A blazing hot day in Smallville USA

Not a cloud in the sky and the sun was beating down, leaving the hood of the bus scorching hot. My DIY ladder had warped so that was currently sitting in the shed with 5 gallon paint drums sitting on it, slowly straightening it. Thus I had to borrow a step ladder for the purposes of climbing on the bus hood.

Since removing the old solar panel I'd been looking at the site where it had been and thinking it looked a lot better and a lot more anonymous without a solar panel in place. As I'd spent a lot of time and effort designing a solar panel assembly it was time to try to install that.

Knowing that the front of the top has some curvature on it, I put a ruler up against the bus and found to my surprise that it was far more curved than I had anticipated.

Pulling out one of my wedges I checked and the curvature was more than my wedges would handle. This is one of the typical problems I run into. I get something to do a job and it's not quite right. I'd been having second thoughts about putting up a front solar panel. Actually there are two reasons for that. The first is the loss of apparent stealth. The second is that the front of the roof of busses often gets whacked by low hanging branches.

As can be seen, there's a lot of curvature there. Sadly, more than I can get away with ignoring. If I raised the solar panels then I'd run into another issue - the panels would be too close to the roofline and would look asymmetrical.

Lacking any clear solutions to install the panels I decided to fill the two 3/16 drill holes made last time and to fill the 4 original mounting holes. That's where all the fun began...

As many of you know, I have two hand riveters. I have a small red hand riveter from Harbor Freight and a big blue long handled riveter also from Harbor Freight. Both of those riveters are prone to jamming. It takes a long time and a lot of fiddling to unjam them. It can be done though because I have unjammed them several times.

My little red hand riveter started off by putting the first rivet in almost perfectly. The mandrel broke off a bit late, leaving a spike sticking out of the rivet - I trimmed that with my angle grinder. The second rivet went into the riveter just fine but then it all got stuck with the riveter refusing to release the mandrel and refusing to finish squeezing the rivet. That led to my having to use the angle grinder to cut the rivet away from the riveter, cut the head off the rivet and then push the rivet through the rivet hole. Though I couldn't take a good picture of it, what had happened was the mandrel had gone in and gone sideways. It had got jammed between the edges of the two jaws inside the riveter.

Not feeling like working on the riveter again, having unjammed it not more than two rivets before, I turned to my blue long armed Harbor Freight riveter. Blow me down if that didn't jam straight away!

I was left with the riveter hanging from a partially inserted rivet and could go neither forward nor back. I had to get the angle grinder out again!

Well look at that - the rivet mandrel has gone in the side again. This riveter I've had to unjam before. This is the only riveter I have that will do steel rivets. Clearly I'm going to have to sit down and dismantle these two riveters and reassemble them. It's a fiddly, time consuming process that involves a lot of cursing. Last time I did this, I had to repaint the room I was in because everything stayed a delicate shade of blue.

Originally the two 10W panels as the back of the bus powered everything. As my power demands grew I added a 15W at the front. Now that I have added portable power points and can put a pair of 30W panels in the windscreen, I don't really need front solar panels. Just the back panels will keep the battery charged if the bus is not in use. I can always put extra panels in the windshield.

With the state of the riveter I'm very tempted just to buy another. Originally, I almost decided to get an air riveter but saw the price and had to pick myself up from the floor. That was why I went for the long armed riveter.

To fill the 3/16 hole I drilled, I can just use an ordinary rivet. The holes where I had my rivnuts will need a different approach. For those I will use wide flange rivets. I can get them with a 3/4 flange. I'll put a washer on the inside and fill the gap between the washer and the rivet head with Bondo. Then tighten the rivet. It will, I'm certain, be a really challenging operation.

The bigger, more irregular hole I used for the power cable will be a much more interesting proposition. The only way to hide that will be to make it a feature. Maybe get some kind of sign made that can be fastened over the offending aperture.

Getting shot of the front panel means I can just retask some wiring which means I now won't need to redo the wire that doesn't work - that can just be bypassed. I can retask existing wiring for the driving battery charger.

As for the now redundant triple 10W panels plus my other spare 10W panels, they're not going to waste. I have plenty opportunity to use them elsewhere. I even have spare charge controllers. It's always a good thing to have spare solar panels.

Would this be considered money or time wasted? Not really. I could have done different things with the time and money but none of this has left me hurting for time or money. I have learned a bit and changed plans a bit. I've had to order some 3/4 flange rivets and I'll likely have to order a sign to cover up my cable hole.

My next task will be - after I've got the riveter sorted out - to replace the roof vent. Rewiring inside the bus to reuse the front panel wires will not take long. After that I have the rear cameras to sort out, sealing around the keypad to do and wiring the solar driving battery connectors to do. Then there's fixing my bad welding on the back door and possibly putting up some window grills. I had an idea about that of welding a ladder to fit the side of the bus out of 1/16th sheet strip and soldering a steel mesh over that.  That way the bus would look much more a prison bus and be more secure.