Tidying part 2

I started clearing up the detritus in the cockpit, putting electrical bits with electrical bits, hardware with hardware and tools with tools. I still got rid of another sack load of litter.

After a couple of hours I'd reduced the quantity of stuff in the cockpit considerably. It took a good few more hours to get the floor totally clear. The big problem is I'm moving stuff from place to place and it's not reducing any. I'm definitely going to need a bigger box for electrical bits and a bigger box for tools. Tools, like wheels are something you always need.

Actually, the toolbox idea just isn't really working. I do, however, have some plastic drawers. They might be good for the electrical though since they're not really being used for anything much. One of my problems is I like electronic components. I've only got a hazy idea about electronics from high school so I tend to buy stuff and put it together in the hope that it'll work but it rarely does. I can solder decently though.

It'll take me a few days yet to get everything into order in the bus. 

One of the things I thought of was if I weld steel over the two windows on each side of the back door, I'm going to need something to arrest sparks. Thus I went to cut another piece of fridge or freezer door. The disc in the angle-grinder was mostly used but I was able to make the first two cuts well enough. The third went OK though I had to hold the grinder at a strange angle to be able to complete it. The fourth was when the grinding wheel became so small that cutting was not possible.

I had to hunt out the tool to remove the grinding disc. That, needless to say, was at the bottom of the tool box. So, the next thing was to find the cutting discs. That took a positive age by which time I'd misplaced my safety glasses. I took the disc out to the angle grinder hoping I'd left the safety glasses out there but I had not. I left the new disc with the angle grinder and went and hunted all over the bus for the safety glasses. I found those and put them with the disc and the grinder but realised I'd by now misplaced the tool. I went back to the bus and hunted everywhere, even going through the tool box again with no luck. Then I decided to check where I'd found the cutting discs. Steadying myself as I leaned over by placing my hand on the back of the driver's seat, I found the tool - exactly where I'd left it - perched on the back of the driver's seat.

Returning to the fridge, I finished cutting the steel. I didn't have time to clean the insulation off it - that's a job for another day as is trimming it to the right size to use as a spark arrester. What it's going to do is to slip into place inside the bus to be held in place by my Harbor Freight welding magnets while I weld a sheet into place from the outside that fills the window aperture. Honestly I wish I'd known how to weld before I started the bus project. I'm sure things would have been so much faster and easier still, if there is a next time, I'll know for the next time. One thing's for sure - I know how to build a trailer if I ever want one!

This week I hope to get the bus completely tidied. I still have a few things in the cockpit but mostly stuff centered around small projects. I might be able to get the fuse box into the console and the new rectifier into place lickety split now that I can actually sit on the driver's seat!

Tidying the bus

Today as it was getting harder to get the right tools when I needed them, it was clearly time to start tidying inside the bus. It's looked like a tool volcano had erupted for quite a while. Thus I got down to it.

The first thing to remove was much of the trash. You wouldn't believe how quickly trash builds up from wrappers and boxes and envelopes. Just about everything I buy either comes online in an envelope or box with lots of associated packaging or from a store in a big plastic bubble container. There's absolutely no need for all this plastic packaging. People have sent things from one side of the world to the other, successfully, packed in straw, crumpled paper and cotton for centuries.

After a trashcan full of trash, I got to the tools. A couple that are unlikely to be used again on the bus project I put in the shed. That will likely happen to a few more. When the bus is completed I will only need standard maintenance tools on the bus together with spares such as bulbs and fuses.

Then it was a case of picking up the smaller stuff like sockets and wrenches then dumping them in the tool box. Slowly I'm getting there but it won't be done today. It might be done tomorrow or more likely on my day off on Tuesday.

Looking around I can see all the projects I have on the go:

• The 3rd battery holder. I built the base yesterday. I have to build the rest of it next. For that I might have enough steel angle or I might not. I'll have to measure very carefully.
• The new roof vent. I found my tube of epoxy putty and the new roof vent and put them carefully to one side.
• A fuse box to put in the control console in order to replace the huge array of inline fuses.
• A solidly built bridge rectifier to replace the rectifier I put together for the front solar panel. No great improvement - it just looks prettier.
• Sheet metal to go over the back windows. I'd originally put a sheet of metal on the inside of the bottom door window to prevent somebody entering after kicking out the glass. Now I think it'd be an excellent idea to have sheet metal in place of the window. For that matter I should do all of the back windows. I have no need for windows at the back of the bus! Two are covered by wooden panels and one has a steel panel over it. The fourth window isn't really needed either.

