I've been screwing around!

 and had the a long list for years of The first task today was to grovel under the kitchen countertop to complete installing the main breaker box. All that entailed was screwing down an earth wire and screwing the fascia back on the distribution panel. That was by no means easy, I can tell you! It looks good though.

That thick, 30A wire is very hard to handle. I left a 20A breaker in the main breaker box because my made up cable is 20A. Really I should upgrade the cable but for the life of me, I can't imagine using more than 20A.

If you remember, I mentioned a pinhole in the back, above the window. Today having seen the sill immediately above, I realized water ingress would be very unlikely. Thus, rather than fiddle around on something that quite frankly hasn't been a problem, I solved the problem in rather the manner I solved small holes in a wheel arch just before an inspection when I lived in Britain. Then, I stuck pieces of masking tape over the holes then slapped under seal over the whole wheel arch. What I did this time was stick aluminum tape over the hole then spray paint it grey. I don't believe there will be a problem and if there is, I am grown up enough to solve it!

I trimmed a little groove in the wooden spacer on the back of my panel in order to make it fit. Being somewhat lazy, I just trimmed the wood with my angle grinder.  Having done that, it was time to slap paint on the bare wood.

While the paint dried, I pulled out my new Harbor Freight 20 ton jack. What a crazy thing that is! The handle is so short I'd have to lie underneath the bus in order to operate the jack. I'm not impressed by that! I hate taking things back but unless I can figure out a way of using it, I'll have to.

Yesterday -and I forgot to mention this- I tried to unscrew my long handled, jammed riveter. This time it all came apart easily. I cleaned it and reassembled it and now have a working long handle riveter. That would have been useful many times over the last year!

While I'm thinking on the subject of things unmentioned, I'd probably already mentioned that I was singularly unimpressed by the value of my smartphone. That had cost me $50 a month after tax and




$275 to buy. It had lasted barely 3 years before becoming very funky to charge. I replaced it two or
three months ago with a $15 Flip phone. Over the 3 years I'd had it, it had cost around $57 all told per month (including depreciation). My new phone over 3 months has cost less than $20 a month including depreciation. It's a win all the way.

In terms of use, I use my phone just the same for talk as I did before. The difference is I now don't spend forever wasting my time playing with a silly glowing blue screen. I'm not addicted to the blasted smartphone but then, I never was.

As you can clearly see, I've used just 63 of my allotted 300 minutes this month. That's clearly not a major issue. The lady at the phone store was very dismissive of my choice to use the minimum minutes! In fact she was dismissive of my choice to have a flip phone. I don't miss a smart phone. I have a GPS so I don't need a phone for that. Most email is just junk and none of the rest is anything I can't wait a few hours to read.

When I've installed the wooden panel I'll pretty much have completed work on the living quarters. I'll want to install the ventilation battery underneath the bus and might upgrade it to a simple lawnmower battery. They're cheap enough that I can afford to replace one every year! I might also fit a second lawnmower battery to power things like USB power sockets. Now that I'd probably run off an extra solar panel. For the moment, as no extra panel is planned, I might just install two underbody mounts for batteries. Things to think about anyway.

On the list of things left to do.... fixing the reversing horn, stripping out the extra speedometer sensor 

and fixing the original sensor. Then there's fixing the windshield wiper and lowering the brake pedal. As can be seen, the brake pedal is 4 inches higher than the accelerator and could be dropped by 3 inches easily. That would stop my knee from hitting the steering wheel, trying to use the brake, which is a dangerous situation.

Well, it's hard to get a photo that really shows the gigantic step from accelerator to brake. Trust me though... this is not something you want to do in a hurry. It might be fine if you have little legs but for my tallness, it doesn't work too well.  

My final act of the day was to secure the last of the panels over the window. Sadly the last panel has warped a little so doesn't fit flush. Having said that, its sole purpose is to protect the window from objects stacked up in the storage area. Some bars over the window in the door might not go amiss either.