So far, I've learned that I have no business with a soldering iron, I have no business attempting any DIY mods that involve electronics, and a 2001 Mercury Grand Marquis has no business being on an unimproved road after it's been raining heavily for two days.

I was bored yesterday and itching to do something to my car. I can't paint my lowers this weekend since it's been raining and my friends garage is booked, there were no autocrosses around, and it was too wet and cold outside to do anything outdoorsey. I poked around audizine and found the fog light mod for the B5, the one where the fog lights can be turned on independantly of the headlights/running lights, and decided that I was totally going to do that! My first stop was to the scrap yard one town over to see if I could find a trashed B5 with the control module I needed to modify. I wanted a spare in case I trashed mine. They did, I pulled it myself and they sold it to me for $5 since they had no idea what it was. Hooray! I didn't want to have to spend $90 on a new one if I needed it.
I got home with it and ripped open my glove box and the lower moldings around it to get to the module, and pulled it. Following the instructions, I cut off the pins and started to heat up my soldering iron. At this point, I think it's important to mention that I have absolutely no idea how to solder. Like, I'm so bad, when my dad (an electrical engineer) looks at some of the work I've done he asks "Who the hell did this, a three year old?!" Anyway, I totally wasn't going to let this stop me, and used some stripped network cable wire as the jumper cables. It didn't go so well... I melted through the housing of the module and ended up soldering the wire to one pin and I couldn't make it go to the other. Good thing I did this on the replacement one. I tried again with much better (albeit horrible looking) results, installed it, put my dash back together, and viola! It works! Now I can turn my fog lights (front and rear) on without the headlights being on, and they stay on with the high-beams!

It totally took me about two hours, too... I should have taken a picture of it but I don't want to take my dash apart again.

But now I'm feeling good about myself and my friend (who drives a production class Corolla rally car) comes over to kick my *** in Gran Turismo 4 when we get a call from a mutual friend who seems to have gotten his Grand Marquis stuck in the mud. And he leaked out all his tranny fluid. And he doesn't have traction control. He was going to the groundbreaking of his new house they are building and got stuck on the unimproved road since it's been raining non-stop since thursday. Hooray! We told him to call AAA and have them tow it out, but the road scared off two of their drivers. One in a 2wd F-350 tow truck, and the other in a 4wd F-450 tow truck. Pussies. We drove out there to rescue him and we found that he wasn't actually stuck in the mud. He was in a field that the muddy road lead to, but he didn't want to try and drive out. We filled the tranny (16 qts!) and Tim, my friend w/rally car totally hopped into it, got a pretty good start and hit the mud running. It was a blast watching him powerslide it all over the place, almost hit two trees, and paint the silver-grey Mercury brown. I really don't see why the tow truck drivers wouldnt go in, because he didn't get stuck once. I think his tranny is done for, but damn it was fun! AAA sent the original tow truck driver back and he asked how we got it out. When we told him that they just drove it out he sheepishly said "Oh..." and hooked it up and towed it off.

 

I'd be wilin to bet your solder-joints are sheit because you're too impatient. heating the solder instedda the joint, and/or blowing on it to cool it off.

Be patient, you must. Blow on joint, you must never. Ghey, blowing joints is.

 

They are worse than that, they are laughable. When they break loose and I have to redo them, I'll totally post a pic of it since it's really that bad. I really should have let someone more qualified do it but, meh. I'm awesome and all!

 

I did this mod last year its great. Soldering took me 5 min and getting the glovebox down enough took me like 30 lol. I used a dremel to shave the pins.

 

should of made a vid of you and your buddy powersliding all over the place.

 

ahh dude....i i want to do the mod (and yes im a pretty good solderer) but have no clue really as to which wires and pins to snip/cut and which to solder...you gotta throw some pics up....pretty please

--E

 

Here's the tech article:
http://www.audiworld.com/tech/ext11.shtml

And here are the pics for it:
http://www.audizine.com/forum/showth...=fog+light+mod

Hope you have better luck than I did!