Is this the end?

It certainly looks like the end of the road for my cheap Walmart microwave. I count 5 bullet holes in its carcass. Seriously, how can Walmart sell junk like this? After a little over 2 years use the bottom of the microwave inside was very rusty. It lay idle in a dry location for a further 2 years then when I set to cleaning it up, the pan had holes in it under the paint. No wonder every time I cooked, the countertop was covered in nasty looking water.

Today was one of those days when little was accomplished. Mostly that was because I am not really all that well. I didn't go to Lowes (hurrah). I did trim a little of the excess steel from the fridge to make some blanks to cover the apertures under the top front flashers. I started that a little late in the day and despite a spectacular mishap that went to show why only fools would take the guard off an angle grinder, I managed to cut two rectangles of steel.

Once I'd cut the steel, I ground the rusty bits back to clean steel then sprayed both sides with zinc paint. The zinc spray can started dripping and dribbling paint which was annoying but on the other hand this is exctly why I do prefer a brush and pot of paint. There's just no point in wasting a 65c brush for a little bit of painting though. Spray cans are handy for quick, small touch ups and that's about it. I decided on rectangles on the basis that they're easier and faster to cut. As long as they're mounted in the right places, they should have a balanced look. I'll have to trim the top outer corners to match the curve of the roof and I'll have to trim and indentation for the CB aerial. Other than that, the steel should be fine as it is.

As the paint was drying I turned my mind to the rear turn signals and switched one of the lenses over so that unlike the right turn signal, the left now has no arrow. It didn't improve matters. I suspect the bulb could be the problem in the left turn signal. It just seems dimmer than the right turn signal.

By the way, the right turn signal is a completely new unit that I installed last year as is the right hand reversing light. I'll have to replace the bulb to see if it improves matters. Really and truly it doesn't matter to me whether the lens has an arrow on it or not. I just hoped I could make it brighter. So, it looks like a new bulb but I won't stop there. I'll see if I can get some of that silver reflective Christmas wrapping plastic foil and fit it inside each of the light assemblies to improve the amount of light coming from them. These things just aren't visible enough for my liking in daylight.

By the time the light began to go, the paint on my steel plates was not fully dry so I put them inside the bus. I would have liked to have installed them today rather than leaving tape over one of the apertures. Having said that, there's always next weekend and the tape should keep rain out.

I looked at the ground beside the bus. That'll need a good clean up when I finish working on the bus. I have a feeling I'll spend an afternoon picking up trash from the yard! The plan for the big piece of fridge is to cover the lower door window aperture at the back of the bus. I'll have one piece that I'll trim to weld into the aperture. Once that's welded, I'll fill the space behind it with closed cell insulating foam then either use rivnuts and screw a sheet of steel over the inside of the door or rivet a sheet of steel there. On the whole, I think rivnuts make more sense as it allows me to perform maintainance if needed. I just hope I can make my welds waterproof.

I am very disappointed with the amount done today. I know I have overdone it today. I know I overdid it yesterday too. I wanted to go to Lowes to get my final plumbing part. I wanted to put two stop nuts on each bolt for each barrel. I wanted to plumb the shower barrel in fully. I'm still looking at plumbing the handbasin. I just hope I can get everything completed by the end of the month. My dad was griping that I hadn't completed it by April of last year, which was my original completion goal! I think my original target was a little ambitious given that I had so much to learn and that I'm such a perfectionist.

Bang - ouch - grunt - bang - ouch!

That was pretty much how my day went. I spent most of the day underneath the bus, fitting the back on the power inlet. Now I'm using a Nema 5-30 when the recommended connector is the Nema 6-30. Neither has any particular advantage. Both will carry 30A at 120v. It just so happens that I managed to get 6-30 and 5-30 inlets by mistake. The 5-30 connectors were available but the 6-30 were not so I ended up with the solution I have. It's non-standard because the connectors are designed for two live wires as opposed to live and neutral but it works when one is wired live and the other, neutral.

Fighting with 50A cable in the confined space under the bus is not to be recommended. I bumped my head countless times. In the end and after a lot of time, some of which was wasted by having to fetch tools I had not envisaged needing, I managed to put everything together. The cable was too thick to allow me to install a rubber gromet around it. Well, that's not quite true - the cable was so thick and difficult to manover, I didn't manage to install the rubber gromet. I might return to that tomorrow or I might just squirt some silicone sealant in the gaps.
 
I would like to have some sort of guard around the wire but I'm not sure it's going to be that easy to install. Having said that, I can`t imagine anything is going to hit it, where it is.

