"CARS In The Skies" - A Crash Course on ACARS

                  

If you've been following along for a while, you may have noticed that I have some various strange combinations of interests, of which one seem to involve things that deal with radios and things that fly. 

On that subject, I've made posts about listening in on things like weather balloons, gliders and commercial aircraft. It's pretty amazing what sorts of rabbit holes you could go down when you are talking about all the various ways that stuff in the air communicates with stuff on the ground. 

Over Christmas, I came across a couple of SDR dongles in a desk drawer while doing a bit of a reorganization. 

Those who don't know, SDR (or Software Defined Radio) are neat little devices that are small radio receivers that can be plugged into the USB port of a computer. While by itself the SDR is just a small brick that doesn't do a lot by itself, but when plugged into a computer that's loaded up with the appropriate software that controls the SDR, you can literally receive any radio signal that's out there.  

SDR Dongle

So, having found my lost stash of SDR dongles, I started to think of what sort of project I could do - after all there's no sense in just keeping them in the desk drawer. 

I wanted to do something that was a bit unique as a project, something that would take more advantage of the processing power of the computer to decipher what was coming down the wire. So obviously I wanted to focus on something was a bit obscure. 

After some snooping around the web,  I came across this image

Flight Management Computer

If you ever seen any photos of the flight deck of any commercial airliner, you may see this little screen sitting between the pilots. This is the Flight Management Computer and is typically used as a navigation database. This database is used to store route information which the autopilot in turn will use to fly the aircraft to the proper destination. It also reads in data from the aircraft's systems to give a gross weight and determine the best speeds for climb, cruise, descent, holding, approach, etc.  It will also compute the aircrafts position based upon inputs from the IRSs, GPS and radio position updating. On top of all that, this little box also monitors the aircrafts systems to keep any eye out for any potential issues. 

So there is a lot going on with this little gizmo. However, the most important thing, at least from my perspective, is that the FMC also transmits data about what's going on with the airplane down to ground stations through either VHF or HF radio frequencies using the ACARS transmission standard

ACARS, which stands for Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System, is a digital data link standard that allows aircraft to communicate with ground stations, enabling the exchange of information for operational efficiency and flight safety. 

The type of stuff that is communicated through ACARS include:

• Air Traffic Control (ATC) requests for clearances and instructions from air traffic controllers. 
• Communication between an aircraft and its base for operational matters. 
• Communication between an aircraft and its base for administrative purposes. 
• Weather reporting 
• Transmit aircraft health and maintenance information. 

As you can see, there is a lot of stuff that could go into an ACARS transmission. Since I am relatively close to a number of large airports, I figure that I should be able to listen in some action. 

But first I needed to understand what exactly was being transmitted.

From what I can gather, ACARS transmit in a standardized message format that typically, among some other details, contains the following information in the message:

• Date and Time
• Label - which indicates the nature of the message 
• Aircraft Registration Number
• Flight Number
• Message details 

So for example, a typical ACARS message could look something like this:

[#4 (F:130.025 L:-34.5 E:1) 18/02/2025 00:03:54.852 --------------------------------

Mode : 2 Label : H1 Id : 0 Nak

Aircraft reg: N27722 Flight id: UA0630

No: D26K

#DFB9 94.1316CLMBAIR -26.3  -9.50.584 94.59 94.0621CLMBAIR -26.8  -9.

80.584 94.59 94.0926CLMBAIR -27.0 -10.30.585 94.59 94.1331CLMBAIR -27

.5 -10.50.590 94.59 94.0936CLMBAIR -28.0 -10.50.597 94.59 94.13

Obviously it's rather cryptic, but sometimes you do see some stuff in plain text, usually of a pretty mundane nature:

 [#3 (F:131.725 L:-19.1 E:0) 17/02/2025 01:58:21.571 --------------------------------

Mode : 2 Label : 84 Id : 1 Nak

Aircraft reg: C-GDMP Flight id: WS1224

No: M24A

HI

ITS LOOKING CLOSE FOR MI

N REST FOR MY DH TMW.

ANY CHANCE OF CHANGING T

O SHERATON TO IMPROVE MY

TURN AROUND TIME.

The key to figuring out the meaning of the messages can be found in the Label value. It took a bit of digging around but I did manage to source out a list of what those labels meant - which once you know what the labels meant, you are able to roughly decipher the contents of the message.

