I put it off as long as I could...

Then I crawled or rather rolled under the bus to measure the space available for my battery compartment as being 13.5 inches. Then I set to work.

The first thing was to shovel the sugar I dumped from my abortive sugar blasting attempt away. Scooping it up in a shovel set hoards if wasps that had been clustered thickly over it, buzzing around angrily. Clearly using sugar has hazards!

For the next hour or so, the steel for the compartment was measured and cut. The space needed is only 7x11 inches per battery but the compartment will be 19 inches deep - just in case more space is needed.

The next thing was to balance it all together and I must say, it looks pretty decent. After that came the drilling and bolting...

The plan is initially to have a plywood floor on the compartment as it'll initially solely be a cable compartment. Later, I'll replace the floor with something more suited to batteries.

Looking at the cross members underneath the bus, they seem to largely be closed box section with a few c section beams. That's not very welcome as it looks like I'm going to have to get my box welded onto the bus. On the other hand, having it welded on means that at the same time, a stouter floor could be added, stouter sides and my sections could be tack welded for extra security.

I plugged on until I was overcome by mosquitoes and darkness. Looking at my construction it appears the steel of my angle bracket is not a true 90° as the steel section is slightly wedge shaped. Given this is steel from the bedframes the hillbillies installed, I'm not surprised its not quite right. Nothing they used or did was right. I'll plug on and see if I can at least get the front square. It really doesn't matter too much if the back is angled.

That's what it looked like when I finished work for the day. There are still several bolts to install plus lock nuts. I'll have to go over all the bolts with a wrench later, just to make sure everything is tight. It's looking like the bottom will be held on by between 24 and 32 bolts. The top will be held together by a similar number. I think I can defy 1000lbs of battery to cause that lot to sheer. The extra long bolts will be trimmed after the lock nuts have been installed.

I had a casualty. One of my 4.7mm drill bits broke. Perhaps I should say I broke it. I'd drilled through a metal section and the section moved when I was drilling through the second piece. Needless to say, the drill bit objected. Fortunately I had a spare.

Unless I can get a lot done tomorrow, this underbody compartment looks like it could drag on for a couple more weekends. Having said that, its getting ever closer to completion.

In Tractor Supply yesterday I saw some very interesting U bolts. Those could come in handy for my water tanks. That is, of course, if I can bolt through C or I section rather than box section.

I'm beginning to think that I might have to investigate welding. The same nuts on the bus forums advised against Harbor Freight gasless wire welders but then they never think much of non premium solutions. This is of course typical of forums!

After completing the basic compartment construction, the next stage will be to investigate attaching the compartment underneath the bus. I'm expecting to have to trim some of the girder sections. Honestly, I can't wait to be rid of the hillbilly compartment. Left to my own devices, I'd have simply not put an underbody compartment. If I'd had the bus straight from the depot, there are a few things I'd have done differently. One thing is, rather than simply laying plywood over the central walkway, I'd have removed the central walkway!


As it is, the floor has a slight arch in the centre because of the walkway. As it had to be removed as one section, I couldn't do much about it without ripping up the entire floor. Having said that, I suspect that might have been a better option.

The roof

Yesterday I hunted in vain for a tool to use with the compressor to blast the silicone sealant out of the affected seams on the bus. The plan was to use sugar as the blasting compound principally because its more available and cheaper than alternatives.

Proceeding gingerly along the roads, there was little to no sign of flood damage. Indeed, I had to make a detour to see any. Clearly although the flooding has been tragic, the areas I normally visit have been spared. One would not know this, given the constant media coverage. Indeed, I even saw some articulated trucks on the road. Clearly the fears of road instability have been greatly over stated. Indeed this is probably why so many people are ignoring roadblocks.

Visiting store after store, the story was the same at each one. They had grit blasting tools listed but none ever carried in the store despite what the company website claimed. The one place that would have them was Harbor Freight but as visiting them would involve crossing the somewhat suspect Lake Murray dam, I passed on the chance. Instead I shall investigate to see if small areas can be repaired and shall put tape over the affected seams. Maybe after the floods and danger diminish, I can visit Harbor Freight.

