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.