I would procrastinate if only I had the time!

After procrastinating for most of the day, eventually I got down to work. That was pretty much after 4 hours of sitting in the bus, thinking about the four projects remaining to complete. Those are the underbody wiring, the mount for the battery, the windscreen wiper and so on.

Investigating, I found there was no easy path from the inside of the console downwards. There is wiring but it heads elsewhere. Underneath the console is the heater unit. Opening the access panel revealed no easy nor straightforward way of accessing the console nor of passing the wire downwards.

The next thought was to pass the cable in a different direction but all directions seemed blocked by impracticalities. Eventually, with careful measuring I found a small gap of about 3 inches between the heater unit above the floor and the battery compartment under the floor. I carefully used a self drilling screw to pierce where I thought the hole should go on the grounds that if it was in the wrong place, I could just leave the screw there. As it turned out, the screw was spot on in the right place. There was a complication, however.

The end of the battery box and the underside of the floor, where I drilled the hole, is caked heavily with mud. That is a clear indication that I desperately need to put mud flaps on the front wheels. I'll get to that as soon as I can!

I enlarged the hole with a drill bigger than the wire loom but still had difficulty passing the wire through. Silly me, I should have enlarged the hole a shade with one of my conical files that fits the drill. Anyway, I fought with it for half an hour and eventually got enough of the loom through the hole. Then I fastened the top end, leaving enough wire that I can easily connect to switches etc on the console.

Eventually I went under the bus to use my nylon Harbor Freight cable clamps. I went in with the idea of putting connectors in every C section rib but having got as far as the differential, it makes more sense to connect to every rib, just for extra security.

Working around the differential, exhaust and brake lines, the daylight quit on me. That meant pulling out my original LED lantern - the one with the broken handle. That actually helped a lot. My later LED lanterns seem to have killed the batteries already.

During work around the differential, which was every bit as awkward as could possibly be imagined, one of the self drilling screws snapped in two. I've never seen that happen before! It was a case of having to lie and roll in the sand under the bus getting covered thoroughly in all kinds of yuck. I can honestly say that if I never have to work underneath the bus or around a differential again, it'll be too soon!

While I was in all kids of tortuous positions, I took the opportunity to look at my brake lines. Most seemed shiny and new. The flexible hoses looked pretty good too. It's always worth checking out important things like brakes. In a way, I'd really prefer air brakes. It's possible to put them in but retrofitting would be costly. Too costly for a low budget motorhome!

I didn't actually finish what I was doing. I do need to extend the wire for the reversing horn. I also need more cable loom. From now on, work on the wiring won't be as challenging. Where I need extra cable clamps, the cable is already supported so I don't need to fight the cable. As I have said though, I definitely need to add mud flaps. I also need to seal around the hole I drilled using some kind of sealant.

On the whole, today was a success even though work was not completed. Completion will have to wait until next weekend though my overalls definitely need a wash before then! I even have sand in my hair.

Inside my cable loom is a twin 16 gauge cable, a single 16 gauge cable and a coaxial cable. The single cable is to power the reversing horn. One side of the twin cable goes with the coaxial cable to power a camera mounted under the bumper. The remaining piece of twin cable is used for some future application that I have not yet thoroughly decided - though I have some ideas.