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Wednesday, July 5, 2017

Definitely not feeling too good

I seem to have picked up a stomach thing. After a hard day at work, I returned home to find not one but two parcels waiting for me. The first turned out to be replacement convex mirrors. My existing convex mirrors had become abraded over the years, being plexiglass rather than glass. The second turned out to be a pair of charge controllers.

My existing mirrors had become somewhat hard to use due to their lack of clarity.
The lack of clarity isn't all that easy to photograph to be honest. If you look at the top of the mirror you'll see a fuzziness. That was much more pronounced while driving. The other mirror was just as bad.
Again, the bad portion is at the top. As the mirrors had offset ball mounts, it wasn't possible to simply rotate the mirror. eBay is, however, useful at times like this.
The new mirrors are heated. As I don't have mirror heating set up, I have simply wrapped the wires around the mirror mounts. If I go further and change my big west coast mirrors then I will probably go for a smaller flat mirror and possibly a second convex but oriented vertically. As can be seen, it's pretty good.

It took me longer to remove one mirror because the bolt was seized solid. In the end I had to use my angle grinder. The other mirror came free much more easily. I'd have liked to have got them off in a non destructive way but it is what it is.

My charge controllers were not installed today. That's a job for another day. They're slightly different from my main charge controller in that they don't seem to have a thermometer built in though I have not read the manual.
The plan is to use them for charging batteries designated for charging cellphones etc. This is a plan I have vaguely in mind. It's not something I'm going to leap on immediately so I might just use one to replace the not very good charge controller I have in the cockpit of the bus.

Today I ran my extraction fan briefly from the 10AH battery with the good charge controller at the back of the bus. I have a feeling the bad charge controller might have damaged the battery judging from the odd readings I was getting. I'll have to see how it all goes though. My next task will be to complete the intake for my ventilation system. That's a task for another day when I feel better.

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