Curiouser and curiouser

I tried the lawnmower batter and while it did work, it didn’t give me much power. In fact by the time it hit 12v I had maybe 2 minutes out of my extraction fans. Thus I abandoned the lawnmower battery and went to the store for a Duracell battery. This is a 12v AGM battery and when installed it read 12.7v. I was expecting it to be fully charged and at 13.8v so after connecting it I plugged in both my extra 30w solar panels. That should boost the charge fairly swiftly though it might take a few days if the weather is not great.

I’m a little concerned about the 12.7v rating which invoked the cry of curiouser and curiouser. This battery should have a float voltage of 13.8v. There’s a year’s warranty on it so if it fails to perform then I can have a word with Batteries Plus about it. The Harbor Freight thing just didn’t have any capacity whatsoever.

For giggles when I went to get my battery I took the Harbor Freight battery. Batteries Plus put it on their big test meter and it tested just fine. The capacity however was not tested. Reading around, the only way to test capacity is to use it and see what happens. I know darned well that even using only half of 35AH I would be able to run my 3.92A draw for about 4 hours and 20 minutes. I shall test that next weekend having left the battery to charge for the entire week.

I decided to bite the bullet and take my bus for a service. The oil has been in the sump for almost 4 years. I am going to get the differential oil inspected, the transmission oil inspected, the axel and hub lubricants checked, grease applied to all the grease points and the brake line connectors checked. I don’t think much of the rusty clips that hold the brake lines together. They’ll also put the tyres on the right pressures and check them. I have checked everything and it all seems OK but the oil definitely needs to be changed. While that is being done I’ll get the sump gasket changed. The bus leaked oil when I was going to buy it and I told the guy I wanted the rotten tyres replaced and the oil leak fixed. He did replace the tyres but put coagulant in the oil rather than replacing the sump gasket. It works but it’s not what I’d call an approved method.

Immediately following the service which will be done in the morning I shall drive down to a beach location for a few days holiday. This will be my first ever overnight stay and first ever overnight trip in the bus. I’m looking forward to it but am apprehensive until I get a paid mechanic to check it out and change the suspect oil. They say oil should be changed every 3 months when its in use in small engines. In big engines once a year is fine. Kept sealed in the can oil will keep for 5 years and more as it’s really stable. Once it’s exposed to air, water begins to creep in with condensation. That dilutes the oil a little and reduces its efficacy.

I have a ton of work to do tomorrow and next weekend in order to make the bus ready for the trip the weekend after. Basically the bus is ready. It just needs construction supplies removed and a good cleaning. It also needs me to put things in drawers where they should be and put other things away safely. It’s a lot of work!

Lawnmower Man 2 - The Final Solution

Today was not a good day to be under the bus. Not because it was Friday or Friday the 13th. It was the 13th but most definitely Monday and not Friday. That being said, work under the bus was quite unpleasant as I was being attacked by full squadrons of mosquitoes.

It took quite a while but I managed to install the battery connector - the red thing. That’s two interconnecting plugs with screw holes allowing one or both to be screwed into place. Needless to say one side is bolted to my steel bracket (top of the picture). That used to be the bottom of a bus seat so it’s quite sturdy.

The battery - as can be seen is a cheap lawnmower battery. That still has plenty life left in it. Now the only thing I might redo up there is to slip some plastic sleeving over the cables from the battery to the connector. I didn’t think of it at the time. I was too keen to be out of there and away from the mosquitoes.

Drilling the four bolt holes for the bracket took forever and I had to keep switching drill bits as the drill bits heated up. That and spraying WD40 to lubricate the drill. Needless to say my front is covered with oil splatter and my back and sides are covered with sand. My skin is covered with mosquito bites so I must look quite frightful.

Having done all the connections I slipped inside the bus and switched the battery on. I had to reprogram the controller to have a maximum charge of 12.8v, a charging program for flooded batteries and a maximum discharge of 12.4v. Now I’ll have to see how long that 0.4v lasts me.

While I was down there, I noticed the welds on my battery bracket are showing signs of rust. That’s very disappointing considering there was no rust present when I welded them and that as soon as the welds had all cooled I’d slapped rust-killing primer and then when that had dried, white protective paint on top. I can only assume the rods weren’t that great. I know what you’re going to say... Harbor Freight. Yes - it’s true - my rods came from Harbor Freight. I’ve not noticed a problem with rust from rods before though. Now you see why I paint everything that I put under the bus, white!

