The best laid plans of small marsupials and of homo horizontalis!

I must have been laying down on the job. The idiot at Lowe's sold me a Nema 10-50R when I needed a Nema 30-TTR socket. After battling all day to lay cables, I can't put the socket in place. Without the socket in place, I can't wire the breaker box. Without the wiring completed I can't do any welding.

Tomorrow I might have to venture out in the Black Friday melee to get a socket. Perhaps visiting the mobile home parts store nearby might be in order. Otherwise, its available "cheaply" online at $15 or in my nearby * hiss, spit* Lowe's for $8.

In more positive news I did discover the spare brushes for my angle grinder. I'll have to see if that solves the problem.

Laying the cables needed two people and the conduit isn't even buried yet! The big problem was sliding the 30A cable through 10 foot lengths of conduit. It ends up needing a thin wire passed through, pulling the thicker wire. Even with that, it needed copious quantities of WD-40 to make it possible.

By the end of this weekend, I want to be welding. Heaven knows whether I will be though. Everything this last two months has been characterized by unforeseen delays. Maybe by the 3rd coming of Christ, I might be ready!

Frustrations

Today started with my laying conduit on the ground from the outside breaker box to where I was going to have my plugin. Then I was going to erect a stake for the socket. The plan was to have the electrics completely done today but as with plans, little was actually accomplished.

The blower swiftly removed fallen leaves and the conduit was layed over the ground. The next stage will be to insert the cable and bury the conduit. I can certainly do better than the Dish Network people that didn't bother burying their cables. An ants nest was revealed and the scurrying ants blown away too.

When it came to cutting a point on the metal stake intended for use with the outside socket, I hit my first big problem of the day. My angle grinder stopped working. After some tinkering, I gave up on it as a lost cause and zoomed off to buy a new one. They're cheap enough at Harbor Freight for $15.

After returning home with my new angle grinder, I proudly plugged it in and it didn't work. Nothing I did could make it work. Putting it away and cursing Harbor Freight, I pulled out a hacksaw and completed the task. Then I drove the stake into the ground.

By then, the light was beginning to fail but I took another look at the angle grinder and found how to dismantle it properly. It seems one of the carbon brushes on the motor had broken. Looking around as I recall there had been spares, I found some that didn't fit.

Clearly either I found spare brushes for another device or Harbor Freight put the wrong brushes in the box. This is rather disappointing and frustrating!

As tomorrow is a party day, nothing will be done. Friday being shop til you drop day, should be good. Everybody will be out on the roads hunting non existent bargains. A good time not to go to Harbor Freight!

Even without an angle grinder, I can complete my wiring in order to run my welder. I fully intend to be welding by Sunday night!

In other news, the Peltier cooler arrived. The glue that fixes it to cooling vanes arrived a few days ago as did the solar panel to power it. I'm still waiting for the cooling vanes.

I've ordered a long permanent magnet to use with a home made coil for my door opening device. Failing that I did see a likely looking solenoid but I'd rather try building something myself first rather than going to a last resort of buying somebody else's junk.

This bus project is taking longer than anticipated. Were I starting again, I would definitely take a different route. Meanwhile I'll have another hunt for the right carbon brushes. Harbor Freight surely can't have been dumb enough to supply the wrong brushes?

Haltering progress

As with everything bus, this weekend looks like being little to no progress. Half the things I need have not yet arrived.

Yesterday's shopping trip could have been better and I returned to Home Depot to see whether I could find anything better. I didn't and none of the sales staff seemed to want to do anything other than chat amongst themselves. No point in making a stink about that - they're minimum wage dross who probably can't find a real job. There are a lot of people stuck in worthless retail positions because the mythical masses of jobs just don't exist. The US is still in a very deep depression while the leaders are pretending its not so.

The plan was to bury my cable in conduit. Looking at the ground, although it's sandy, there are an awful lot of tree roots. I had an idea that I should just use a 100 foot 30A extension cable instead. It turned out that would have cost $150. A 20A extension cable 100 feet long was equally costly. While a 15A cable was better priced, it would not have sufficed.

The original plan was thus resurrected. It was suggested to me that rather than digging a trench, I could just lay the cable in a conduit and simply cover the conduit with dirt and rocks. As the conduit would be in an area nobody would work or walk, that would probably work.

Meanwhile, I looked around for the scrap angle iron I'd seen the other day and couldn't find it. That's 100% due to annual inflation in the leaf economy (Autumn). I did find another suitable piece of steel though. I even found steel plate that looked suitable for a battery compartment floor!

Looking around further there was even a rust free carriage bolt that looked usable as the electro magnet I need in order to spring the front door latch. With sufficient coils, the door should open easily. I can't wait to be able to get in and out of the front door.

Today was hindered by a virus. I'm going to take it relatively easily this weekend. Laying cables in overland conduit sounds like a nice light task, the same as making an electromagnet.