Since I needed to spend a fair amount of time doing the research on what those labels actually meant, I figured I would be helpful and provide the definitions that I uncovered for the ACARS Message labels for anyone that's interested (a bit of a warning, it's a pretty long list!):

 Label         Message Type

    00 Emergency SitRep, Hijack Situation

    10 British Air ETA, American Airlines 

    11 Inrange Arrival Report

    13 CMU loadsheet uplink

    14 General Aviation Free Text

    15 General Aviation Position Report

    16 General Aviation Weather Request

    17 Position/Weather Report

    18 General aviation weather report

    19 ATIS report

    1C Flight plan request

    1L QF OFF message

    1M Estimated Time of Arrival report

    20 SAS Initialization

    21 SAS Takeoff Data calculation

    23 SAS Loadsheet Uplink

    24 Northwest Airlines Position/Weather

    25 SAS Special Load Notification

    26 SAS SIGMET message

    27 SA Weather Request

    28 Weather Request

    29 SAS Flow Message

    2S Weather Request

    2U Weather

    30 UPS Position Report

    31 Northwest Airlines Weather Report

    36 Northwest Airlines In Range Message

    39 Northwest Airlines free text message

    3F UPS ETA Downlink Message

    3G UPS Free Text Message Format

    3J UPS Downlink Message

    3S UPS Downlink Message

    3U UPS Uplink acknowledgement

    41 SAS Flow Message

    46 Pirep

    47 747-400 Airway Position Downlink

    48 Misc Msgs

    49 Air Canada Status Reports

    4A Air Canada latest new format

    4M Cargo Info

    4P Weather report/forecast

    4Q Air Canada departure format

    4R Air Canada-Specific Message

    4S Weather Request

    4T ETA Report

    4X Air Canada Frequency List

    50 Possible HFDL Msg router

    51 Ground GMT Request/Update

    52 Ground UTC Request/Update

    53 Reserved Spare

    54 Aircrew Voice Contact Request

    57 Alternate Aircrew Position Report

    58 Aircraft Tracking Position Report

    5D ATIS Request

    5P Temp Suspension of ACARS Service 

    5R Aircraft initiated position report

    5U Downlink Weather Request

    5V VDL Switch Advisory

    5Y ETA Revision, Diversion

    5Z Airline designated downlink

    7A Takeoff Thrust Report

    7B Misc Aircrew Initiated Msgs

    80 Position report format, Airline Defined

    81 Airline Defined

    82 Airline Defined

    83 Airline Defined

    84 S.A.S. Free Text Message

    85 Airline Defined

    86 Airline Defined

    87 Airline Defined

    88 Airline Defined

    89 Airline Defined

    8A SAS Out report

    8B SAS Off report

    8C SAS On report

    8D SAS In report

    8E SAS Out/return in report

    8G SAS Take off data calculation request

    8H SAS Loadsheet request/confirmation

    8I SAS Flightplan request

    8J SAS Crewlist request

    8X Uplink ATIS Information

    8Z Avionics unable to process data

    99 Emergency Situation Report

    A0 ATIS Facilities Notification

    A1 Deliver Oceanic Clearance

    A2 Unassigned

    A3 Deliver Departure Clearance

    A4 Acknowledge Departure Clearance

    A5 Request Position Report

    A6 Request ADS Report

    A7 Forward Free Text to Aircraft

    A8 Deliver Departure Slot

    A9 Deliver ATIS Information

    AA ATC Communications

    AB Weather Information for Pilots

    AC Pushback Clearance Uplink

    AD Expected Taxi Clearance

    AE Unassigned

    AF CPC Command Response

    AG Unassigned

    AW ATS Wind Data

    B0 ATS Facility Notification

    B1 Oceanic Clearance Request

    B2 Oceanic Clearance Readback

    B3 Request Departure Clearance

    B4 Acknowledge Departure Clearance

    B5 Provide Position Report

    B6 Provide ADS Report

    B7 Forward Free Text to ADS

    B8 Request Departure Slot

    B9 Request ATIS information

    BA ATC Communications

    BB Weather Information for Pilots

    BC Pushback Clearance Request

    BD Expected Taxi Clearance Request

    BE CPC Log-on/Log-off Request

    BF CPC Wilco

    BG Unassigned

    BW ATS Wind Response

    C# Message to Cockpit Printer #

    C0 Uplink message to all printers

