Working towards goals.

Today I didn’t really feel like lying on the ground under the bus doing the necessary wiring and tightening a few nuts and bolts so I worked inside instead. Because my extraction fans have such a high current draw they have been defeating my house battery. All is not lost however. 

On eBay I found this nifty little battery protecting circuit. My current thought is to power the fans directly from solar power. I can install a simple bypass relay that will route power to the fans straight from an external solar panel. The current switch is just there to prevent the fans from starting before there’s enough power to run them properly. In the event insufficient power gets to the motor, the coils could heat up and burn out.

So far all I’ve done is set the threshold voltage to 11.5V to turn the power off and 18v to turn it off again. Just in case the panels provide too much power!

I had a go also at installing my DVR for the rear camera. I tried a splitter since the video feed through doesn’t seem to work with my system. Bizarre but there you are - this is how Chinese stuff works or doesn’t work. One thing I did was to snip off the microphone connector since there’s absolutely no reason to have a microphone or an audio track. If somebody shoves their car under my back bumper all I need is a video file showing they did it and that I was not reversing.

I ran into a snag, however. It seems my power drills are too big to fit into the space available. I could drill the mount holes for the unit with no problem. The problem came when I wanted to drill the hole for the cables to go through. In the end after hunting online I found that 90 degree drill converters were available. Locally they were $20 or more. Online I could get one for $6, shipped. I ordered one.

In other news I’ve been having problems since 2014 with my 2007 MacBook. It started with the screen going dark and needing the brighter and darker buttons to be toggled. Then the battery died so I thought it was the battery. I bought a $20 battery on eBay and it worked - for two weeks then that battery died. I semi-retired my MacBook and started using tablets. I went through a huge number of Android tablets before finally, 3 years ago, finding an end of line iPad Mini. That I’ve been using ever since. It’s good but the memory is minimal and it needs regular flushing. It’s also not something I can do much with other than web consumption and blogging. Even with a keyboard it’s not that great.

Recently I had another go at my MacBook. I bought a new battery but not an actual Apple battery - I didnt want to spend $200. Then I found the hard drive wasn’t reading correctly so I got a new hard drive for it. Then I couldn’t find the operating system disk to reinstall the operating system. I bought a new disk and tried to reinstall but it didn’t go well. It needed an update and refused to update over wifi. I bought a cable to connect directly to the router. It still wouldn’t update. I downloaded the update onto a memory stick using a windows system. Then I tried updating that way. Again, no joy. It refused to update.

With a lack of ideas I put a Linux CD in and installed Linux. That kinda worked but the screen kept going dark so I could not see whaat was on the screen without shining a bright light at it. All very strange!

Ok. This is a bus blog so why am I prattling on about my laptop issues? Simply because in the beginning my updates were all done on my MacBook and because I find computers far easier to use than tablets. Now the reason I had a Mac was because I really find Windows is user unfriendly. It seems though that I’m looking now to replace my MacBook with a new computer. I know how much money I have and how much I make and how much I can afford. The problem is I really hate spending money. While at a stretch I could probably afford a MacBook (and I did see B&H with a 2017 mmodel for less than $1,000), I’m thinking more toward a $200 Windows 10 model and installing Linux instead of Windows.

I saw this one in Best Buy. It looks like it could be a good deal but only if I can be sure of ripping Windows off it and putting Linux on it. I just don’t like Windows and Windows has been bloody awful in so many of its incarnations. Let’s look at them...

1. Windows 3.1 - This was actually quite good and was before the centralized registry
2. Windows 95 - This crashed an awful lot and introduced people to losing loads of data as being ”normal”.
3. Windows 98 - Continued the same crash ridden, data losing as Windows 95.
4. Windows ME - Not quite sure what improvement this was but it still crashed and lost data.
5. Windows SE - pretty much the same as ME but with a different name.
6. Windows NT4 - pretty good actually save for a problem with bigger hard drives and no USB support.
7. Windows XP - introduced a centralized permission slip. If microsoft wanted to kale the operating system they could by simply not allowing me to use it. Big brother strikes.
8. Windows Vista - bloody slow and probably some kind of joke Microsoft played on the public.
9. Windows 7, 8 and 10 - no experience but I imagine they will show all of the truly stupendously evil traits of the previous Microsoft operating systems. 

