Changed the oil and filter in the wife's '06 TB.
Earlier this week she informed me that the HVAC blower motor was not working on any speed. It never has worked on speed 5 since we got it, so I figured that the resistor had finally departed this life. I also decided that since I was going to be standing on my head under the passenger side dash anyway, I would go ahead and replace the blower motor. They aren't terrifically expensive, and they are a potential cause of a failed resistor, so I made the call and replaced that as well.
Here's the resistor. It's not good, but I've seen worse:
Between the new resistor and blower motor she now has AC on all 5 speeds!
Something else that needed attention was that the reverse light on the passenger side no workie! 🙁
I bought a new bulb for it about 2 weeks ago, and tried changing it, but that didn't fix it. I did discover that someone else had been in there at some point and did a real hack job on the wiring to that bulb cluster! I took this pic today when I finally had a chance to repair it:
All 5 wires had been cut at some point (I'm guessing to replace the taillight assembly) and then twisted together followed by a wrapping of electrical tape!
Underneath the tape all looked like this:
Eeeewww!!!
I separated all the wires, and used some waterproof butt connectors (the heat shrink type) to reconnect them. Before I installed the connectors I put a 2" length of heat shrink tubing over the wire bundle. I did that to help seal everything up.
The finished job.
I didn't take a picture of the last step, but I gave the whole thing a good wrapping of electrical tape, pretty much covering it from one end of the black heat shrink tubing to the other. It's well sealed and has good strain relief for the wires.
Unfortunately, this did not fix the problem. ☹️
So I'm going to have to dig a bit deeper to find out where the break is. But, hey, I do know one place it's NOT!
The brake light, turn signal, and hazard flasher work, though. It's supposed to be stormy tomorrow, but I'll get to it when I can.