    C1 Uplink message to printer 1

    C2 Uplink message to printer 2

    C3 Uplink message to printer 3

    CA Printer Error

    CB Printer Busy

    CC Printer Local, Printer in Test Mode

    CD Printer out of Paper, Printer No Paper

    CE Printer Buffer Overrun

    CF Printer Reserved Status

    DL Reserved for Data Loading

    D  De-Icing Downlinks

    DI De-Icing Uplinks

    EI Internet Email Message

    E1 Internet Email Message

    E2 Internet

    EL Engine Monitoring Unit Message

    ER Engine Monitoring Unit Message

    F3 Dedicated Transceiver Advisory

    H1 Messages from Avionic System

    H2 Meteorological Report

    H3 Icing Report

    H4 Meteorological Report Config

    HF HF Report

    HX Undelivered Uplink report

    KB Loopback Request/Response

    LB Cabin E-Logbook

    LC Cabin E-Logbook

    LS Technical (Cockpit) E-Logbook

    LT Technical (Cockpit) E-Logbook

    M1 IATA Departure Msg

    M2 IATA Arrival Msg

    M3 IATA Return to Ramp Message

    M4 IATA Return from Airborne Message

    P0 AMS-Protected Downlink Message

    P6 Unassigned

    P7 ATS Message

    P8 AMS-Specific Message

    P9 AOC Message

    PA ATS Message

    PB AMS-Specific Message

    PC AOC Message

    Q0 ACARS Link Test

    Q1 ETA Departure/Arrival Report

    Q2 ETA Report

    Q3 GMT Clock Update

    Q4 Voice Circuit Busy - Reply to 54

    Q5 Unable to process messages

    Q6 Voice-to-ACARS change over

    Q7 Delay message

    Q8 Reserved

    Q9 Reserved

    QA Out/fuel report, Departure Report

    QB Off report

    QC On Report

    QD Arrival Report / In Fuel

    QE Out/fuel destination report

    QF OFF (Off/destination report) / Fuel

    QG Returning to Gate Report

    QH Out Report

    QK Landing report

    QL Arrival Report

    QM Arrival Info Report

    QN Diversion Report

    QP OUT report

    QQ OFF report

    QR ON report

    QS IN report

    QT OUT/Return IN report

    QU Unassigned

    QV Autotune Reject

    QW Unassigned

    QX Airborne system unable to process

    QY Unassigned

    QZ Unassigned

    RA Command Acft terminal to TX data

    RB Response of aircraft terminal to RA

    RE Refuel

    S1 VHF Network Statistics Report

    S2 VHF Performance Report

    S3 LRU Configuration Report

    SA Media Advisory

    SQ Uplink Squitter

    UP Message Acknowledgement

    WP Potable Water Remote Pre-selection

    _D General Response

    _J No info to TX

 

Whew!

So, armed with this knowledge, looking at the 2 messages I used as an example:

• I see that the first message has a label of "H1" which means that it's a message from the aircraft's avionic subsystem - likely a status report on aircraft position and activity - by looking at the message contents I can make out GPS co-ordinates and altitude. 

• The second message, the one with the plain text, had a label of "84" - which indicated that it was a SAS Free Text Message - which makes sense when you look at the message contents

Now that I am armed with this new found knowledge, my next step is to step up my SDR dongle and computer to monitor ACARS frequencies and to capture the messages that are received. 

My ultimate plan is to only parse out the free text messages, since they seem to provide a bit of a behind the scenes peek of the working lives of aircrew, and probably far more interesting than position reports. 

Once I've got a process sorted out on how to capture these messages, I would like to perhaps post them as a live feed somewhere. Now since I believe there are some rules out there that prohibit posting "live" transmissions, I would need to create something that won't post until at least 48 hours after the transmission. 

In my next post I'll work on getting my SDR up and look at starting to gather my messages.  

Tunes With Fire

 

One thing that I've noticed in recent times is that there are a lot of electronic gizmos out there that try to jam a lot of gimmicks into a single device.  A lot of those gimmicks I find to be a bit on the tacky side and really don't add any real improvement on the prime purpose of the device. 