When Vista came out in 2007 I upgraded to a Mac. Now my Mac is probably beyond redemption and since its creator is now in the next world, it’s probably time to try Linux again. I did use Linux quite seriously a few years ago. I used it as a server and I used it as desktop computer. It worked really quite well. I gather the Asus was designed to be used with Linux but hasn’r Been sold with Linux installed. Given the price of $200 as opposed to $1,000 or more, you can see why I’m looking at Linux and this little Asus!

Remaining to do are little things like a solar input at the back, wiring up the new battery holder and installing the recorder for the back camera. While I’m at it, I’ll install a recorder for a yet-to-be-installed front camera. I did have an idea of using a camera that I took out of my car afte it blew a fuse. That needed a new USB connector to be soldered on. That connector arrived in the post today and I duly soldered it on. Whoops! It was the wrong gender!

Somewhere I have a gender changer plug but I’m pretty sure that is also the wrong gender. 

Today seems to have been a day when nothing really went to plan. I’m hoping tomorrow is better. It was almost warm enough to go under the bus. I just didn’t feel like it though.

Dumbass things that bus converters do!

Over the years I have seen some crazy things that bus converters do.
1. Covering over or welding shut emergency exits. The word emergency is important. If you cover over or weld shut emergency exits then you run the very real risk of dying in your bus should an emergency occur. They’re put there for a reason! In a real Bus evacuation, the aim is to have the bus evacuated in under two minutes and that’s as a school bus with hardly any flammable materials inside. A motorhome conversion is a tinderbox on wheels!
2. Removing the bifold door from the front and replacing it with one of the rather useless RV doors or even worse a house door. The bifold door has many advanatages including durability and having glass panels the while length. House doors with glass have not got the right kind of glass and could be very dangerous.
3. Raising the roof. If you need to raise the roof then you’ve bought a bus that’s too short. That’s a buyer’s error. In any case, how much standing will you be doing in a bus? I’m six feet tall and my head does not touch the ceiling of any known school bus. I should know - I drive the blessed things for work.
4. Removing interior ceiling and wall panels in the vain hope of making the bus warmer inside by replacing them with wood. It’s a bus - it’ll leak heat through every oriface and every surface. There’s just no way of doing it economically.
5. Believing their busses will last forever. They’ve been sold by a school district. They’ve been hammered by bad drivers and have had accidents poorly repaired by underpaid and overworked bus mechanics. They’ve had their oil changed once a year instead of every 10,000 miles. That’s three times over the recommended changes. They’re not going to last forever!
6. Whining about insurance. Nobody is going to insure a self-built bus conversion. Nobody is going to inspect a self-built bus conversion. The best you’re going to get is a standard collision only policy.
7. Not knowing how to drive a bus. That’s one of the craziest ever things. A bus is twice the width, twice the length (or more) and three times the height (or more) of an average car. It’s also ten times the weight. The braking system is different - powerful air brakes as opposed to the pathetic hydraulic brakes of a car. Driving it is a very different experience.
8. Not performing a pre-trip inspection before driving their bus. Tyres, lights, fluid, belts, brakes, horn, wipers etc all have to be inspected before each trip.
9. Not doing annual or mileage maintainance.
10. Believing internet baloney about it being possible to get highway speeds out of a school bus designed to spend 90% of its life on back roads and dirt tracks. Sure - it might be “possible” to get more than 55mph from a school bus by tinkering with the engine, it is not prudent as it shortens the life of the engine.
11. Repeating internet baloney. There is no such thing as a bad engine or a bad transmission. The problems reported by bus conversion owners are almost always down to bad driving, bad maintainance or bad modifications.
12. Whining about the costs of running a bus. Tyres are costly $250 - $500 each or $1,500 - $3,000 for all six. Servicing is costly at about $1,000 a go.
13. Buying a school bus with no idea about parking regulations where you want to park it.
14. Believing a bus conversion will be cheaper to live in than renting the cheapest mobile home. Sure - it might be possible but it’s debatable. The cheapest parking will be a lot of land in the countryside outside zoning regulations.

I see those as the most common whines online. There are more. I see so much craziness online. One of the craziest is that people pay redneck bus converters to convert their busses for them when it would be so much cheaper just to buy a used motorhome.