Other than that I haven’t done anything else with the bus. I have an idea about a second solar input that’ll be capable of handling higher amperages. 30A is the limit for the charge controller which frankly is quite enough. I doubt I’ll ever be likely to need quite that much power.

Tomorrow or soon - whenever I have time - I’ll test my new (secondhand) battery. By my guesstimation, I reckon that since my Harbor Freight Deep Cycle Dodo was 35AH and many similar batteries are around 30-35AH, this battery is about the same. Assuming the lower end of 30AH and being about to take a starting battery down to 75% only then a quick back of a tax bill calculation shows that I probably have 7.5AH to play with. That means around two hours of just my extraction fans running. We shall see though. Anything over 30 minutes is better than the Harbor Freight battery. That surely has to have been leftover from April 1st!

Lawnmower Man

There once was a book by Stephen King called Lawnmower Man. I saw the film and it was OK. I tried reading another Stephen King book but it was rather a ghastly book so I never bothered with his stuff again. But... Lawnmower Man came to mind because I replaced the battery under the bus with a lawnmower battery.

 This was the original battery. As can be seen from the little blue sticker on the back left, it was manufactured in July 2017 (if it’s a genuine sticker). Actually, I wouldn’t put it past somebody buying a new battery and putting the old one in the box and transferring the date sticker. Anyway, it never had any heavy use and was installed in probably October when there was no real need for ventilation. It was kept solar charged but by March or April when ventilation was needed, it was clear that there was something amis. By May I’d decided the battery had a problem. Today I finally got around to replacing it.

The new battery is dated September 2016. It has been used in a riding lawnmower until I replaced the battery with a new battery about 3 months ago after which it sat in the wind and rain. The old battery had the wires bolted to it under the bus. The new battery I’ve put a battery connector clip. This means that connecting and disconnecting is a simple matter of pulling a plug. Then I have to release the battery from its mount and remove the battery. No bolting on connections while under the bus. So much easier. The connection can be bolted on in plain sight before the battery even goes under the bus.

As I’d not drilled the holes for the clamp that holds the battery down, I did that too. I like my simple design of battery bracket. All it is is two pieces of steel angle on each end, welded and a steel flat welded as a connector with holes drilled to attach the clamps. The clamps themselves are just turnbuckles and cable connectors.

As I now have to mount a socket under the bus I had cut some steel and drilled two holes to bolt the socket and some holes to bolt through the underbus ribs. It turned out quite well. Looking under the bus I’m going to have to be careful as to where I put the bracket and I’m probably going to have to re-route some cables. Not a huge task - just time consuming.

I’d looked at my connectors and wondered if a flat bar would be better so I could mount the battery socket horizontally. As it turned out it looks like my original angle was a far better idea. Now there’s a reason why this is painted green and not white like everything else.

I have a Nissan Xterra as my daily driver. I’ve had it for 12 years and each year I need to respray where the paint has fallen off. Nissan did a terrible job with their clearcoat and it’s a known fault. I’ve been complaining for 12 years about it but Nissan doesn’t give a rat’s arse. As soon as they have your money, they care nothing about you. So, today I went and sprayed some more bare metal where the paint, primer and clearcoat had fallen off. When I finished, the almost full paint can refused to disgorge any more white paint. The nozzle had clogged. No spare nozzle I have seemed to make it work so the clog must be inside the can. This left me with cans of various colors including green so I ended up choosing green and spraying my flat bar, green.

The battery I had saved from the lawnmower was far lighter than the battery I took out from under the bus. Checking the fluid levels, all the cells were full. I’ll have to reprogram my charge controller as this battery has a full charge of 12.8v and a 75% charge of 12.4v. I’m not supposed to go below 75% on a starting battery. This is a starting battery which to replace will cost a massive $21 from Walmart. That’s way better than that Harbor Freight $70 battery. If I have to replace it every 4 months then it’s still going to work out $7 cheaper than the Harbor Freight nightmare.

Had the Harbor Freight battery been any good, I’d have just grinned and bore it, connecting cables under the bus each time the battery needed replacement as it shouldn’t have needed to be replaced for 5 years. As I expect to have to replace the lawnmower battery perhaps every two years or maybe more frequently - depending how badly I misuse it, I needed to install battery connectors.

Today I put the battery connector on the battery and onto the underbus cables. I still have to make the connections, install the bracket and so on. I just ran out of time. I started the day not feeling too well. I’ve not felt well for quite a while. Thinking about it - as there’s a rat on the loose that just refuses to get into a nicely prepared trap, I’m wondering if my ailments are related to bugs the rat spreads around? With luck, tonight will be the night the rat decides to fall in the trap.