Admiring the well hung!

Today I decided to install my battery cage. While I was at it, I installed the battery too. It wasn’t plain sailing though. When I put the cage in place, the nicely pre-drilled holes didn’t line up with the corresponding holes - they did (mostly) but enough didn’t that I had to get the power drill out to rework some of the holes fractionally. I can only guess that welding the battery cage to the suspension bars must have warped the bars slightly. Next time I’ll save myself a ton of effort and just weld straight to the bus. All this welding I’ve been doing lately has shown me I can get nice-looking welds as long as I stick to 1/16th welding rods and use a lot of them, making several passes and puddling as required.

As can be seen in this photo, the battery fits nicely into my cage and is secured by two turnbuckles and two link extenders together with the cross bar I made yesterday. Those with really sharp eyes (the picture looks dark on my tablet so I can only imagine what it looks like on some of the lower-quality screens) will see I’ve installed a self-resetting circuit breaker above the near end of the battery. At that point the battery quit in my power drill so I pretty much knocked off work under the bus. Having said that - I’ve achieved great things today.

Speaking of problems, one bolt wouldn’t go fully into place. I’m not too worried about that because each bolt will support more weight than the 30lbs of the combined cage and battery. It’s held by 7 bolts. I might return to the strange bolt at some future point. For the moment, it’s secure and I want to see how well the battery fares attached behind the rear wheels.

Not feeling like rolling about under the bus further, I pulled out one of my 3 LED light panels and tried to prime the contacts with solder for easier soldering later. One contact took solder but the other just burned away in a fraction of a second. I’d already expressed doubts about those panels, if you recall. Also, if you recall, I don’t get much luck with electronics anyway. Well, at least they weren’t expensive. I’ll just throw the other two in the trash together with this one. They’re not solderable and not worth any more time nor effort - especially when I have some G4 sockets already and G4 bulbs on the way.

Yesterday I mentioned a socket I found buried in the sand, It was almost unrecognizable because of the rust. I’ve had it sitting in a small container of plain household distilled white malt vinegar for the last week or so. Look at how the rust has just dropped off. Probably another week and I’ll take it out of the vinegar, rinse and dry it then give it a quick coat of varnish. Then it’ll be usable.

Monday and Tuesday it’s supposed to be dry but low 50s so it’ll be chilly. Those sound likely days for heading under the bus to complete some if not all of my 12v underbus wiring. The in-the-bus wiring can be done pretty much any time. I don’t even need daylight to do that.

Looking online, there is some stuff called cold solder that can be used to solder things l/ike my light panels. I just don’t feel it’s worthwhile though. I could go on forever trying to “rescue” hopeless items. My drawer is full of useless electronics that I’ve acquired over the years. Things that were supposed to do one thing well and which failed even to do that. Mail order and ebay clothes are on a par with electronics. If it’s not tried on in the store then the size given probably isn’t right and usually it’s not worth the time nor money to send the thing back for a refund.

At this point let me remind you of my RCA 16GB tablet. I paid $50 for a brand new tablet covered for a year by the manufacturer’s warranty. While it worked, it was a pretty good little tablet. The trouble was the charging port was flimsy and became loose within 3 months, causing the tablet not to charge no matter how careful one was. Contacting the manufacturer it seemed I had to pay $10 - $15 to send the thing back. Then they wouldn’t send me my nice purple one back, fixed. Instead they’d send me a used black tablet. Hearing that I wrote it off as “never ever buy anything from RCA again”.  That’s taking the Mickey out of the customer! I’m usually pretty careful about not buying electronic garbage because every dollar thrown away on trash is two dollars I have to spend on something decent. Years ago somebody put it very succinctly - over the years people will pay the price of a Porsche without ever owning one. So - electronics - BAH!

As an aside, I’m sitting writing this in my bus, illuminated by my cheapo LED lanterns that I sprayed with frosting spray. While the lanterns still are not very bright, the light is much more pleasant to work by. I am not dazzled nor blinded and I can see roughly where things are. I can’t wait to get the full 12V system up and running though - with the G4 lighting. The advantage with the G4 is I can change the power usage by simply changing the bulb. Thus if I need a lower level of light in the bathroom then I can do it!

For the next two days (Christmas Eve and Christmas Day) it’s going to be raining. I’m unlikely to do anything on those days. Having said that, Christmas has officially been postponed to New Year’s here due to everybody still being sick.

I’ve been thinking a lot about those G4 bulb holders. I want to put a lampshade on them and a mounting. In the end I concluded that a simple L bracket from the hardware store would work as a mount. I could fasten that to the wall and mount the bulb holder on the end of the bracket. A lampshade would be trickier so I started by hunting on eBay and Amazon. Nothing leapt out save for the high prices. Then I had a sudden brainwave. Those cheap plastic shot glasses from the dollar store, sprayed with frosting spray should work just fine as lampshades. I can just bolt them onto the bracket and if they get broken then so what? They’re also dirt cheap and as some have noted - I like cheap.

As you can see - it’s a very simple little thing. I bought a pack of 5 for next to nothing. That’ll give me a single light over the desk in the bedroom, a single light over the toilet and a single light over the cooking area in the kitchen with two left over. I’ll definitely have a lampshade over the lights in the kitchen and the bedroom. The bathroom I’m not so sure about. That just might not be worth bothering about. Unless you’re Uncle Jessie who reads the Bible while sitting on the toilet every Sunday (and sometimes the whole bible judging by the time he spends there) then a lampshade is not really necessary.

Now you’ve heard me complain about the pitiful light from my LED lanterns then you hear about my only lighting some areas. You must be scratching your head! Well, the fact is I like adequate lighting where I’m working. I don’t need it in unimportant areas. Those lanterns don’t produce enough light for anything. I’m just waiting on the post for my G4 bulbs.