Imagine my feelings of stupidity when the guy looked at it, saw the cracked cover and broken gasket and had it diagnosed and fixed in under 60 seconds.
I experienced far worse once, and in a field I know pretty darned well.
When I was driving down to the bootheel to pick up the Austin Healey, I was just outside of St. Louis when a couple of drivers pulled up next to me and shouted that the tail lights on the trailer weren't working and they'd nearly run into it.
I pulled off the side of this busy highway, and went through all kinds of motions trying to fix it. I had quite a few tools in the trailer since it's my race trailer, but no circuit tester.
I removed one of the trailer's tail-lights and hooked it up to the battery to make sure it worked. It did. Then I used it as a circuit tester to check the leads at the trailer hookup. Truck wasn't sending juice to the trailer brakelights.
Opened the fuse panel and used my make-shift circuit tester to test all the fuses, and they all tested good. Drat!
I ended up under the truck, testing all the wiring at the back of the truck. Had juice everywhere but the hot wires for the left and right trailer tail-lights.
Put everything back together and pulled off at the next exit and went to an auto parts store. They directed me to a Ford dealership on the other side of town (was tough getting there hauling a trailer, especially without tail lights).
Mechanic came out, double-checked to make sure the lights weren't working, checked the juice at the trailer plug, then opened the hood.
I asked him what he expected to find there, and he pointed at a black plastic cover. @$&#$*&*&!!!!!!! Another fuse box! I felt like an utter moron!
Sure enough, the problem was a pair of blown fuses in a fuse box I didn't know the truck had. Apparently a bunch of the fuses in that one are just for trailer stuff.
I later found the owners manual in the truck (it was in there all along) and sure enough it covered every fuse in that "extra" box.