The sheets of metal for the back windows went to the back of the bus. That's a project that is not urgent and unlikely to be completed soon. The current project is the battery holder. That will need more welding. The roof vent again is not a project that's going to be completed soon. That also got stored at the back. As for the fuse box and the bridge rectifier - those are jobs that will take but a few minutes. The reason they have been left is because of the massive tool volcano that had subsumed the driver's seat. Needless to say I'd have to sit on the driver's seat to complete those projects.

During my sorting I found this. It's an old Hyperdrive HD80. It's from my days when I'd had a photography "business". I say "business" because there is no actual business in photography. At best it's a hand to mouth existence that has been largely killed off by digital imaging and cellphone cameras. Anyway, an abusive individual in my past had not actually persuaded me to start this business but more bullied me into it. Needless to say, there never was any actual income - more outgoings on gear. Most of that was lost money. This is one of the last remnants of that nightmare period. So having found that I've put it up for sale on Craigslist. eBay is just not worth the auction fees. Like as not I'll get no takers and will end up tossing it into the trash despite the fact that new it  cost $270. That misadventure cost me about $8,000 and after selling as much as I could of it (some just had no takers and had to be thrown in the trash) I think I got maybe $1,200 back.

A step toward a battery holder

What? Another battery holder? Well, yes. The two house batteries I have are doing an excellent job but in order to run the extraction fans decently I do need to add a 3rd battery. I'd decided this months ago and had tried running the fans directly from solar which had worked very well. I wanted more of an inclusive battery system though, hence the addition of the new battery mount.

I started by doing the usual measuring of a standard U1 battery and then added half an inch to the length and width. As this battery will be mounted in the battery compartment with my driving batteries, I decided to do a slightly different mount from that used in my two battery hangers. I couldn't have the tie down sticking out the side - I needed a piece of flat steel on each side just to protect the batteries next to it.

So, I cut the main pieces. This is a fraction longer than the group 31 batteries used for starting the bus but that's no problem - the battery bay is massive. It's possible to see where the U1 battery is going to go!

Having cut the basics of the battery holder, I added the sides and the anchors for the battery tie down. That was all pretty straightforward. It used up most of my 72 inch piece of steel angle.

By the end of the cutting all I had left was a 3 inch piece. I'd used 69 inches of steel angle. Of course, during construction, one of my tie down anchors needed modification so I modified it. Then the modified anchor fell into the leaves and I couldn't find it even with a magnet! There was only one thing to do - cut another. That took a minute or so with the angle grinder (who on earth uses a saw to cut steel). Then several minutes drilling the anchor hole with a 5/16 drill bit in a Harbor Freight mains power drill set on low speed. In order to save the drill bit from burning out, I used low speed and lubricated the drill site with WD40, reapplying WD40 every minute or so.

Eventually, welding time arrived. I started by using 3/32 6011 rods but they were slow going. Then I found my 7014 1/16 rods and went quite a way with those before deciding to try my 5/64 6013 rods. Well, I laid my best bead ever with the 5/64 rods. The only problem was it didn't adhere properly. That steel is anything but clean! I chipped the 6013 off and went back to my 7014 rods and completed the task thus far.

The next stage will be to put an upright close to the far end on which I can attach a sheet of flat steel through which I can mount the battery kill switch that I've been using for the driving batteries. To that upright I will also add a couple of threaded sleeves. That way in order to get it secured tightly to the battery compartment all I have to do is to tighten the bolts against the existing battery retaining strap. This also allows the next set of group 31 batteries to be a slightly different size. Batteries in the same group are only nominally the same size. I found that out with my U1 batteries.

With luck and a fair wind I should be able to complete this tomorrow!

More steel

Today I got on with cutting more steel. The actual cutting was pretty fast and straightforward. Everything has been cut over-sized. There will be a lot of trimming needed before I can actually use any of the steel I cut. The point was though to grab the steel I need before it all vanishes.