I think a lot of that stems back to my university days when I took a course on human interface design (granted it's a bit of an obscure subject, but I did find pretty fascinating). In broad strokes, the main take away I took from the course was that more the "stuff" you cram into something, the more unusable it becomes for a human to operates it. Back in the day, the prime suspect of this crime was the lowly clock radio that tended to have many, many buttons that control things that aren't related to the function of keeping time and waking you up. Sadly, considering that I still have difficulty in finding the snooze button in the morning, this is still very true today. 

So it's safe to say, I don't tend to pay much attention to the noise that emanates from the electronics section of your typical discount department store, but for some strange reason, this caught my eye. 

Fireplace Bluetooth Speaker

On the surface it's basically just another Bluetooth speaker, but what really caught my attention was the "fireplace" feature - yes, another gimmick, but I was actually always a bit curious on how the fire place effect was accomplished, considering that those electric fireplaces you find in homes are a popular item these days, I always wondered how this effect was done and I always wanted to try and recreate that effect on a future project.

So, I popped it into the cart and brought it home. 

Box Contents

Getting it home and opening up the box I found the usual stuff that you would expect (Aux and USB cables, a small manual and the speaker itself). The speaker appears to be made of the sort of cheap plastic that I would would fully expect from something like this. 

 Flipping over the back showed the specs of the unit

Speaker Specifications

Looking at the back of the speaker, I confirmed the suspected country of origin, along with a good assortment of certification labels. But one thing that did leap out at me was the power output of the speaker.  Five watts is actually pretty impressive for something like this, whether that it is accurate we won't be able to confirm until we get inside. 

We got this far, how does it sound?  How about does the "fire place" look? 

On the whole it's OK - I wasn't keen on it being defaulted at full volume on start up, but it's about what I would have expected for an inexpensive Bluetooth speaker, but that wasn't what I bought the speaker for.  The fire effect is basically what I was looking for and definitely looks like what an electrical fireplace would look like. 

So, let's open the hood and take a look inside. 

Opening the Hood

My goal with this exercise is to not destroy the speaker, but rather just to take a look to see how it was put together. 

Off the bat, I'm actually pretty impressed on the design of this thing.  Normally I would have expected the back to be glued in place, requiring a "cut job" (and wrecking my goal of not destroying the thing), or one of those proprietary screws for which no screw driver exists. Instead the back was secured with some good old Philips screws. 

Philips screws!

Once the screws were removed the back was easily opened to expose its secrets.

The secrets within

The first thing I noticed that the speaker was stamped as a 5 watt speaker, so that's a good start 

5 Watt Speaker

Next I also noticed that the front of the speaker was basically a translucent piece of orange acrylic that was textured, most likely used to help with the flame illusion. 

Orange Acrylic

At the bottom of the speaker, there was an opening in the acrylic with a series of orange LED's that were of the steady burn variety (personally I was kind of expecting them to flicker since I know you can get LED's that simulate a  candle/flame effect).

Orange LEDs

Now what really struck me was that the flame effect was actually accomplished by a fairly simple mechanical means in the form of an electric motor that was geared to turn at a slow speed. The motor itself was connected to a shaft on which had what I can only describe as shredded tinfoil attached to it.

"Shredded Tinfoil"

The flame effect was accomplished when the motor spun the tinfoil, which in turn reflected the light from the LED's casting the light on the back of the acrylic sheet

That basically explained how we get "fire" and I have pretty good reason to assume that this is also the same approach that's used in those home fireplaces. 

With that sorted out, I took a look at the brains of the operation. 

Bluetooth Speaker Circuit

At first glance, it's a pretty basic circuit board and it's got the type of features that I would expect including a SD card slot, power switch and the standard USB and aux ports.   

One thing that really impressed me though was that the wiring connections were connected by sockets on to the circuit board, which actually makes any future repairs or upgrades very easy since it's literally a plug and play solution. Usually in something made at this particular price point, I would have fully expected the wiring to be directly soldered. 

At a high level, it looks like everything is being run by 4 chips. To a get a better sense on how things were put together, I took a look at the individual chips to see what they did. 

Basically each chip handled one key function of the speaker. 

The main chip in the board is the brain that reads and decodes the Bluetooth signal.

Bluetooth Chip

Another chip drives the audio output to the speaker, looking up the specs on this chip indicated that it was rated for 5 watts output - so the speaker is really and truly putting out 5 watts of power, so I was quite pleased to see that the manufacturer was not misleading us.

