{"id":6952,"date":"2014-09-18T19:28:47","date_gmt":"2014-09-18T18:28:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/?p=6952"},"modified":"2014-09-18T19:56:59","modified_gmt":"2014-09-18T18:56:59","slug":"kia-tow-bar-day-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/kia-tow-bar-day-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Kia tow-bar day 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

We had thunderstorms that woke me up just before dawn. Not a lot of rain fortunately, so at least the ground wasn’t made soft and muddy, which would have made installing the tow-bar electrics a rather nasty job. As it was, just as I’d got everything all ready to start work, we had another heavy shower accompanied by a few rumblings of thunder, so it was after mid-day by the time I really got going.<\/p>\n

The first job was to mount the trailer socket and this was easy enough. However, I found that I had to angle it slightly downwards (see pic below) which meant that the cable sleeve passing through the rubber shield into the back of the socket is a high point. I just hope that this doesn’t encourage ingress of water if the socket is in the path of spray while driving over wet roads.<\/p>\n

\"null\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Then it was time to make all of the necessary electrical connections. The main problem with many vehicles, including my old Astra, is finding a convenient route for the bunch of cables from the tow hitch up to each of the rear lights, but I’d already looked on the internet and was encouraged to see that apparently as the rear lamp clusters are accessed, eg for bulb changes, from the outside of the Kia and not from the inside, the cables can all be easily run to either rear light along the inside of the bumper. When I checked by removing the left rear lamp, this is what I saw looking down behind the bumper.<\/p>\n

\"null\"<\/a><\/p>\n

So the videos on the internet were dead right, and from then on it was a piece of cake and I didn’t bother taking any more pictures. I ran an extension from the right rear lamp (driving light and flasher) over to the left where I made all my connections, including an indicator buzzer that I had left over from when I fitted the Astra tow-bar. This tells you that the trailer indicators are working and is required in the UK but not in France. However, I think it’s handy to have, although I found that because it had to be fitted on the outside under the bumper, I couldn’t actually hear it from the driving seat with the engine running. Nevertheless, it’ll mean that I can check the trailer indicators with the engine off without having to get out and physically check them.<\/p>\n

I was worried at one point that the length of harness supplied was going to be too short. In fact, it was just long enough, but a little bit too close for comfort in my book. At the end of the job, I’m pleased to say that when I tested the set up, everything worked exactly as it should do immediately, so that was a relief. The fog lamp didn’t work, but as I recall I had the same problem with the Astra, so I think it may not be connected in the trailer plug. I also found that when I looked underneath it, my trailer had a bit of spare cable coiled up to ‘shorten’ it, and when I released it, it easily reached the power socket on the vehicle. So taken all round, another good day’s work. <\/p>\n

But what about flying? Well, depending on which forecast you believe, either Saturday or Sunday will be the best for flying in the next few days, so I’ll have to wait and see and make my choice accordingly. I’m now well overdue for another flight in 56NE, but in the meantime it’s back to the wood store!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We had thunderstorms that woke me up just before dawn. Not a lot of rain fortunately, so at least the ground wasn’t made soft and muddy, which would have made installing the tow-bar electrics a rather nasty job. As it was, just as I’d got everything all ready to start work, we had another heavy … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6952"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6952\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6967,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6952\/revisions\/6967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}