Monday, January 16, 2017

What a depressing day!

After not installing the brackets under the bus yesterday, today was a little cold and wet. Too much so to want to try doing the brackets today. Similarly it was not  not too enticing to check the reversing horn nor the remains of the hillbilly wiring.

Other than that, there were a whole load of things I needed from the store in order to complete the tasks:

  • To secure the back windows each side of the door, more plywood is needed. The plywood available isn't big enough. 
  • In order to complete the bars over the driver's window, more metal strip is needed.
  • Having played about trying and failing to make rivnuts work, it seems it's necessary to get real rivets.
  • Having messed about trying to revive the main breaker box that was situated under the bus with its now inappropriately placed holes, it seems far easier to just get a new one. Of course we're rivets available, it might be possible to revive it.
  • To complete the supplies needed for underbody brackets, more split washers are needed.
  • To see properly, light is needed. The LED lanterns are producing such woefully inadequate light they need to be replaced. (Never bother changing batteries in electronic products, just change the product)
  • In order to fix the reversing horn, wire is needed.
Of course, having struggled unsuccessfully so far, it's now too late to visit the store because by the time the supplies are back here, it will be dark. It's all really rather depressing to be honest.

Crouched under the counter beside the breaker box (which oddly has no main breaker) because there were no rivets, rivnuts were attempted. The first hole was a shade too small but quickly became too big. Choosing a larger rivnut meant a larger hole. Once that was done, it was time to insert the rivnut which is when the rivnut did what rivnuts do best. It started to spin in the hole. That led to a frustrating half hour disassembling the tool in order to get to the rivnut in order to extract it. Having done that, it was time to try something else. Thus, a self drilling screw was tried. That went every which way but the way it was intended and without adequate means to support it while it turned that led to more frustration. Eventually a small hole was drilled as a guide for the self drilling screw. Then the screw went in correctly. Trying to find the hole was a challenge. After the screw had been put into the breaker box, matching the screw with the hole proved impossible. At that point, having wasted pretty much the day, a halt was called to the charade.

Meanwhile, the left wiper motor switch is worn out so one has been ordered via eBay. That, if it works, should solve the left wiper problem. The right wiper isn't working at all. I'm going to suspect the motor there. Other than that, pretty much everything else works and has been fixed.

The only thing I'm going to have to get real help with is putting on a trailer hitch. As this vehicle does not have air brakes, some kind of servo assist on the brakes will be needed.

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