<VV> Horrid Red Plastic Thingy

[JVHRoberts at aol.com]

It's the part that's poorly designed. It is not considered good practice to  
ONLY have threads into plastic for an electrical connection. Too many plastics 
 relax over time, and the plastic the HRPT is made from is no exception. 
 
I've solved this design deficiency a few different ways, the one that looks  
closest to stock is to use a short piece of threaded rod (I used 10-32), jam 
two  nuts onto it, screw this into the HRPT, then put the wires onto the stud 
you now  have sticking out of the HRPT, and then one more nut (with lockwasher) 
and  voila! end of problem. Forever. If the plastic relaxes, the connection   
stays tight. 
 
In a message dated 3/6/2008 9:50:50 AM Eastern Standard Time,  
airvair at earthlink.net writes:

Smitty,

When it gets old and deteriorated, it needs  maintainence. True, many
plastic compounds (and this terminal block is  possibly one of them) don't
last forever, something I acknowledged. But as  I said, "lack of
maintainence" is the problem, not an inferior  design.

I've had to replace the terminal block on very few of my cars,  and usually
it's been on cars that I had recently aquired. The ones I have  owned for
quite a while simply don't need that kind of maintainence that  often,
because I'm not Mr. Brutewrench. My convertable, which I've had  since '71
has never needed it, nor has my 4door, which I've owned since  '89. I have
no reason to believe that either has anything but the original  terminal
block in it, and they function just fine.

I just wish  people would stop blaming the part and look in the mirror for
the real  culprit.

-Mark


 



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