the receipts.

Yeah, I know, they can have their downside too. I remember my cousin's 1984 Nissan 200SX had a digital dashboard and he also had the warning voice too. Even so, I sort of like the retro-futuristic look of those dashboards. I know a lot of today's cars also have electro-luminescent dashboards, something Imperial and Dodge had tried in some of their 1960 t0 1966 models.

[DUMBGRUNT]

Yes, they do look cool!

That said, I HATE working under a dash!
And not wild about pulling one either.

Then I jumped down the rabbit’s hole for a look at some EL.

Ended up reading about EL repair, fun stuff and I admire the guys with that talent.
http://teamchicago.com/Imperial/imp-el.htm

“The needles on your gauges are supposed to glow too. If some don’t, then look for a really tiny little wire in each gauge that has broken off from the needle. You may reattach it with electrical solder, and a precision solder iron. “

I read that and think “OH CRAP!”, the needle swings on a hairspring!
I have a nice soldering iron but mostly use it on a bench.
And it’s not like I’ve never used a flashlight taped to the dash or extended the glovebox lamp to the dash to drive at night.

This is like doing microsurgery!...

Thanks!
That was a fun trip down the rabbit hole.

[MrLucky1966]

Interesting story there. It is interesting that there were some cars as far back as the 1950’s and 1960’s that were quite advanced for their time.