 

Audio Amplifier Chip

 Of course we need a voltage regulator to make sure nothing bad happens to the various electronic bits. We don't want to release any magic smoke after all. 

Voltage Regulator

And of course we want to make sure that we can keep the lithium battery properly charged to make sure that the fire in the speaker stays fake.

Lithium Battery Charger Chip

So it is really a pretty simple circuit which makes sense. but like I said earlier I did notice that there are some really nice touches in the overall design that would make this speaker pretty easy to hack into something else.  

But for now I carefully put things back together and played some tunes. 

With that, a purely impulse buy became a learning experience wrapped up in something that I could modify into something different if I ever get tired of listening to tunes. 

By the way - the song I played is "Scarlet Fire" by Otis McDonald  - Thanks to DankPods to putting him on my radar (though I didn't blow up my speaker like he typically does!)    

Engraving Glass With A Diode Laser

 

Engraving a Mug

As I may have mentioned in the past, I've gotten fairly heavy into the laser engraving world which has morphed into a nice little side hustle for me

As with any business, the key to success is to keep growing your product lines, giving your customers a wide variety of products to choose from. 

I've had some pretty good success in providing a wide selection of wall hangings and custom signs with my ORTUR engraver, but I was starting to feel a bit pigeon holed of being a "sign guy" and was starting to feel a little creatively limited.  

About a year ago I came across a Facebook Market place ad for another ORTUR engraver that was available locally and at a reasonable price. Since I was wanting to have another engraver to potentially increase my productivity I decided to jump on it. 

Once I finally collected my new acquisition, I noticed that I also acquired a few other goodies as part of the deal, including a  rotary roller accessory which gave me the ability to engrave cylindrical objects. 

This opened a whole new world of opportunity for me to explore. I played with my new tool, trying it out on round wooden items like pieces of dowels and rejects from my lathe until I got to the point that I was pretty comfortable on how to properly engrave round things. 

Excited about my new found skill, I wanted to use it to do something more useful. Obviously I can use it to engrave things that I produced on my lathe, but I did want to see what else I could do with it.    

The obvious item that came to mind was glass drinkware - This was something I could easily get an almost infinite supply for very little money.  The idea of being able to sell them as customized engraved items was also pretty appealing.   

An Unblemished Mug

My initial experiments were a little disappointing. First off I discovered that most people engrave glass with a CO2 laser, not with the LED Diode laser that I had. The main reason for this is that a CO2 and a Diode laser work on different parts of the light spectrum. Effectively, the light from my diode laser, because of the particular wavelength that it used, was just passing through the glass as if it was air. 

Doing some experimenting, and after a few donations of my rejects to the local thrift store (they were still perfectly good drinking glasses, they were just a little "unique" - no sense in having them go to waste), I came upon a process that let me reliably engrave glass with a diode laser. 

How To Do It

Painting

The trick is to put on a thin coating of black acrylic paint on the area of the drinkware that you want to engrave. Acrylic is the paint of choice since it is primarily water based, hence would make removing the paint later fairly easy. Acrylic paint is also pretty easy to find since you can find it at any place that sells craft supplies.  

I had also discovered that the paint needed to be a matte (or similarly dull) finish since anything that had a gloss to it tended to reflect the laser beam, greatly reducing the effectiveness of the laser.  

This in turn created another problem. I found that for whatever reason, matte black acrylic paint didn't really adhere properly to glass, resulting in the paint flaking off when it dried. Strangely enough, gloss paint didn't seem to have that problem. 

Because of that, I ended up using a 2 coat paint process to prepare the drinkware for engraving. 

First I applied an thin, even coat (this is important since I found that a thick or uneven coat created spotty results on the engraving) of black gloss paint on the glass surface that I wanted to engrave

Glass Acrylic Paint

Applying a thin coat

I found that using a small roller brush provided the best coverage.

Once the first coat had dried I then applied a second coat of paint, but this time using a matte black paint. Again making sure that the coat was thin and even. 

Matte Black Paint

Getting ready to paint

Painting the matte black paint

Once that coat is dry I now had a glass cup prepped for engraving

Ready to Engrave

Next step is to set up my laser software for engraving. 