Today I made use of the old battery compartment I built. I simply tack welded a brace on one side to make it less flexible then tack welded a top on. Now it's a handy support for my redundant 15 gallon barrel. That's going to be used to collect kitchen grease at m'lady's home.
  
At least it's going to have some use. I'm finding that nothing that came with the bus that was attached by the hillbillies was worth keeping. I spent two months working with various attempts at building compartments before I finally decided it wasn't worth the bother.

After welding the compartment remnants together to form something useful, I turned to the gas cylinder. Cutting it open surprised me. The steel was thicker than I'd thought at about 16 gauge and it was rusty inside. Looking at the thickness of the steel, I wasn't surprised that the bullet didn't penetrate both skins. It did prove that the people that hide behind car doors during a gunfight have a point. 9mm will go through the first leaf then the second will stop the bullet. I was quite surprised about that!

As can be seen, the bottom of the cylinder has indentations. This makes the bottom unsuitable for use as a handbasin. The top is similarly unsuitable as it has not just a valve but a pressure release plate. That's all fixable but it's just too much messing about. Better to look elsewhere for my handbasin.

The bullet was surprising. During its entry, it remained complete but seems to have lost its copper jacket at some point. The copper and lead are two entirely separate entities which probably accounts for the double dent on the non-penetrated side. At a guess, I'd say it shed the jacket as it came in through the entry hole.

As you can see, the jacket and the lead core are now separate! I didn't think this would happen.

In terms of what was done today - I put the power inlet into the bus. The main breaker is not yet installed but might be tomorrow. My 20A cables are 30 feet and 20 feet long. The 30 foot long length is just a shade too short to reach the bus. I could move the power socket and really should but I'll leave it where it is. I'll probably get a 40 foot 30A cable and make that up, maybe tomorrow. Tonight it's just too late to go and buy any cabling. 

After dinner, I took my LED lantern and went back to the bus. I didn't leave it plugged in as I have as yet not installed the main breaker box. I'll get to that tomorrow. Instead, I hung my LED lantern up in the bathroom and put up 10 rivnuts with screw eyes. Those will take S hooks and I will hang my shower curtains from them. 

It might be worthwhile to put a further rivnut and screw eye from which to hang the LED lantern. Very handy for showering in the dark! 

Not mentioned so far today, two more of my self-stick blinds have fallen down. Clearly the glue isn't up to much. I need to get some roller blinds to replace them. I might actually put off getting the 30A cable a while. It's not strictly necessary just yet. The main breaker box is far more important!

If I speed on with a trip to the store tomorrow, there's no reason why I can't clean the bus, install the blinds, install the shower curtain and take photos for the retitling process. The shower curtain will take mere minutes to install. The blinds won't take that much longer. Cleaning isn't going to take a huge amount of time either! There's only 210 square feet of bus!

Let there be a place to stick it!

There is a photo of progess so far. The power inlet cover is in place. The grey doesn't match the grey of the bus but there is something I have in my possession that will resolve this - a paintbrush and a pot of paint. "A paintbrush" I hear you exclaim! Well, yes - a paintbrush - because spray cans contain so little actual paint and I have at least 3 or 4 lying around that represent about $20 - $30 of money wasted because the nozzzles won't allow paint out. Even switching nozzles has no perceivable effect. Spray cans are handy for quick touch-ups but only as long as you can use the entire can in one session. A paintbrush and a pot of paint is far less sexy but works far better and costs far less.

As you can see,the breaker box is lying on the ground, still attached to the cable coming through the floor of the bus. If you remember, I buggered up the inlet box that I was going to use on the back of the inlet - behind the skirt - the other day by snapping off two screws in the threaded holes. That was me just not thinking and using an electric screwdriver. Had I used the manual screwdriver I was too tired to find, this would not have happened.

Looking at the point where the cable enters the bus, I rivetted a steel plate around the area. As I installed that with a hand riveter and aluminium rivets while being unable to see what I was doing because of the hillbilly compartment that is now not in existence, that went a bit cockeyed. I'll see about drilling out those aluminum rivets and redoing that entry point. I rather think that replacing the rivets with screws might be a better solution. Instead of using rivets, to use rivnuts and screws. Of couse I'll have to use 10-24 rather than my preferred M5 screws on the basis that America is not all that good at metric stuff. I'll also have to use thread lock or silicone goop to ensure the bolts don't vibrate loose when I'm driving. I'd wondered why the area above felt cold and drafty. Now I know - there's airflow though my badly fitted plate. I can fix that though!

