More welding

Today I managed to squeeze in some work on the bus. The first thing done was to complete building the security bars for the front door. That involved riveting and as my long handled riveter is now broken, I had to use my hand riveter. It took quite some squeezing to work my steel rivets! It just wasn't worth buying another long handle riveter for something so trivial as half a dozen rivets.

Next, the bars were spray painted. Most of the paint is a rather nice, very hard Rustoleum black. The rest has been sprayed with bumper black since my black spray can ran out just before I finished the job. Typical!

Having done that, my attention turned to my next project. For a while I have been unhappy with the barrel hangers. They're essentially U bolts with zinc inserts attached to the subframe via two nuts. There's just no room on the thread for a second nut. I'd used stop nuts but was still not happy.

Today I took some of the excess chain and welded links to some steel angle. I'll cut the angle tomorrow and clean up the welds. The thought is that links welded to steel plate attached to the sub frame via 4 bolts per plate with two nuts per bolt and the endmost nut welded to the thread should be far more secure.

Meanwhile I had another jolly good fight on one of those iniquitous online groups. Basically it proved that nobody on the bus/camper/tiny home sites/groups know anything. Maybe that's unfair. Some probably do but there are a lot of fools proclaiming their ignorance while putting themselves forward as experts.

I posted my rather miserable experience of LED lighting, pointing out that LED lights are as horribly oversold as solar panels. I noted that every LED flashlight I've ever had has given up at or about the time it needed it's first set of new batteries, that out of 4 LED bulbs I bought for the bathroom, 3 have failed in under a year, that the LED bike lights I had were uselessly invisible and that all the 4 LED lanterns I bought for the bus combined are dimmer than a 40W light bulb. I let them run with a bit of prodding and repetition of what I'd said. The results were predictable. I had responses like...

1. Well, I have LED bulbs and they're great and I've had them for years.
2. You need to stop buying cheap bulbs.
3. Stop buying Chinese LEDs.
4. You're using them wrong.

Nothing that was at all constructive. Only one or maybe two other people echoed my experience with the bulbs as being terrible. Yet, I look online and found a beautiful article that echoed my experience. Quoting that got me the usual "that article is bullshit". I just find people's inability to see truth As being quite entertaining. If God himself turned up and declared that the oceans are filled with seawater I bet there'd be people ready to argue tooth and nail with him that they're not!

This is largely why I don't trust the internet for any form of research. It seems to be a concentration of stupidity.

Now the article echoed my experiences, namely...
1. CFL and LED bulbs do not last long
2. In order to get the same brightness as incandescent, the wattages have to be increased dramatically.
3. CFL and LED bulbs cost many times the price of incandescent.
4. Electricity saved is minimal.
5. Given the short lives of CFL and LED, the cost of lighting is now higher than ever.

Here's the article: right-thinking.com/2013/12/31/i-am-going-back-to-incandescent-bulbs-man/

Tomorrow my task will be to cut the angle iron and to clean all my welds. I'll also have to figure out some way of testing my welds fir strength.