The alternative to Harbor Freight is either Northern Tool and a trip across the dam or heating the silicone and scraping it out manually. Had I started that yesterday rather than wasting fuel and hours driving, I could have been done. That would have been today's plan had I not had another fever. It seems I have some kind of rolling virus. I gather others complain of the same virus and how it lasts about a month. That must have been shy yesterday's shopping was do tiring and lackluster.

Today I purchased from eBay a battery powered shower head. The basic plan is to heat water, dump it into my cooler then use that water to shower with. Unlike other shower heads, this one is powered by 4 D cells.

The advantage there is that unlike the rechargeable shower heads with built in batteries, the batteries can be changed. Unlike the 12v plugin shower heads, it runs off a power supply with more possibilities. By that I mean that if I don't have freshly charged D cells, I can use alkaline D cells. Coincidentally, my LED lantern also uses D cells.

That all has me thinking about solar panels to charge AA and D cells. For simple small cell charging, the solar panel need not be gigantic nor expensive. Indeed, 4 D cells might be all that's needed to power my forthcoming front door unlocking system.

Looking at the solar panels available is pretty mind boggling! The whole thing seems vastly complicated. All I want to do is to put a small solar panel on the roof, connect it to a battery charger inside the bus and be done. It's not simple though. As ever, it seems that what I want to do is unusual and not catered toward.

A short term fix for my plumbing came to me this morning. Yesterday while in Walmart I noticed 5 gallon gas cans. My thought is to collect waste water under the bus in a bucket then decant to a 5 gallon gas can for subsequent disposal. For potable water, a few off the shelf camp water containers would work.

Needless to say, these are all inexpensive things that can easily be upgraded at a later stage. Even the cable compartment, rickety as it is, can be upgraded at a later stage. Consideration has to be therefore given to completing the shower plumbing and the interior soft furnishings.

Despite feeling pretty rough, I managed to put a few minutes in, painting the galley floor. It could probably stand more work to attain perfection but it's pretty good. The next thing will be to put a movable vinyl floor covering such as those that protect carpets from mauling by the wheels of swivel chairs.

There are pits and dents in the plywood of the floor. These are due to the plywood the hillbillies laid being of low quality. Still, those sections were in good enough condition not to have to redo which is why they were left. This is probably why they tiled their floor with such disastrous consequences.

Idly I considered visiting the roof. There is an area that needs more grey paint but the paint can is in the middle of the galley workbench which cannot be accessed due to wet paint! Grabbing the ladder, I leaned it against the bus more in hope than anticipation.

As tomorrow is also a non work day, due to the recent floods, I can leave roof stuff until tomorrow. I'll probably just tape the seams with aluminum tape if I can't clearly see any possible leak sites. At least then, it'll all be done. I did look online at a Harbor Freight grit blasting attachment. Online its $17.99 plus $6.99 shipping. Instore it'll likely be the same but a quick calculation showed that gas getting to and from the store was likely to be $4.30 plus a couple of hours time. I think the wear and tear on my car is more than the $2.69 saving. That is, of course, if I opt to clean out the seams instead of taping and painting.

That's what I was going to do. What I really ended up doing was to head to the roof anyway. It took one trip and a look to see the problem. What has happened is rust has lifted the silicone sealant and allowed water underneath.

The three affected seams aren't too bad. It puts paid to my idea of using a wire brush though. I need to get under the seam more than I can with a brush. This looks like it will have to be a grit blaster and the sooner the better! I'll have to hit Harbor Freight tomorrow. For the moment the seams are duct taped against unexpected rain. It looks like I need a lot of rust killing paint and probably some real baking soda since I don't need to blast out silicone. Oddly enough the hard to remove silicone came off easily with a razor blade. I'm glad I caught it before it became too bad. I have no idea what the other seams are really like though they seem OK. The good news is that where I applied rust killer before, without removing any rust, there was very little live rust.