More welding excitement

Reading about welding last night, I found the difference between 6011 and 6013 rods is that 6011 is a penetrating steel that will flow into crevices and 6013 is a rod that will just lie on the surface. As it happens, I'm out of 6013 rods so I went to work on welding two of the pieces of roller shutter assembley together. While doing so, I noted that the 1/16 rod was much easer to work with than the 3/32. I think 3/32 might be a bit much for my welder. It took quite a while to weld the two pieces of steel together which was fine. I must say though that the bitter cold outside was more challenging than the welding.

The biggest problems when welding today were that the two pieces of steel moved slightly in relation to each other. That meant that it was slightly skewed. No matter - it should work just fine as it is. In fact, if there's anything I've built that's geometrically perfect, I'd probably faint! The other problem was that one of the pieces of steel warped while I was welding it.
The warping wasn't expected. The movement of the parts was something I hoped wouldn't happen. I'd wondered whether I should drill and rivet the two pieces together first but decided to wedge it with a brick. Clearly I rocked the whole lot at some point and movement occured.

The next stage was to trim the excess steel off and straighten the bent steel. The angle grinder made quick work of trimming off most of the excess.  Straightening the warped steel was straightforward too - I just pulled out Mohammed's screwdriver and whacked it back into shape.
Having done that, I'd had enough of the bone-chilling wind howling around me and the daylight - such as it was - which wasn't that good due to low hanging and ominous clouds began to fade. Apparently sleet is forecast. I hurriedly sanded where the paint had come off the steel due to welding, brushed the slag off the welds and slapped rust-killing primer on the metalwork. Interestingly, I'd sprayed some clean steel with Rustoleum zinc paint a week ago and it's now rusty. Typical bloody Rustoleum. I really wish I could find paint locally that's not utter garbage. I did idly try some paint with a rather suspicious name of "Miracle" a few days ago. The only miracle was that it was cheaper than Rustoleum. Let's just say it achieved a surface peel in 5 days as opposed to several months for Rustoleum.

Inside the bus I put up the two blackout blinds in the bedroom. One went on crookedly but it works. The other went on quite well and looks pretty good. It's more a privacy thing than anything else.
Following that I put the final white blind up and then on a window that it wasn't possible to put a blind on, I cut a shower curtain and stuck that up with self-adhesive velcro. I'll have to see how all this self-adhesive stuff lasts. I suspect not very long but only time will tell.
Tomorrow I want to try to complete my breaker box compartment and to replace the old cable compartment totally. Before that though, I need to experiment welding thin steel. I really hate that thehillbillies put in that dreadful cable compartment. In fact, I don't think anything they did with the bus was worthwhile. I'm wondering if they simply gave up and sold it when they discovered how half-assed their workmanship had been. 

The big thing is that after I have put the shower curtains up, everything else I do will simply be upgrades. I'll have to order some more 8-24 rivnuts and some 8-24 screw eyes. I did think about self-adhesive stuff but I'm pretty sure all this self-adhesive stuff will fail in the summer heat. I will probably replace the blinds with roller blinds and the shower curtain over the one window with a section cut from a roller blind that's screwed to the framework. I"ll have to wait and see though. 

Even the cable compartment will be an upgrade. The existing compartment is rotted. The new compartment will not rot. Underneath the new compartment I can install the holder for the new power inlet. I bought that the other day. Despite the fact the bottom inch will be visible, it shouldn't be that noticeable. I really didn't want anything hanging below the skirt but I don't think anybody will really notice one or two small things.

Closet chain - check!

Today before work the temperature was a bearable 88 Fahrenheit according to the app I have on my tablet. Thus, it was possible to erect more of the closet chain. The procedure is simple... Drill a small hole where the next screw eye is needed, insert a rivnut then put silicone sealant on the screw eye thread, screw it in, hang an s hook from the screw eye then hang the chain from the s hook. Of course it wasn't that simple. The threaded portion of the screw eyes were too long at 2 inches so a few minutes were spent cutting them down with the angle grinder. The right size drill bit isn't in the toolbox so a smaller hole was drilled and the holes individually enlarged with a reamer.

Having installed more eyes and hooks than before, it appears there's enough space at one end for more screw eyes. As there are three more remaining on the table, it makes sense to use them, which I will after work. That being the case, the closet rail could well be completed today. That leaves the shower base mount, plumbing and electrical. This weekend might see the whole lot completed (but probably won't). I'm a bit of a perfectionist even though many things aren't perfect.

