Tested and A OK

The sun appeared suddenly and the sky went blue. That's the first time in ages so I zipped out to take full advantage of it. My Walmart Aleko 10W panels had all arrived so I have 3 to play with. As there were screw connectors on the contact plates I'd bought some ring connectors with the idea of using them. I'd forgotten after I bought them and had subsequently bought another set too. While I was at it, I bought some low amperage twin cable. Each of those panels is less than an amp at full blast so the wiring doesn't have to be super heavy. Just plain old speaker cable will do. 

As somebody is going to move into the trailer next door, I'm having to contemplate moving my 20A power supply. I'd been tapped into that breaker box for a couple of years for the 20A I need for welding. I'll pull the breaker out and pick up my cables. It's no biggie. I can transfer to the breaker box on one of the other mobile homes here. They're all owned by the same people. 

Without the customary power supply, rather than laying a long extension lead I tried using my gas soldering iron. I'd bought a gas soldering iron from Harbor Freight a long time ago. It fell apart before I had opportunity to use it. I'd kept the tools and since they fit my Walmart butane torch I thought I'd try the soldering iron adapter. The short story is it did melt solder but did not work at all well. On a warmer day perhaps it might have worked better.  I gave up on that, laid out a long extension cord (in fact two end on end) and soldered wires to my solar panels with my Walmart electric soldering iron.

My soldered joints are at the bottom and I think they look a lot neater than the Chinese solder joints at the top. At this point I still need to put some diodes into the circuit. Having said that, I could now test each panel as I added wires to it.

Testing was straightforward or not, perhaps. I started by putting my blue watt meter on the panel to measure watts passing through. For that I needed a load so I connected a car tyre pump. Whoops - too much drain and the meter blanked out. A webcam attached to a USB converter - too little. Then I plugged the panel into the bus system using my external solar input. Angling the panel perfectly I got a reading of 9.1 watts on each panel. Given that there was a tree branch almost in the way and that I probably didn't have perfect sunlight as well as the watt meter using some power, 9.1 watts was perfectly respectable. It looks as though these panels really do produce 10A each.

One of the day's tasks was to work on the non-functioning SAE inlet. That involved removing the access panel. Seeing as the screws had worn out what little thread that can be put into sheet metal it was time to put rivnuts in place and switch out the self-drilling screws with machine screws. Fortunately I had a packet of 8-32 rivnuts. It didn't take too long with a step bit to drill out the holes to accept my rivnuts. I actually ran almost out of 8-32 rivnuts. I'll have to order more.

With the rivnuts in place (there are 8 around the access hole) I can easily open and close that access panel. While it was open I got on with the next phase - investigating the problem with the SAE connector. The logical place to start was with the connection between the twin wire and the red/black wire that came from the SAE connector. I cut the connectors out and put new connectors then tried it again. Nope! That didn't work.

Next I cut the new connectors off and put my voltmeter set for resistance on the SAE inlet. I had a lovely connection on the negative side and none at all on the positive side. I have a dead SAE inlet. Well, fortunately I bought 4 so it wasn't an absolute catastrophe. I switched the SAE connector over but tested it as OK before anything else. Then I put new connectors on the twin cable and the SAE connector and tested. Nope! That didn't work either.

There's nothing clearly wrong with the connector from the back.

There's nothing clearly wrong with the connector from the front.

So, having ascertained the problem likely lay in the twin cable which was brand new on a spool from Lowes (hiss, spit), I tested the cable. It turned out that one side of the cable didn't work. That means I'll have to open up my cable wrap and replace the twin cable with single cables. This is not the first time I've had to throw out a reel of bad wire.

The biggest reason why progress on the bus has been so damned slow is that a goodly percentage of the products I've bought have been worthless garbage and everything has to be tested before use. I didn't test that SAE connector nor that cable and look where that got me! It's not possible to lay the blame for these failures on price, on a particular retailer, a particular manufacturer or a particular country. I've bought from various places and still get failures. It's just the way things seem to be - non existent quality control across the board.

One thing I need to do is to get some short (3/4 inch) 8-32 machine screws. While I have some machine screws, they're all way too long and I just don't feel like shortening them. I did buy some 10-32 bolts the other day and I have 10-32 rivnuts arriving. They're for use at the back of the bus though. I need to secure the rear access panel and the new charge controller. The top of the control console is pretty loose - the screws have all come through the steel so that could be a candidate for rivnuts too.

I started work on the bottom bracket to hold my three solar panels. Drilling is taking quite some time as I started by drilling 5 rivet holes for the first panel and 4 securing holes below each panel into a single length of aluminium angle. Using my Harbor Freight battery drill took forever and I exhausted both batteries before I'd drilled many holes. I switched to the Harbor Freight power drill and drilled the holes a lot faster. This is, of course, the time when one wishes one had a drill press. Not having one and having got most of the way through one set of holes, I'm not that enthused about spending money or time on getting a drill press.

A gentleman came and removed all the scrap fridges and other scrap domestic appliances today. While he was doing that I realised I'd missed a trick. If I cut the fridge steel that I removed from the fridge etc to fit over the lip where the glass goes in the window I could drill and rivet. Then I could smooth over the rivetted area with Bondo to make it look really good. I could even put a thin layer of Bondo between the two surfaces waiting to be riveted. As long as I riveted quickly there should be no problem.

While I was doing that, a rather suspicious individual turned up in an unmarked truck with no business cards and a clipboard that didn't seem to have anything relevant clipped to it. He was trying to pedal roof repairs. He was very insistent about wanting to get on top of the roof and was told politely that the services he offered were covered. I'll have to get on with installing the security camera. I figure since the security camera unit I bought will take 4 cameras, I can at least put three. One looking to the right with the other two cameras in view, one looking to the left with the other two cameras in view and one looking down the driveway. That way I can capture anybody tampering with the cameras.

Tomorrow I hope to make more progress on drilling the aluminium and possibly drill the second piece of aluminium. I'm not sure that I'll have time given how slow all this drilling is, this weekend to remove the old solar panel and install the new ones. Each single step on the road adds up to a great journey though.