I have converted my bus and done everything myself. I have not paid anybody to do anything. I made my own cabinets - did all my own carpentry and after teaching myself to weld, did my own welding. I attended no welding classes nor did I watch any welding videos. I used the cheapest welder I could get and was told soundly by online groups that I could not weld, could not weld using that welder etc. Well, my welds hold strongly and are in use. That should tell you everything you need to know about internet advise!

Latest news

I decided a while back to put a second battery in place for my solar system. Thus a while ago I welded one together and later bolted it into place. That was where things stayed for a long time since work at 12+ hours a day is pretty exhausting.

The other day I tried to install my new DVR unit thinking it would be easy. Indeed it is supposed to be easy. In fact though, it is anything but easy.

Needless to say it’s probably Chinese. There are two video connectors and two audio connectors. One is for audio/video in and the other for audio/video out. It’s supposed to sit between the camera and monitor. Try as I might though and I could get it to record video nicely. I could not get it to output the video to the monitor. Thus after thinking for a while I decided to put a Y connector (which has been ordered but has yet to arrive) so that I can read the video signal and show it on the screen without having to process it through the unit (which seems to lose the signal).  More testing will be needed so I’ve been unable to install it yet. In anticipation I ordered a pair of microphones (I needed one but they came in pairs) thinking this would be my front video camera controller. I will probably buy another to do my front recording if it works just fine for recording my rear view camera.

Today though as it was wet there was no hope of working under the bus. Thus I worked inside. As many of you know when I last moved hours I did what I normally do and emptied whole drawers into plastic totes to go through later. I’ve done that 3 times in a row now! Thus I have plastic totes filled with goodness knows what. So I spent the day going through totes.

I didn’t find the key to the gold vault or a signed confession by the real assassin of JFK. I didn’t find the lost ark either. I did, however, find that I had an awful ot of just plain trash. Most of what was in those totes was old court documents, old pay stubs, old bank statements from banks I no longer use and thousands of receipts - most of which were too faded to read.

The amount that passed through the first sifting reduced the quantity from 5 boxes to 4 and I’m sure I can reduce it yet further. I have yet more boxes to go through. Most of the stuff in those boxes I have not seen for upto nine years. It all has to be gone through though. Some of it is inspiring letters and cards from my late mother. Those are definitely keepers since she won’t be sending more.

One thing I found is my surveillance clock. It’s a neat little clock that looks worthless but records anything that moves in front of it. I’d used that years ago to record somebody that kept breaking into a place I used to stay at. Now though I’m afraid it has seen better days. Despite being quite expensive, the plastic was cheap and has just become sticky. It’s not that it has got sticky it’s that the plastic has begun to break down. I’ve heard of this happening before with some of the Panasonic cameras. I’m sure I have encountered it before too.

You can probably see the oily sheen on the surface of the plastic. There’s nothing as far as I know that can be done when plastic breaks down other than to throw it away and buy another. I’m sad because this is a $50 surveillance device but on the other hand it had served its purpose and I have better devices now.

I looked out of the bus window and saw what appears to have been a buzzard that was dragging a wing on the ground. When it saw me, it hopped away, dragging its wing. Figuring it was badly injured I went to grab my rifle so that I could put the thing out if its misery without it having all the pain and fear as some other animal tore it apart alive. By the time I’d loaded my rifle and put the magazine in, the thing had vanished. I just hope it has a quick and painless end with no fear.

One of the things I kept finding was old second generation phones. I have so many defunct Virgin flip phones that it’s not even funny! I’ll have to try charging them and copying down any numbers etc. Then I’m not sure what on earth I can do with phones that are on networks that no longer exist short of using them as rifle targets or fishing weights.

Blanket on the ground

Come and look out through the window 

That big old moon is shinin' down 

Tell me now don't it remind you 

Of a blanket on the ground

Finally after almost 4 years of working on and under my bus I figured out a way of staying somewhat cleaner. I threw a $2.99 Harbor Freight tarpaulin on the ground. It makes such a difference. Now I can slide more easily and I don’t lose things like nuts and washers in the sand under the bus. I can even throw it on wet ground and stay dry. I wish I’d thought of this years ago.

