Electrical connectors and me have always had a kind of love-hate relationship. I love it when they stay connected, but I hate it when it’s time for me to remove them. Those little plastic finger-shredding nightmares have cost me more wasted time, torn tendons, thrown tools, and swearing than anything else in the garage.
Just the other day, I was trying to remove a simple two-pin connector from the power window switch of a Chrysler Imperial. You’d think this would be the simplest thing on planet Earth: lift up the little tab, wiggle it loose and then just yank it out. It went great on the passenger-side window, and there is absolutely no reason it wouldn’t be the same on the driver’s side as well. Such optimism was my downfall, as I landed in door-card purgatory for the better part of an hour, slowly working my way to the bottom of my repertoire until at last, lubed with my tears, the connector magically slid off as if it had meant to do that the entire time.
It’s not like I don’t have the right tools, either. I’ve got spudgers, prybars, separators, proprietary pinning/depinning tools, and a lifetime of experience, and even with all those advantages I’ll still occasionally run into a headlight motor that just can’t be unplugged without the help of Señor Power Drill. This, I think, is one of those shameful things that separates me from the true masters of car repair: the flat-rate mechanics.
I have tried many times to make a pact with the Devil in order to better understand a way to have a less painful job. You have to scroll my phone for about a minute to get to the bottom of the list of recent calls I’ve made to Sumitomo technical support to offer them my first-born son. If only my bodywork would stay attached so well.
