Sunday, April 23, 2017

Done some tidying

Although there are things I want to do, I ended up doing only some tidying and nothing much else. If you remember, I took advantage of Radio Shack's sale and bought a pile of fuse holders, switches and so on.

It transpires that the reed relays are normally open. I'd thought they'd have been normally open one side and normally closed the other. As it is, they're useless for my door alarms. That's a shame but I did find they're incredibly loud when connected to a 9v battery. Enough to waken the dead so great for a door alarm!

One of miladys chickens had laid an egg in the middle of the pen where it would be impossible to reach. Rather than leave it there, I decided it would be best broken and then the chickens could eat it. Thus I hunted for my aur pistol. Hunting for the pellets took quite a while, proving just how much sorting and tidying I need to do. I saw plenty stuff kept that would probably be best in the garbage and that's without trying on all my clothes, many of which are too small now. Anyway, the end of the story is I found my air pistol and the egg literally exploded when shot with a .177 pellet. After that I played around, shooting cans before returning to the bus.

I'm still going through phases when I have a feverish temperature. I'm not fully over the Black Widow bite yet though the red patch on my back is fading. The black spot in the center is new and intreaguing but not yet a cause for concern. In any case, while I can afford health insurance, I cannot afford the copay needed to use it!

I looked at the components I'd bought from Radio Shack and could not really see what I had. Everything was wrapped in nasty plastic pouches, obscuring the items and crucially wasting space. I spent a few minutes slitting wrappings with a razor and dumping things into a cardboard box. I'm sure I have far more that needs similar treatment. I removed a full carrier bag of plastic trash from the bus.

The interesting thing is that almost all of the Radio Shack fuse holders have non standard connections. They have 3/16th inch blade connectors as opposed to the normal 1/4 inch connector. The Radio Shack batteries have the same narrow connectors. As luck would have it though, I bought a pack of Radio Shack connectors that actually fit. They're non insulated which I do not like but it is what it is.

My new plan for the console is to put fuse holders into the console and to use some of my new Radio Shack switches in place of my Walmart shiny steel switches. The newer switches have blade connectors and some are illuminated to show they're on. Some of the new fuse holders are illuminated to show when a fuse is blown. That's useful!

Looking at one of my ammunition boxes I realized one would do really well under the bus as a housing for my air intake. With a closable lid it will be far easier to replace the filter. It should even be possible to use ordinary PVC piping as ductwork from the side of the bus and through the floor as an inlet. That would work well for me but it would have to be installed after black widow season is over!

The brake pedal had my attention today. It definitely needs to be lowered. I'm wondering whether somebody has switched it out at some point for a short one. It definitely didn't come from the factory like that. The adjustment is probably going to be at the Master Cylinder. As that's underneath the bus, I'll be leaving that alone for the moment.
I looked but could not see the other end of the brake push rod under the hood. It's probably obscured by the engine.

I think the priority right now is probably cleaning and tidying inside, sorting out and finding tools then sorting my clothes. I know there are a ton of documents relating to an unpleasant court case that I'd been keeping for reference though now that the other party is deceased I doubt there's much point. I've kept lots of other documents too such as sales competition winning certificates from when I did retail. My last employer used to shower me with certificates, most of which I just threw away, fortunately.

I'll have to look into getting normally closed reed switches. The switches etc are upgrades. They're not necessary for normal bus operation. Actually, I'm having new thoughts about the battery position for the rear vents and about adding front solar panels as well as the air induction system. For the moment they're not priorities.

Priorities are to get the pedals correctly adjusted, the short out of the electrics and the underbody steamed and greased. That'll be a mechanics task. The windscreen wiper motor etc I can do myself. That's simple engineering. I'll have to take the hood off the transmission and trace that strange white wire I found a few weeks ago. I would rather have a speedo that's 2mph out than use some add on speedo that's been badly installed. I could also do the installation properly! Things to think about. Retitling I feel I should concentrate on though.

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