What with my day job I’m pretty busy. I leave for work at 5AM and don’t actually return until something after 5PM. Though I’m actually at work from 5:25AM to 4:45PM I don’t actually get paid for 11 hours despite the fact that I should be. I drive a school bus from 5:30 (5:25 if you count my morning checks) until 8:30 then I have to sit around until 10:15 when my next run starts. There’s no way I can go to do anything for two hours or less that would make money. Essentially it’s dead, wasted time. My next run returns at 12:PM and again I have to sit around until 1:45PM which is when I start my afternoon run and that ends at 4:45PM. Again, I have around two unproductive hours. So my day isn’t actually as long as it sounds. I get about 8:45 of paid work and the rest should be paid because I can’t do anything with it and don’t even leave the premises.

So, I don’t generally have very much time during the week in fact let’s say no time to do anything. Saturday is usually a recuperation day and Sunday a catch up laundry day. I have however managed to squeeze some time in over the last few weeks to do something.

About a month ago I decided to make another battery hanger. Not to replace my existing hanger but to complement it. I’d found that using my brand new Duracell battery from Batteries Plus Bulbs I was getting the same poor results that I was achieving with my old Harbor Freight battery. That led me to suspect that the problem is that the battery does not like putting out more than about 2amps. The symptoms are the same. If I have both extraction fans on then between them and my door unlocker (which is constantly powered) I’m using around 3.92A. Under that load, the battery voltage drops rapidly. Turning the load off, the voltage recovers rapidly. Thus I suspect that while the battery will hold 35AH, it does not like to disgorge that at a rate fast enough for me.

My solution to the battery problem was to build another battery hanger so I can put my Harbor Freight battery back in place but in parallel with my Duracell battery. Now I’d been convinced to use a brand name battery by people that had decried everything from Harbor Freight as being cheap trash.  Some Harbor Freight stuff does not last that long but then some stuff I bough elsewhere did not last too long either. At the end of the day it doesn’t matter what brand is on it - it’s all made by the Yellow Peril and arrives in American in a shipping container. It is (I hope) unlikely that my battery solution will not be the correct solution.

Today I threw the tarpaulin on the ground and went under the bus to install my new battery hanger. Using two power drills - one with a nut spinner and one with the drill bit - I got the task completed in under an hour. The next stage will be to install the wiring but before I can do that, I have to wait for parts to arrive.

I had to put the new hanger a bit closer to the side of the skirt than I did with the previous hanger due to the proximity of the exhaust. I don’t expect heat from the exhaust will hurt the battery but I wanted to keep as great separation as I could. It’s secured by 8 bolts of 5/16 inch diameter. Those should hold  3,900lbs each for a grand total of 31,200lbs or to put it in perspective they’ll hold the weight of my bus. The weight they will be holding is the 10lbs or so of my battery hanger and the 20lbs of my battery. That’s a grand total of 30lbs and the safety margin is something like 1,000%.

In this picture you can see both battery hangers - the new one in silver at the top of the photo and the old one in white at the bottom of the photo. They’re slightly different in size - I had only a Harbor Freight battery when I built the first one and while it holds the Harbor Freight battery nicely, it’s a bit tight on the Duracell. Though they’re both allegedly a U1 size, the sizing isn’t exact. When I put the wiring in, I’ll switch the batteries around.

I have almost all the bits needed for the wiring. I’m missing the fuse holder. I was going to put a breaker in place under the bus but I decided a fuse would be way better. I have some self-resetting breakers I will be using. The manual reset breaker would have been a problem in that I’d have had to go under to reset it and in the event it tripped from the motion and vibration of the bus, it would have been annoying. A fuse solves that problem as it won’t vibrate into an off position.

If the extra battery does not solve the problem (though it will use up my spare battery), my next solution will be to modify the solar input at the back of the bus. I’d been planning a solar input at the back but that was to charge the solar batteries. What I think I’ll do is route it, using a relay and a resistor through to the fans. That way when there’s sufficient voltage to run the fans, they’ll run directly from solar panels. The resistor will just make sure the relay doesn’t trip and switch the fans on until there’s sufficient power in order to prevent overheating the fan motors. Relays are way cheaper and easier to replace!

