Patched a small hole. Very exciting stuff!

Today I did a small project. In the old incarnation of the upper backup camera, the camera cable was quite a way below the camera mount. Thus when I put the new camera in with the cable going through the tube it's mounted on. The mounting plate wasn't big enough to cover both sets of holes. Today I put a plate over the last remaining hole and riveted it in place.

The steel plate was a cutoff from when I put the steel sheet over the outside of the bottom window of the door. That was where I had to make room for the hinge. I had to cut that cutoff in two to get a piece the right size. That, of course, shows you why you store your cutoffs from everything. You never know when it'll come in handy. That steel plate must have been done a year or so back. 

Once the plate was in place - I did put Dynotron caulk behind the plate and underneath each rivet, I sprayed it white to match the bus except there's enough dirt on the bus now that it's more grey than white. Before I go anywhere in it, I'll have to give consideration to washing it. That'll take about an hour by hand with a manual pressure sprayer with 2 gallons of water in the bucket, some soap and a mop.

The Dynotron caulk was at its end. No more would come out when I removed the seal from the nozzle and pulled the trigger. The plunger was right at the end of its travel. I did not have to open a new tube however - cutting the tube open allowed access to more caulk than I really needed for today's project.  A good slathering went over the back side of the steel plate, onto the backs of the rivets and around the edges of the steel plate. Finally I put some over the ends of the rivets just to make sure it's all sealed. 

This time around I used aluminium rivets. Steel seemed a bit of a waste. I'd have had to get the big riveter out and this was just a light hand job. The steel plate will have no pressure on it and four aluminium rivets are strong enough to stand up to holding an ounce of steel plate. I'm not expecting anything to press on that plate either. 

So we end a long dry patch in which I have done little to nothing with the bus. Remaining to be done as far as I can think right now...

• Brake lines to finish
• Tyres to replace
• Right wiper mount to re-rebuild.
• Some fiddling with the USB socket over the microwave
• Adding a fuse box inside the front console.
• Complete the solar charging setup for the driving batteries.

That was all on my old list. I've taken off the list a cable to the driving battery compartment. I am pretty sure that the lithium batteries will not like the cold weather and will simply shut down on cold days. That does not worry me. I might add a second battery connection on the kill switch and have that feed to a socket on the side of the bus that allows me to plug in a lead-acid battery that can sit on the ground outside. I can probably still get some power out of the old lead-acid deep-cycle batteries - enough to power lights etc if not the extraction fans.

The cross-view mirrors I bought seem to have reacted poorly to the plastic bags I had protecting them when I was painting the bus. They seem to have gone white which is strange as it's clearly not paint. They'll need to be replaced. This is probably the 3rd set I'm buying. The first was not curved enough. The second was right but something happened to them. The third is coming as soon as I order them.

The new list adds:

• Two extra external solar connectors, one at the front and one at the back
• External connector for extra batteries
• Replace cross-view mirrors

The list is now down to single digits again. I can confirm that the new vent that I installed seems to be coping with the recent heavy rain. I have a paper towel underneath it supported by a plastic sheet that's held up by very feeble magnets. If water collects, the towel gets heavy and falls. I'll give that a few days of really heavy rain to see what happens.

Not much of anything

Today was one of those days where more could have got done had I not been exhausted by five 12-hour days plus a busy Saturday.

The first thing that was done was to pour more of the white powder mix into the mold with a sample aluminium plate in place. I did test the white stuff with a blowtorch and while it glowed, it did not change colour. It is definitely soft so I'll have to see what exactly it does with the aluminium when I try to weld.

Having poured the mix over the aluminium in the mold it did cure as stated in about an hour but it was a couple of hours later when I scraped the white stuff back to reveal the aluminium plate. I did try to move the aluminium but the white stuff started to come up too. Perhaps I should have sprayed it with some kind of mold oil? I left the aluminium in place and put the whole lot in the bus. Maybe some heating/cooling cycles will have the desired effect. If not, I can pry the aluminium out and see how good the mold is.

Next, I pulled out the metal I had painted last time and cut it to size to fit over the cable hole above the current camera mount. I'll have to drill rivet holes later as I still need to fit it more precisely.

Finally, above the bed, in the bedroom, I caulked the edges of the board inserted where I did have accessible windows and removed the four roller blind mounts. That'll make a big difference. When I slept in the bus last time I was in danger of clonking my head on those things. Being pointy, metal and sharp there was a risk of hitting an eye on one of those. Definitely not safe. Now they're gone.

I'll have to slap some pink paint on the edges - and a couple of places where the paint isn't so good and then I'll say that area is completed.

As far as the metal cover over the cable hole is concerned, that will be done another day. It's not a big job but I just didn't feel like hefting the stepladder nor climbing it today. As for the aluminium, I'll probably get to that next weekend. I need to do a test weld first. This is all experimental so far. If the test weld turns out OK then I'll buy some longer pieces of aluminium that I can join for real and see how that works out. The aim, as ever, is to cover all of the windows with three wide aluminium bars painted white. That way the bus will look ever more like a prison bus.