As the world is now in the grip of the Corona Virus which seems to be more targeting men of fighting age (could it possibly be a Chinese biological weapon test), I'm expecting plenty time to work on the bus. This weekend was a 4 day weekend because of the work timetable. The first day was spent not doing much because frankly those 12 hour days are exhausting. The next day was spent shopping and admiring the empty shelves in the stores. People have gone nuts on stockpiling hand soap, bleach, disinfectant and toilet paper. There have even been fights in stores over toilet paper!
I sat in the driver's seat of the bus and ended up adjusting it. Lowering it took quite some doing! I was there with a pair of wrenches and still didn't get it absolutely spot on. I have a feeling there might be some warping.
When I bought the bus, the seat was jacked all the way up. I generally drive with my work bus seat all the way down and pushed back a bit. This has helped with my bus as my knee used to impact the steering wheel. Now it does not - it touches lightly. I still need to raise the accelerator a bit in order to get it closer to the brake pedal height.
A while ago I ordered two lots of rivnuts. One lot was in 4mm while the other was SAE #10. The #10 steel rivnuts arrived. The M4 rivnuts did not. That pretty much continues my run of eBay bad luck. I'd ordered on February 4th and they were supposed to arrive by March 12th. They did not so I filed non-arrival. The seller then asked if I could wait another week. I told them straight I would not wait another week and that the fake tracking number they gave did not aid their case.
So, I wanted to test my steel #10 rivnuts. Thus I pulled out a sheet of rusty steel and drilled a hole, enlarging at the same time with my step bit. The tools used - a drill and step bit, a multi wrench, a 10mm wrench and a #10 bolt. I did switch to an adjustable wrench later when the 10mm wrench proved to be too loose.
On the bolt are a nut, a washer and the rivnut. The basic idea is to put the rivnut in the hole, turn the nut so that it moves down the thread, compressing the rivnut and the washer will slide against both the rivnut and the nut in order that the rivnut does not turn. That didn't happen in this instance. The rivnut turned.
The solution to the rivnut turning was to drill another hole - bigger than the circular portion of the rivnut shaft but smaller than the hexagonal collar. Then I picked up a handly piece of 2x4 and whacked the rivnut into place so that the collar would bind on the hole and allow the washer to act as a lubricant.
Two complete turns of the wrench while holding the bolt head steady got the rivnut into place with the shaft compressing to grab the steel firmly from both sides. I could have turned some more but it was holding and this was just a test.
So eventually I got as far as working on installing my new charge controller. Already I like it more than my old controller. It seems to measure wattage used more accurately. It measured the batteries at 85% so perhaps it's not a dead battery - just the old controller (which had been in use for a year) was on its way out? Time will tell.
I had to move my rectifier for my solar panels and getting the controller in was a tight squeeze. The instructions said it needed the thermometer installed near the batteries. That might happen at some point. The instructions also said that the controller needed to have 6 inches of clearance above. That's not going to happen in this bus. As it's a 20A controller and the maximum continuous power through it is likely to be just 7A, I'm not particularly worried about that. It takes a maximum of 400W solar and I have (currently) 20W attached to the back, 15W that will be upgraded to 30W at the front plus portable panels of 2x30W, 2x20W, 2x10W, 1x15W and 1x5W for a grand total of... 205W of which I'll likely be using an absolute maximum of 110W, but of that only 50W continuously.
One of the things I particularly like about that new controller is that it automatically senses the batteries and sets itself automatically. No need for me to read the manual. Of course I did read the manual. Then I had to hunt to find out just what order to put the wiring in. There was no mention of it in the manual so I followed what my other controllers did. First pair of holes from the left positive then negative for the solar panel. Second pair of holes from the left positive then negative for the battery. Third pair of holes from the left positive then negative for the load.
The only issue so far in setting up the controller was that it was set for 15 which is load on or off at the press of a button. It was set for on but it was off. I had to toggle the on/off button a couple of times to get that working.
It was supposed to rain tomorrow but started raining before I got the new charge controller installed. I would have proceeded on from installing the new controller to testing the new plastic wedges and installing the new solar panel. Thus I stuck with installing the new charge controller. I'd not felt energetic all day anyway. It's partly those 12 hour days that take a toll but also the bugs I pick up from my passengers. I'd been wanting to install the charge controller since I bought it back in mid January.
I was going to install it using rivnuts but started off using self-drilling screws then just stuck with those rather than enlarge the holes and install rivnuts. I'll probably have to go rivnuts in the end. It was nice though to have attachment points big enough to take a self-drilling screw. All the other controllers used small plastic attachment points.
One of the biggest problems I had was that I'd sprayed xylene foam inside the cavity at the back of the bus. What a pain that was. If anybody suggests to you that spray foam is a good idea, you'll know you're talking to a complete imbecile. When you need to get at the point where it has been sprayed you have to dig it out, a little at a time, watching for wires buried in it the whole time. So I now have a broken thumbnail that'll take a month to grow out.
That's the stuff to avoid. The best thing you can do with a can of that is to put it on a wall and shoot at it. The foam will burst out and set and make aesthetic art sculptures that you can spray lurid colors and sell to tasteless people on Facebook or Craigslist.
They turn out like that if you shoot them right! Needless to say that was my last ever can of Great Stuff. I now would not touch the stuff with a bargepole.
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