The major headache is the ventilation system. That uses by far the most power. This is the only reason I have my two portable 30W panels. The rest of the bus systems will work very happily on my existing 35W of solar array.

As those of you who are familiar with my bus know, I have a penchant for humorous yet sinister destination signs at the front of the bus. I quite like my first sign that said “Fort Leavenworth Death Row Express” and I have one now that says “Fort Leavenworth Prison Choir”. I am on the lookout for other interesting signs to put in the window. I did like the idea of putting “Marine Transgender Football Team” but I kinda like the Fort Leavenworth connection. Suggestions? The comments are always available for suggestions!

Dumbasses!

In every field there are dumbasses. Usually such people believe everything they read in popular tawdry rags on an online in dodgy discussion groups. A former coworker described internet groups rather succinctly as “Maximum noise, maximum time soak, minimum technical information” and it’s so absolutely true.

In the bus groups and I have been a member of many I have heard many strange things...
The AT545 is a poor transmission
The DT466 is a poor engine
You can get 70mph out of a schoolbus
Bigger tyres make you go faster
Hydraulic brakes are bad

Let’s take all these myths and lay them to rest.

“The AT545 is a poor transmission”. This is usually accompanied by some claim that the person making the claim had one burn out on them or perhaps more or had some other disaster. The actual fact is rather different. The AT545 is a fine transmission. Mine ran out of transmission fluid which stalled the engine. Rather than restarting the engine after it stalled, I leapt out and checked my fluids. There was no transmission fluid on the dipstick so I called for a tow. Because I did that, I did not damage the transmission so all it needed was a replaced seal and more transmission fluid. I now carry two gallons of spare transmission fluid, just in case. Another claim is that the AT545 cannot be used downhill to slow a vehicle. This is a nonsense claim. All transmission can be used to slow a vehicle going down a hill. Just put it in a lower gear and when speed picks up too much, brake down to the speed you want then let the brake cool while the transmission and engine eases you down the hill. For a steep hill, I suggest slipping the transmission into 1.

“The DT466 is a poor engine”. No - it’s a fine engine. It was designed for hauling plenty weight. It’s not a Ferrari engine and it never will be. This is an excellent engine for towing etc. It’s not for interstate racing. A well maintained DT466 will last for hundreds of thousands if not millions of miles. It has an upper rev limit of 2900 RPM. I have heard other say it maxes at 3000 and others say it can be made to go faster. Sure it can - just like you can put nitrous and high octane fuel in a Ford Escort. It will run fast and furious but will break pretty quickly. It’s intended use is medium speed hauling. It’s an about town hailing engine, not am interstate engine. Leave it governed to 2500RPM and you’ll have a happy engine for years if not decades.

“You can get 70mph out of a schoolbus”. Sure you can but you’re going to burn out that engine and transmission. If you throw it off a bridge I bet you can get it to go even faster than 70mph. Of course when it reaches the bottom, you probably won’t find it still runs. The official specification for a school bus is “Must achieve 55mph” and that’s it. Thus most schoolbusses can do 55mph - on the flat. Uphill it drops to 35 and downhill you can get 70. 70 is not advisable as must busses have F rated tyres. F is 50mph. For reference, here are some tyre speed ratings...
F Up to 50 mph
G Up to 56 mph
J Up to 62 mph
K Up to 68 mph
L Up to 75 mph

Schoolbusses were designed to spend 90% of their life on backroads and dirt tracks at anything up to 45mph. On my daily school runs (I drive a schoolbus) I spend most of my time in housing estates at between 20 and 30mph, depending on the speed signs. I do spend periods of up to 10 minutes at 45mph getting between housing estates on 45mph rural roads. Not once in my day do I need to go over 45mph. That’s not to say that I have not had to on some routes. I drove a route one year that involved two interstates. I used a variety of busses. Some would do 57mph with my foot on the floor. Some would barely do 45mph. They were fine. All the interstate traffic was roaring past me. On the other hand even when I’m in my car and 5 or 10mph over the limit, the vast majority are still screaming past me. Hence I stick to the limit in my car and to whatever the bus will do in a work bus.

