West Seattle Auto Repair

Overheated, melted electrical connectors in headlights is a failure that is becoming more common in older vehicles in which the headlights have been configured to be ON when the car is ON. There are safety benefits to having the headlights on and convenience benefits to not possibly forgetting to turn the headlights off, so let’s not quibble about the cause of the failure but come up with a workable solution… Sample Headlight Connectorsphotographed by David Winters During a routine bulb replacement, we may discover melted electrical connectors, which require replacement. If we replace melted materials with the same materials, they are likely to melt again. As an improvement to this repair, we have added to our inventory of parts a heavy-duty electrical connector with larger wires that can be soldered in place to replace the original (melting) plastic connector. This robust connector can handle the heat produced when headlights are on constantly ... read more

Clean-Up Crew Holding Oil Clods What do you do for fun? Swedish Automotive owners David Winters & Sandra Wanstall along with their family collect trash off the beach. It starts as a beach walk (with garbage bags just in case) and ends with a trash haul, in this instance almost too heavy to carry. Trash Bags Heavy with Oil Clods The garbage bags in the photo are heavy (at least 70 lbs each) with oil clods picked up along the beaches of southwest Vashon Island. Since the king tides in January many more of these clods have surfaced, remnants of the 1991 600,000-gallon oil spill at Tacoma’s US Oil & Refining. What spilled washed up on the beaches and became these clods, whichrese ... read more