Ready for the Night

The car hasn't had a working license plate light, so it hasn't technically been legal to drive it at night.  I'll confess that hasn't stopped me, but I have been eager to remedy the situation.

I had a few hours today that I could spend on the car, so I spent them refurbishing the license plate light.  It was more involved than I thought, since I had to drill out a rivet holding the lamp socket together, and carefully wire brush the parts before putting it back together.  I didn't have a reference for this so I was ad-libbing.  I soldered up new connectors and replaced a section of wire, then fished it through the convoluted path through voids in the trunk lid.  I tied a string to the old wire before I pulled it out, which made it rather easy to fish the new wire back in.  Here are a few victory shots:

 When I was screwing in the light assembly,  the sheet metal screws I used were too long.  I found out the hard way when they bottomed out but the light still wasn't tight.  What would you do?  Like anyone else, my first thought was to tighten just a little harder.  Now the car bears new marks of my impatience:

I replaced the screws with shorter ones and used a couple of washers. Now the light is tight, and I have a very small, subtle reminder to back off when things aren't going quite right.   Overall, I'm OK with that.

#2 Son flew back from college to spend Thanksgiving with the family.  I am delighted to see him, and am looking forward to enjoying his company this week.