If you want a bus that goes faster then honestly you shouldn’t have bought a schoolbus. You know how fast they go from when you were a child. You know the legal limit is 55mph for a schoolbus on a road with a limit of 60mph or faster and 45mph or the actual speed limit (whichever is the lesser) on all slower roads. Souping up your engine is not going to help - it’ll burn through fuel at a horrible rate, will wreck the engine and leave you no better off.

“Bigger tyres make you go faster” or “A higher ratio back axle makes you go faster”. Both of these are disingenuous. They will increase speed on the flat but will negatively impact speed uphill and downhill. Downhill you need the gearing and tyre size to be right in order to control descent correctly. Uphill if your ratio is wrong or your tyres too big, you’re putting way too much strain on the engine.

“Hydraulic brakes are bad”. This is utter nonsense. Cars have hydraulic brakes with hardly any problems. Somebody wrote that their hydraulic line suddenly burst and left them with no brakes on their bus. That is complete nonsense as all hydraulic systems have a cable backup system. It is also indicative of a complete lack of inspections and maintainance going back several years. The cry is “air brakes are safer”. Not really - if an air hose breaks or gets snagged then there’s a sudden release of pressure which means the brakes all come on full instantly which in traffic can have deadly consequences. Air brakes and hydraulic brakes both have their pluses and minuses. It’s like drum versus disk brakes - they’re both equally good. The sole advantage of air brakes is that it’s very simple just to add a couple of hoses and control the brakes on a trailer. With hydraulic there’s a lot of fiddling using ancialiary electrical systems.

So, in conclusion - if your stock schoolbus won’t do what you want to do then sell it and buy something else. For the rest of us that have no desire to race on interstates, guzzling fuel, a schoolbus is just fine.

In other news, this is the completed battery hanger with its final coat of paint. I’d run out of white so I had to use silver. That’s just waiting for a weekend for me to get under the bus to fit and bolt it into place. When my connectors etc arrive I can wire it into place and install my despised Harbor Freight battery.

The Final Answer to the Insurance Question

Today I had been hoping to be off on my next trip in the bus. I’d had to book to see the HR people about my 401K so I’d booked early and asked if there was space in the parking lot for my bus as I felt I’d be pausing in my bus on my way somewhere. That’s not quite how things happened though. Let’s run back a few days...

I normally work from 5:30am til 4:30pm with just two two hour breaks. That means overtime every day. Anyway, there was a hurricane that swept through the state on Thursday so on Wednesday they announced work would be cancelled for Thursday. Friday was already a day when work was not scheduled. Thus I’d arranged to go to HR on Friday morning. Well, Thursday came and the hurricane swept through. The rain was pretty intense and managed to enter the bus through the roof vent that Carpenter put at the front of the bus. Normally water does not enter. It was not entering majorly but it was entering and probably soaking the insulation inside the roof cavity. It was dripping onto the door opening handle in the centre of the console and water was dripping over the instrument cluster and in other places under the console too. This is not a very happy state of affairs!

So, I set out on Friday to my HR meeting and got there in time despite not really knowing the way and having left my GPS in the bus. Speaking of GPS mine is fine for my car. I need one that will avoid steep downgrades and very low bridges for the bus. I gather Magellan might do one. Mine is a Garmen.

The meeting went well and I left the HR guru after a good chat about busses and motorhomes. From there I went to Tractor supply as on the way I’d decided that since both my Harbor Freight and Duracell 35AH batteries experienced rapid voltage drop when a 3.92A load was applied then an instant voltage recovery when the load was removed, they were both probably not ideally suited to a load greater than 2amps.

Having decided to put an extra battery hanger on with (at the moment) my Harbor Freight battery paired up with my Duracell, assuming the Harbor Freight battery still has a decent voltage when I check it, I went to Tractor Supply for supplies. I got the nuts and bolts needed to secure the battery but all of Tractor Supply’s steel was hidden behind a thick layer of rust that I had no wish to deal with. Let somebody else brush all that rust off and leave the steel soaking in vinegar for 4 weeks!

Moving on I went to Harbor Freight for some more batteries and there I saw the usual arrangement of tools crying “buy me now”. I held firm in my resolve and exited with just the batteries. These were D cell for my shower, AA for whatever and the big coin cell batteries for my Harbor Freight meters.

