[VAL] Interior ball joint repair

[Glyn Judson <glynjudson@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

    All,

    This might be way too simple for some of you to read but I thought I'd
share with you my experience repairing my gold anodized cone-shaped interior
reading lights.  
    
    The ball joints on some of them had popped out of their sockets. leaving
the useless fixture hanging by their 12v. wires.

    Some time ago Gerald suggested to me that I peen the ball joints back
into their sockets and that's exactly what I got around to this morning
(thanks Gerald).  

    Here's how I did it for those of you who might have been putting off
this chore.  
    
    1.  Remove the light stem from the base by unscrewing the brass nut and
star washer.

    2.  Clamp a 3" or 3 1/2" 1/4-20 bolt, head down in your bench vise and
slip the light stem (with wire protruding) onto the threaded end of that
bolt.  Make sure that the amount of 1/4" bolt protruding is short of
contacting the ball socket when it's fully seated and that the end of the
stem is resting on the jaws of the vise.

    3.  Get a helper, in my case Marilyn my wife, to gently push the light
cone assembly down enough to fully seat the ball in the stem socket.  Be
sure to line up the slot in the ball with the keying part of the socket.
When you get into it, you'll understand.

    4.  Now here's the neat part that took me a couple of repairs to figure
out. Using a drift pin or in my case a 5" long 5/16" carriage bolt to peen
the stem lips at the four points of the compass, North, South, East and West
in order to hold the ball captive in the socket.  It also allows your bored
wife to get back to whatever she was up to before coming out to the garage.

    5.  It's then a simple matter of peening the rest of the flange enough
to insure that the ball remains permanently captive.

    After I got my groove, each socket repair took no more than about five
minutes each.  

    Later,

    Glyn