How not to do a blow job!

Last night I pondered my battery situation for the bus and realised I’m making life harder than it really needs to be. I’ve run though various permutations of battery hangers before deciding I need to read up some on the battery I actually have which is a 35AH AGM Deep Cycle battery. Looking online it seems that AGM batteries are acid impregnated fiberglass mat. They’re also pretty tough things that can be subjected to vibration with no ill effects. That puts a totally new perspective on mounting it! I’ve tried various mounting ideas in my mind from things welded to the subframe to things bolted to things welded to the subframe. Now I realise that as it’s a fiberglass mat, it is probably going to be OK to mount it behind the rear wheels. Of course having spent $70 on the AGM battery and probably about $50 on gel batteries I’ve come to the conclusion the best battery would probably have been a lithium battery at $200 but I’ll use what I have before I go lithium.

Thinking about going under the bus, I looked and as I suspected, it was knee deep in leaves and other detritus carried in by the winds. Thus rather than using the blower to blow the leaves and risk blowing yet more sand into the mechanisms, I decided to move the bus. Thus I pulled it forward 30 feet and went to the shed to find the blower. It wasn’t there. Enquiries revealed it had been lent to somebody so that’s probably the last we’ll ever hear of that blower. Further enquiries revealed there was a rake available.

As can be seen, there were a lot of leaves. Moving the bus revealed how many. Let’s just say that it took quite a while to change the scene from this.

To this.

The primary thing is it would have been done in seconds using a blower as opposed to minutes using a rake. It would have been even faster had the rake handle not snapped in two having been left lying flat on the ground in the wet for months. I ended up spending twice as long, using twice the energy stooping to use a rake with half a handle.

While I worked on it I noticed an ugly-looking spider crawling out of the leaves. It seemed to be brown with a red stripe up its back. Heaven knows what that was. I’m certainly glad I swept those leaves!

Having reconceived my idea for hanging the battery I’m not going to have to do any wending underneath (thank goodness). I can instead complete my hanger and simply bolt it to the subframe just behind the differential. That has several advantages. First there’s plenty space. Second it’s an easier way to fasten it and third if by some chance the people that denigrate my welding are right and it disintegrates (which I severely doubt) then it will just drop harmlessly into the road and not under my wheels.

Meanwhile, my last two relays ordered via Amazon arrived a couple of days ago. I’m not 100% sure how I will employ them but employ them I shall. They took a heck of a long time to arrive because Amazon didn’t notifying me they would come from China. I wish Amazon was more transparent about things like that!

I know I bought one in case the solid state relay didn’t work and the other in order to use my digital door unlocker keypad. That way I can run it from the solar battery rather than the AA batteries in the door lock. Now, of course I found my solid state relay works well but needs a heatsink. For that, enter the feet the hillbillies put on the beds they installed. For some weird reason known only unto them the feet are welded aluminum while the rest of the bed frame was steel.

Now that I can use as a heat sink. The base can be riveted to the bulkhead and the relay bolted to a horizontal on the aluminum angle. The vertical will dissipate heat quite nicely. This should work as well as any other heat sink with the bonus that this relay uses a fraction of the low power that an ordinary relay uses.

I would have liked to have achieved something today - more than just clearing some ground. The sad fact is that it never got above 57F today (13C) which was just a bit too chilly for me. Maybe another day though. It’s just not worth getting sick and missing work and hence missing money. That’s the sad thing about the USA - if you’re sick, you get no income but you get plenty outgoing trying to get healthy again which is why so many people end up on the street after being responsible workers and homeowners all their lives.

Some good news though - when I drove the bus (admittedly only 30 feet forward and 30 feet back), I found what that mysterious cable attached to the accelerator had been doing. It was simply pulling the accelerator down so that the bus would move forward at about 8mph all on its own. I have a suspicion that was done in order that drivers would have to keep their foot on the brake to control the speed in the bus yard.

I had ideas about maybe installing my solid state relay and new heatsink after I’d cleaned it up but by the time the heatsink had dried, the temperature inside the bus was 55F and outside was even lower. Add to that it was 5PM and beginning to get dark. Today just does not seem to have been a day for doing much of anything.