Home Depot was the next port of call. There I would have purchased four adjustable chain links and two turnbuckles as well as some steel angle. I got the steel angle with no problem. Two 4 foot lengths. I failed totally to get the links and turnbuckles because the aisle was blocked off while somebody was up on a great big electric lift, grabbing merchandise off the top shelf. Not feeling too much like waiting, I bought my angle steel and moved on.

Back at the ranch I procrastinated a bit then pulled out the angle grinder and cut the steel to fit a new battery. This time I cut the steel big enough to allow half an inch all around the battery. That’ll solve problems with batteries that are quite oversized.

I cut two approximately 12 inch lengths. These will attach to the ribs under the bus. I cut four exactly 10 inch which will act as the vertical hangers from those two bars. Then I cut two approximately 8 inch lengths to go along the sides of the battery and two approximately 5 inch to go along the ends.

I simplified the design of this hanger from the previous one considerably. Now the battery is supported at the sides only. The end pieces are just there to stop the battery from sliding. The end prices on the old hanger also support the battery.

At the end of the cutting, I had just 3 1/2 inches of steel angle left. I’ll use some to make my attachments for the turnbuckles and will weld them onto the base later. The older hanger also had a piece keeping the top pieces a set distance apart. I’m not really sure that’s strict necessary.

I was defeated when the strange glowing orb in the sky vanished for the day. I’d got almost to the end of the welding on the main body. As can be seen in the photo, the base is done and one side is complete. The other side needs the other bar to be attached then the two sides welded onto the base. Then I have to make and fit my attachment points for my turnbuckles. I don’t need a top bracket as I already have one that will do perfectly.

Tomorrow, assuming sunny weather I shall complete my battery hanger, including painting it with anti-rust primer. Then it will be time for topcoat. At some point I shall go under the bus to install the battery. Cabling is next but I need two more self-resetting breakers. I might have these set at 5A each with each going off an individual battery. I also need another battery connector like the other one. Yet more 8 gauge wire too.

Now I missed a bit. I drove past my insurance agent today. I popped into State Farm to find out about insuring my bus as a motor home. Chatting with them I found my existing car insurance was poor. It was expensive and poor. My bus insurance is collision only and is poor. State Farm offers fully comprehensive bus insurance for the same as I’m paying Progressive for just collision. All they needed was photographs of the interior and exterior to show that there were no passenger seats remaining and that I had a permenantly fitted bed and permanently fitted cooking facility. That’s no problem whatsoever! They didn’t even need me to retitle the bus as a motorhome. That saves me hassle if at some point I have to insure it as a bus.

The totals for the bus came to $609. The lady couldn’t type it into the computer but had to work everything out manually. Thank Heavens for people that can think! My car insurance will rise, which is unfortunate but I’ll have adequate coverage.

It strikes me that the problem people have with getting bus insurance is due to their laziness. I went out and met an agent and she came up with a quote. She knew how to get a quote together. None of these online things actually seem to work. Not insurance quotes and not the search for insurance. My quote is for a product that is not sold online. I’d not really been ready to talk insurance before. Now, I am.

I can say that Progressive only does bus insurance, collision not. AllState did not offer anything for motorhomes that weren’t purpose built by the original manufacturer as a motorhome. State Farm seems to offer insurance and doesn’t really care too much about what they’re insurring. They dont even want the bus titled as anything but a bus.

So I sent off photos of my bus interior and exterior and will now await my responses. Meanwhile tomorrow I shall complete my battery hanger and shall paint it. I’m not sure whether I’ll put the holes to hang it from yet or whether that’ll be something for another day. Whatever, things are looking up!

New Toys and other thoughts

Today I put together two of my latest toys. A camera and a digital recorder. Now before you go saying “but you could have bought an all-in-one unit” I bought two separate pieces for a specific reason. The rear camera used solely for seeing what’s right behind me is excellent but as collisions from the rear are pretty common, I figured I’d put a recorder onto that camera. That will involve putting a Y connector onto my existing camera so that the image is shared between the rear view monitor and the recorder. Put together it all looks quite a muddle.

I’ll have to do some work on it. The power inlet on the recorder (the blue unit) has no indication of polarity and is bizarrely supplied with a 120v power adaptor that also has no indication of polarity. The camera comes with a color coded blank ended cable. Now that I can simply connect to my 12v system with zero issues. It took a while to work out how to put it together as the instructions are in Chenglish. Needless to say the recorder unit came straight from China for $20 and the camera came from somewhere in the USA but likely originated in China for $10.

