Wednesday, March 22, 2017

An odd day

Despite having had little to no sleep last night due to a thunderstorm that caused the dog to decide my head was an ideal place to practice the trampoline. That was followed by work which is still driving school busses. As I partner with another driver, I did the aiding today abd she did the driving. It works well - if she's had a bad night, I drive and vice versa. Otherwise I drive mornings and she drives afternoons.

Returning home after work, I squeezed in a nap then looked at the bus. A few days ago, my new video camera arrived. I'd bought it for my backup system, from China for about $5. Today I tested it on my existing system and it worked well. 
The reason for two cameras is so that I can have two camera angles. The first angle is down from the roof of the bus. That shows me how close I am to something I'm backing up to. The new angle will be  rear facing and the new camera will be mounted underneath the rear bumper.

Those with long memories will recall that the hillbilly prior owners welded an I beam underneath the back bumper. When I removed that, I left little bits still welded to various chassis members because the aim was just to remove the big pieces that shouldn't have been attached in the first place. One by one though I seem to be finding removing the remains is in order.
Fortunately, the hillbilly welds were quite terrible. Some just chip away with light taps from a hammer while others grind away easily with an angle grinder. The rest are very flexible. The weld here cut easily while the weld the other end is fairly flexible. I didn't manage to break the other weld free by just flexing the weld. I'll have to get underneath and as I was in my work clothes, that wasn't possible today. That's a job for the weekend.

The goal is to install the new camera underneath the rear bumper exactly where the remains of the I beam are currently situated. 

A few days ago I had to charge the bus battery because the 5A ABS circuit had drained it. The bus started easily today. I ran the engine for a few minutes then stopped it. No problems. Thinking about the ABS circuit, I think I know where the short in the system is located. The horn is crudely wired into a switch on the dashboard. Pressing the horn button on the steering wheel fires the horn relay. The short has to be across the switched part of the relay though where on the horn wire that is, I don't know. It could even be a faulty relay. There might even be multiple faults.

With the extra speed sensor knocked out of the bus circuitry, the rev counter picked up quickly. I'll have to complete removing that wiring. Then I'll have to see if the original speed sensor needs attention and if so, what manner of attention.

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