Bus leaks

Well, it seems the bus leaks could well be due to poorly applied silicone sealant. I had to patch somebody else's sorry excuse for silicone sealing. There are two ways forward:
1. The best method which involves drilling out the roof rivets and replacing the rubber seals.
2. Removing the bad silicone seals and replacing them.

Option one would need probably two or more clones of me, all working 24x7 for a week. I'd also need a big garage in which to work on a 35 foot long, 10 foot high vehicle and that had enough clearance for me! That's just not feasible. Then there's the little matter of finding rivets big enough and a riveter that could handle them.

So, option two. Removing silicone is a difficult task. It can be done manually using a razor blade and a wire brush. This is not easy however. A better method is to use a soda blaster. Soda is relatively inexpensive and the blaster would fit on an available compressor. Having done that, its a case of painting and resealing, both of which are relatively quick jobs. As an emergency measure, duct tape could be used. There is a tarred aluminum tape available but that's a British thing that might not be available in the USA.

Looking around, soda blasters go for horrible prices but soda blaster guns seem to be between $18 and $35. There's no particular reason why other powders cannot be used. I have in mind, flour, sugar and ground coffee. As long as everything is bone dry, there is no reason on earth why sugar could not be used. Painting and sealing would have to be done quickly or the first moisture would generate a sticky mess.

I gather respirators and face masks are highly recommended for any kind of blasting operations. I did have a full face mask once but I think I left it behind at a former residence.

For the moment, until I can get a dry enough day to go on the roof, I'm just trying to aim the drips into a less harmful place. Today I noticed a third drip area inside the bus. Clearly I have several seams to blast, paint and caulk.

I didn't do anything inside the bus today. There's really not much left to do. I decided my curtains will have magnets to hold them to the bus. That'll save messing about putting up curtain rails etc. I did want to tidy up but with wet countertops that's not really practical.

Had I been smart then I'd have put duct tape over the leaky seams a few days ago. Mind I've not been well so perhaps prancing around on a bus roof would not have been a good idea.

I did sweep some of the floor then noticed the remains of a can of white paint so I upended it and spread it around the floor. There really wasn't much.

Now that's oil based paint so in theory it should be much more durable than the latex paint I have used to date. The plan is to put the same kind of black vinyl floor covering on top of it in the areas I'll be walking on that I have on the bedroom floor. In reality the black vinyl runner was only a temporary thing but it seems semi permanent.

In other news, more of my electrical system arrived today. Two Nema 5-30 connectors. I'm waiting on the weather to abate before I can do more. Currently the road outside, such as it is, is deep in mud and quite possibly impassible. It's thus not even possible to venture to the store!

posted from Bloggeroid

No pictures but a lot of work

Today got off to a late start but start I did. Going to the bus with the intention of doing something simple - putting green paint in the bathroom - I found as usual that I ended up doing something totally different.

Wanting to get the bedroom table done and out of the way, priming was the obvious thing to do. As the cockpit, closet, drawers and toilet needed priming also, I started in the cockpit. The closet was a bit rushed because it was hot leaning in there so there are gaps. I'll fix those anothger day.

The cockpit walls are well primed though perhaps I should also have primed the floor since it is bare plywood. After the cockpit I moved on and primed some of the toilet before printing the beam in the bedroom and the underside of the table.

Needless to say, as it was over 100F in the bus, I did take several breaks. At one point I had to add water to the paint to thin it as it was getting thick in the heat. I continued on and primed most faces of the drawers and the topside of the table. The new cupboard door saw primer too.

By the time the last drawer had received paint, the light was beginning to fade. I popped the brush in a can of water to keep it soft and left, admiring the fact the cockpit now looks a load better.

Tomorrow is a shopping day. I need solely bolts to lock the drawers shut. I might also get more brushes and rollers. I know I have several brushes but it was all I could do today to find just one!

Of one thing I am certain - the way I'm rip-roaring along, the bus will be painted by the end of the week. Meanwhile, some weeks ago, I glued two pieces of PVC plank together. Looking at it today, that joint is now rock solid. I know exactly what I'm going to build my shower base mount out of! Yup - PVC planks glued together and glued to my PVC floor!