The instructions for the recorder unit are somewhat more opaque than a tub of black paint but it seems that the recorder will record in VGA and QVGA. Apparently if I fiddle with it enough I can get it to record in VGA. I don’t really see the necessity of that to be honest. QVGA will adequately show a vehicle failing to stop and running into the back of me. It’s not as though a front license plate being recorded in detail is important because in SC as in many other states, nobody uses front license plates.

The camera is a little strange. It seems there’s no right way up that’s clearly identifiable and it’s not adjustable. That’s OK though as that is eventually intended for use in the front windscreen. I’ll hide it behind the second driver fan so it’s not impeding my view of anything. It’s supposed to be weatherproof and I’m supposed to be able to put it on the exterior but behind the windscreen makes more sense.

If the recorder works then I might be getting a couple more and another camera. That way I can hide one camera so that it records everything and everybody coming up the steps with one setup to record happenings in front of the bus and the existing backup camera being used to record happenings behind the bus.

The recorder has apparently got some date-time thing on it but that’s never going to be accurate as it’ll only be on while the ignition is on. I just don’t see the point of recording anything when I’m parked as all it does is burn up battery power.

The other day I was in a discussion on one of those school bus groups. You know - the kind of group that makes you roll your eyeballs and question how such people managed to slither out of their mother’s womb! In fact that sparked a conversation at work.

Where I work, I work with mechanics, school bus drivers and people of all kinds of professions. There’s even a former Marine sniper working with us. Thus, I work among experts on school busses. I’d even say I’m an expert too since I drive about 30K miles a year with them and diagnose faults.

On that god forsaken group they had been complaining about engines and transmissions burning out and about how useless some transmissions are and how useless some engines are etc. This same group is the same group that talks happily about feeding engines designed to run off diesel with trash vegetable oil that’s been thrown out by McDonalds etc. Needless to say when I brought reality to their fantasy, I was summarily ejected from the group with no notification or anything else. I regard myself as quite happy now. That group had been spoiling my mood for weeks. The problem of people preferring fantasy over truth is very evident in today’s world. Look at the number of kooky pseudo religions that proliferate! This was a problem known about thousands of years ago and is even mentioned in the Old Testement.

So, according to the “group” I should be running my schoolbus at 65 - 70 mph and getting 12mpg out of it. According to them it’s all because my engine had been de-tuned and the transmission de-tuned. All of that is the biggest load of horse dung I’ve ever heard of.

School busses (as opposed to activity busses) are specified “must be able to achieve 55mph” and are limited to 55 or 57mph by a governor. School busses are designed specifically to spend 90% of their time on back roads and dirt tracks, not on the interstate. In my time driving school busses I did drive on the interstate for a few miles most days one year but that was the exception. My current route is 100% back roads, dirt tracks and winding country roads. Those roads are so narrow I have to hit the rumble strip every time something big comes in the other direction.

Then there’s the going up and down hills and the fact most don’t seem to understand why there are markings on their automatic gear shifter other than D, N and R. Notice there’s no P (park) position on a bus gear selector unlike on a car. On long down grades and steep down grades it is better to have the gear selector in something other than D so the engine can take control of speed. Eventually brakes will heat up and fade rendering them temporarily useless. This is why there are runaway truck lanes on many hills. Similarly going up hills, you can max the acellerator and try to keep up with the traffic, overheating the engine on the way or you can recognize you’re driving a big vehicle and keep the gear selector in a lower gear and keep the revs down to 2,000rpm. That will prevent you overheating and straining the engine. You will be going slowly but that’s what big vehicles do - you’re not driving a car.

I’m going to hypothesize that most of the most irksome people on that laughable group don’t actually own a school bus and have no idea how to drive anything bigger than a small car. Add that ignorance to a complete lack of understanding of how to drive something wide, tall and long then throw in air brakes as well which is another level of complication and the situation gets scary. in fact, at work where we all have CDLs (commercial driving licenses) and drive busses every day, we’re all a bit nervous about people driving big vehicles that don’t have CDLs and experience.