Regarding electrical, the plan was to put a socket on the side of the bus. Then somebody pointed out that the pins on the plug would be exposed and live. That's not particularly desirable so I started hunting for a male socket. Wow! Ripoff! Male plugs can be had for $8 approximately. Female sockets for the same price. Male sockets are $80 - yes, ten times the cost. I'm currently hunting for solutions. Those could include a small hatch with cables that can be pulled out that have inline male plugs.

In order to drive costs down and versatility up, I'll have two inputs for electricity, both rated at 30A. 50A cable just seems impossibly expensive! Mind, for the amount of power I'm likely to use, a 20A supply should be adequate. Plans for the electrical system will be unveiled when its completed.

Meanwhile, the weather app is rather amusing. There I am, working on my bus is 88F that the app says feels like 92F and it suggests I wear this! Somehow, I don't think that'll be happening!

The weather part of the app is actually pretty good, however.

At the moment, the plan is still for a manual pump to pump water from underbody holding tanks. Had I realised what an annoyance it was going to be to put sufficient electrical power to run a microwave into the buys would be, I'd probably have used gas instead.

After work a trip to Lowe's happened. Let's just say it took several of Lowe's staff to pick me up off the floor and administer several doses if smelling salts after I saw some of their prices! Looking for cheaper ways around the $80 ripoff, I found all my potential alternatives were coming in at even higher prices!

Thinking around the situation, I'm going to trim my electrical system to just 3 sockets. One side of the breaker box is going to be individual 15A breakers going to sockets with the other side containing just one breaker going to the other side as a master breaker. That breaker is going to be 30A. Although I'd have liked higher amperage, I really can't see paying out the nose for all these electrics. Especially when the maximum I can envision using is going to be around 20 amps.

On eBay I saw a 30A male socket going for $15. That's doable. It probably means I'm going to have to fiddle around with my socket box but again, that's doable. I am getting very much a feeling that I screwed up when I bought my breaker box and RV outlet box. If I cut back further and used just two sockets then one could be the fridge while the other could be something else.

However I look at it, the main problem seems to be the breaker box with no master breaker position. I bought a waterproof box when I thought I would mount it under the bus. The next major problem is the electrical connector. There are so many to choose from and a vast number of prices!

This whole thing gives me such headaches! Wiring safety is not an issue - its all straightforward and a case of not putting more amps through a cable than it was designed to take. That's what breakers are for! In the end, for $19.02 I ordered from eBay a 30A twist lock socket. It has features I'm not keen on - namely the twist lock. I'd rather it popped out if somebody got their foot caught in it! I'm also not keen on the close proximity of screws that go through the plug to the pins on the plug. I'll figure it out though even if I end up using a load of epoxy putty!

Lastly, I completed my closet chain. The angle grinder gave an absolutely spectacular shower of sparks as I trimmed the last two screw eyes to length. The usual performance of drilling then reaming continued. All this was done after the sun had set. I absolutely love my LED lantern.

The end result was this and I can now consider the bedroom complete save for blinds.

4 screws to a marathon!

The idea was simple - to bolt the final upright into place for the front closet. Practice was a different matter entirely! It didn't help that the temperature was 111Fahrenheit either!

The first bracket bolted in nicely. Then after such little exertion as drilling two holes in the wood and two holes in the seat rail then bolting a bracket to the rail and screwing the bracket to the wood, the heat was too much and I had to retreat indoors.

Returning to the fray which was now 97F, I marked the place for the second bracket, having checked the wood was vertical. I drilled thge holes and bolted the bracket to the side of the bus then had a problem.

The head protector on the door lintel was blocking access for the drill to make holes to screw the wood to the bracket. Fortunately it was held on only by 3 self drilling screws. Those were undone and as normal, most just spun in their holes. One went bouncing down the steps and out the door into yard debris.

I resolved to replace the screws with rivnuts. Enlarging the holes was easy enough though one hole had been mangled by whoever put the protector up. So, I got on with my beam and after securing that, turned my attention to the protector.

Two rivnuts went in well, the third not so well. When the protector was in place, one bolt just spun, indicating that removing it if I have to will require an angle grinder! Maybe I'd have been better off using rivets?

Having done it all, I measured for a low cross member then stepped back to admire my work. Looking up and down, it looked fine. Then I saw it! The vertical was straight until the bottom 18 inches. The bottom 18 inches bowed forward. More of America's "wonderful" wood! How a country can build homes with wood of the low quality available, I don't know! Anyway, as it has only to support an OSB panel, its not too bad.

Knocking off for the evening with sweat pouring off me, I noticed how the bus had sunk into the ground. I suppose 13 tons will sink a bit. Probably time to start the engine again and move it a bit!