When engraving anything cylindrical, I discovered that I needed to set my image to a 90 degree angle and mirror reverse the image - otherwise result would be something that was both sideways and backwards - Like I said, the local thrift store has some unique looking drinking glasses on the shelf at the moment due to me finding out about this. 

Setting the image

Setting the image

Once I got the orientation correct, I then adjusted the image size, engraving speed and laser power. 

Of course the size needs to reflect the area that I want to put the image on, but the key settings here are the laser strength and the speed. In these case, I need the laser as strong as possible, moving as slowly as possible. 

Setting size, speed and power

Once things are set, it's time to engrave. 

Engraving

Once the engraver is finished, you would get this as a result

Finished Engraving

The only remaining thing to to is to clean the paint off. This is just a simple matter of using soap, water, and a little bit of elbow grease. 

Clean Up

Scrubbing

In the end you get a nicely engraved mug (in this case) ready for a hot cup of Joe.

Ready to drink

Now, if you can excuse me, I need to go put the kettle on....

Still Here!

 

Yes, yes, I am still here! 

It's been a while since I've last visited this part of the world. Not because of any real calamity in my life, unless you consider being tied up with a lot of other side "projects" a bit of a catastrophe. (I tend to disagree there, since I always like having things on the go - cuts the boredom and it really helps keep me out of trouble!)

So what has been going on? 

Well, the first thing is that the shop is almost turning into a bit of a viable business. A couple of years back, I established an Etsy Shop which has started to really take off on in the past couple of years. 

I've also expanded operations to eBay, Facebook and this year I started to get into doing bulk wholesale orders for a local retailer, making Christmas trees for the holiday rush. 

Anyone want a tree?

I'll admit, I have pretty much had my fill of making trees for this year - but it was a pretty good exercise in how to bang out stuff in volume and it helped me figure how to build as efficiently as possible! 

So between filling orders, creating replacement stock and doing R&D on new products, the shop has been humming along.

If I wasn't busy enough, I seemed to have fallen into a bit of a nostalgia trap. A couple of years ago I won a bid on a lot item from the a local estate auction for a ridiculously low price because there was a specific item that I was interested in. 

While I initially didn't really want any of the other items in the lot, I did take a look at what my booty was in the lot. Among the items was a bunch of old 35mm film slides and some home recorded VHS tapes. I was a bit intrigued on what they contained since I grew during the time when these things were almost everywhere. As luck should have it, my parents did have a still functional VCR and slide projector. 

The film slides were a bit of a time capsule from the 1970's around the time when I was but a wee lad. The VHS tapes yielded a snapshot of television programming from the 1990's. Both periods, I am actually quite shocked to say that are 30 to 50 years in the past now - and also very hard to find now (I mean - who saves VHS recordings of "ALF"?) 

As someone from Generation X, "something" clicked within me and I now made it a bit of a mission to keep an eye out for those homemade tapes, film slides, and eventually 8mm movie films at the local estate auctions. 

I also started to prowl the thrift shops to rescue any functional VCR that I could find.  All this forgotten media turned into a pretty healthy library of TV programming from the 1980's, 90's and early 2000's and thousands of film slides. 

Not to be some kind of weird hoarder, I decided to archive the material and make them available to all to see.  I also found out that there was a bit of a resell market for film slides, so if you prowl the Etsy shop, you will see some there for sell.

The end result was I ended up creating a few YouTube channels. In cases where I chanced upon a cache of tapes that was focused on a certain subject matter, I created a dedicated channel of them. 

At the moment, I have a combined count of 3,800 subscribers and over 1.6 million views so it seems that I may have tapped into something here. 

Go ahead and check them our if you like! 

Bargain Bin Cinema  

Farm Equipment Video Library

A Slide A Day

The 80's Railfan

So yes, on top of the full time job, I've been a bit too busy to write!

But I do want to start recapturing some of  the activities in the shop and now that the post holiday period is approaching, I want to spend some time with you again. 

I don't think I will be posting at the pace that I once had in the past, but I am going to aim to have something to talk about at least once a month. 

Talk to you soon! 

  

Project Basket Case - Finishing up

Now that all the painting was done and everything was nice and shiny, the big day had arrived. 

I could finally put the tractor back together.

Reassembly in of itself was pretty straightforward. It was after all a matter of bolting the bits that I had removed earlier back onto the tractor's frame and reconnecting the remaining electrical components, mainly the headlights.