Almost there with the new solar panels.

For those with long memories, a very average painter was employed next door. The painter was not high quality and her work left a lot to be desired. She brought with her a child who should have been in school. That child was a teenager and that child clambered all over the bus, tried to pull the battery door open, left footprints on the hood and the roof and broke the plastic bezel on my old solar panel.

A while back I bought three 10W solar panels. I could not replace the 15W Harbor Freight panel nor would I. Since the bezel had broken the panel was of questionable quality. For safety it was best to replace it. 

I'd put off and put off climbing up to fix it because I just don't like ladders. I like ladders marginally less than I like crawling underneath the bus and I've been putting that off too. Anyway, the new panel assembly isn't light and since I'd injured my wrist when I'd been clearing a path through the jungle a week or two back with my machete and chainsaw, I needed a light template to fit in place of the solar panel array.

The solar array had been built quite a while back. I'd spent days riveting three 10W panels in a line to a pair of lengths of aluminium angle. That made a long, thin panel assembly that was shorter from top to bottom than my existing panel but wider from side to side. Initially I'd tried making the template from foamboard but the glue hadn't worked well. I'd had to use several pieces patched together since the foamboard comes in 30 inch widths and the panel assembly is near 45 inches.

Thinking Gorilla glue might be a better solution I'd put Gorilla glue on the foamboard but when I went to work I picked up some white hardboard sold as wainscot for $11 from Lowes (hiss, spit). Upon my return I was very glad to have bought the hardboard as the foamboard had bent like a banana.

I put the panel assembly on the hardboard and marked it out with a felt tip then scored around it with a craft knife. Out of interest as harboard is very thin, I continued scoring and managed to cut the hardboard with the craft knife. Then I drilled two rivet holes matching the rivet holes in the panel assembly. I didn't drill more because they might not line up and I didn't want to have to struggle.

My next task was to climb up onto the hood of the bus and remove the old solar panel. As it was screwed on using just four M5 bolts, inserted into aluminium rivnuts that was pretty easy. The only tricky bit was where the cable had been sealed. I'd done a really good job with silicone caulk. I'll likely have to use silicone caulk again since nothing bar silicone caulk sticks to silicone caulk. I'm pretty sure there will be some silicone caulk left adhering to the metal. I put some tape over the rivnuts and over the cable hole because I just wasn't sure that there might not be a sprinkle of rain.

The rivnuts I ended up filling with Black Jack polyurethane caulk. Bondo might have been better but the caulk was ready to hand. That was after I'd used a countersinking drill bit to bring the rivnuts flush with the body. Tomorrow I'll put some aluminium tape over the holes since two holes will have aluminium angle across them. The other two might just have a more generous application of caulk.

I turned my mind to the pre-cut template. That's when the tape measure, ruler and set square came out or perhaps should I say - that's when the trouble began! It turned out that the center clearance light is 3 7/8" wide. I assumed that would be dead center. That, as it turned out was a correct assumption.  The panel as cut was 43 3/8" wide. That's when the trouble began....

To get the board centered I needed to mark where the center clearance light would go and hold the board against the clearance light then mark around the sides of the board on the bus so I could see where everything went. To do that was pretty straightforward - in theory... I would take the width of the board and divide by two. Then I would take the width of the clearance light and divide by two. I would subtract the half clearance light from the half board giving me the point on the board where the clearance light would start or end,  measuring from either side of the board. 

The last time I did fraction calculations was in college in around 1990 so that's 30 years ago. I remembered the fraction lessons from elementary school some 45 years ago. I did the calculations by hand using the imperial system of inches and fractions having spent most of my life in Britain using the Metric system. I was absolutely convinced I'd got my calculations wrong and went into the house, cursing that I didn't have a tape measure in Metric. In the house I plugged the calculations into an online fractions calculator and blow me down with a feather - the answers were the exact same figures I'd calculated manually. Still suspicious of the figures I marked it out on the board and proved the figures were right. My old maths teacher - if she was still alive - would have been so proud of me.

Putting the template in place, I measured carefully and after one adjustment in which I corrected the angle of the panel - it had been 1/8th" too high on one end and 1/16th" too far to the left, I drilled my two rivet holes - one at each end. That was pretty much it for today. It has been a very hot day.

For those curious - that indeed is a ladder that I built from three pieces of 2x4 using 28 1/4" hex head screws. It's slightly warped which makes using it interesting but it's very stable and safe. 

Having drilled my two rivet holes that was it for the day. Notice if you will the way the paint has faded. It's possible to see where the old panel was.

Just to emphasize it because it's visible to the naked eye but not so visible to the camera, I tweaked the settings of this photo. Now you can see clearly where the old panel used to be. It doesn't say much for Rustoleum Professional paint for it to fade like this. Indeed the whole bus has faded to be quite patchy. Still, this paint is easy to get, not that expensive and does the job.

Having finished work on the bus for the day I was intrigued by the wiggly lines in the sand underneath. I'm baffled as to what would have caused those as they don't look as the marks I'd imagine a snake would leave. They don't look like marks left by regular critters or by the wind.

Now the obligatory reference to Corona. No - not the cheap and sleazy Mexican beer but the virus. On my rare trips out from the ranch, I wear a mask. I go to the stores and virtually nobody is wearing any kind of mask. It is truly appalling. In fact there's a local restaurant that rumor has it never closed and was packed every day. Even the Walmart workers that have masks don't wear them. Thus my visits to stores are very brief indeed. 

This is the kind of mask I use. It's a 3M respirator with two filters on each side. The first - the brown filter is an organic vapor filter. The second (the white filter held by the clip-on misty housing is an N95 filter. It's probably the most comfortable respirator I've used so far. I do have one with a visor that's a more snug fit but I'm waiting for the add-on N95 filters for that.

Too many people are not taking this Covid stuff seriously. So what if it turns out not to harm you. It is deadlier to the already compromised and the elderly. Save lives - don't expose the elderly or the compromised. This arrogant attitude of the virus deniers is just going to cost lives. What does it matter if you have to wear a mask? It's just like putting a seat belt on when you're in a car. You can take the mask off when you're not around people! I've already had one person refuse to talk to me any more because I won't support their silly ideas about the virus being an attempt to dominate the population by the government. It's a deadly virus - treat it as such and eventually it'll either go away or enough people will have been exposed that its foothold will be nill.