Last night I'd been thinking about the upper window of the back door. It's not really needed, to be honest. In fact I could easily install a much smaller window. That, like the two windows each side of the door, is not an immediate priority. The bottom back window is more of a priority but even that is not as much of a priority as installing the 3rd battery.

So, having cut my two pieces of steel, I set to and removed the chunks of insulation that were on them. As yesterday I vanished in a cloud of insulation dust and my clothes and my drill were covered in white dust. I was glad of my googles though a respirator would have been nice. One day I might get one.

After cutting and cleaning the steel came the painting. The cold galvanizing compound spray gave up spraying before the can was actually empty. This is why largely I prefer paint pots and a paint brush. The second sheet (shown) I started on the left with cold galvanizing compound but that ran out after about 6 inches of spraying. I switched to bumper spray and did another foot or so before that ran out. Then I moved on to white which ran out after a few seconds. Then I pulled out some silver spray that I'd bought in error and used that. That just about did the last foot or so before that finally ran out too. At least I got to use my odd ends of paint. All it has to do is to prevent rust.

The cold galvanizing spray won't burn when I weld so I don't have to worry about it. The white enamel paint on a fridge (the other side) won't burn when I weld either. All other paints seem to burn and catch fire when I weld. That's not great.

I would have cut steel to make the battery holder today but what with taking a truckload of trash to the dump, cutting the steel, cleaning and painting it and making a two piece sheet of aluminium to block a rat hole in the house, I just ran out of day. Mind, cutting and cleaning the steel was pretty exhausting work and my arms are sore from that.

Getting steel

One of my projects is to replace the windows on each side of the back door and the lower window of the back door of the bus with steel. This is purely because they are not actually used for anything. They already have internal panels over them.

As my friend was throwing out an old cooker, I asked if I could have some of the steel sheet that it was made from. As I was given the OK, I cut one of the sides off and found that it was very rusty. That precluded my using it for anything whatsoever since I don't want to have to clean up rust if I don't have to.

Now that cooker has a very interesting history. It was purchased secondhand from a local secondhand appliance dealer. The cooktop was used a little over the year it had been owned by my friend but the oven was used only once because that's when the cooker would give electric shocks to the chef. As the secondhand dealer had a policy of repairing defective appliances only if they are brought into the store, that meant she had a duff cooker that was to all intents and purposes unreturnable and a complete waste of the $100 she spent on it.

Taking the side off revealed a lot of pine straw inside and a lot of rust, heavy at the bottom and lighter at the top. This would lead me to believe it had been left outside with a tarp over it and that it had been outside for quite some time before the secondhand dealer happened across it. I believe I went through two complete Harbor Freight discs cutting that side off! As it was, the steel was unusable.

The cooker door should not have had rust inside it but it did. Thus, it is my theory that cooker had been made of bits of old cookers, was definitely not safe when it was sold and was in fact quite the lemon. It would not surprise me for the "dealer" to have a long and illustrious criminal record.

I am very fortunate in that my friend bought several appliances from that rascal. Some are fridges and because the insulation is glued to the inside of the metal surfaces of a fridge, there was little likelihood of there being any serious rust involved.  I thus decided to use the top freezer door from an upright fridge-freezer as an experiment.

From previous experience, the foam insulation has to be scraped away slowly. Previous experience also showed that cutting thin steel really eats up Harbor Freight cutting disks. So, I started work and cut the steel from the front of the door. Interestingly, I used a Walmart cutting disk and it didn't eat away the disk at all quickly. It seems thus that Walmart cutting disks are better value - pretty much like Walmart angle grinders.

Having cut the steel out, I had to lever it up slowly. It was well stuck to the insulation. Eventually The steel came free but with a very thin film of insulation adhering to it. That took quite a few minutes to remove using an abrasive disk in my battery pistol drill. It also took the complete charge of one Harbor Freight pistol drill battery.

Having cut and cleaned the portion of the freezer door that I need for one of the back windows, it was bare, bright steel. Thus I whipped out a can of Rustoleum cold galvanizing spray and sprayed all the bare steel.

There is more steel available, obviously. I just didn't feel like working on it today. Once I have it cut and painted then I shall have a steel sheets that can be put over both sides and the bottom window. Having said that, I'm wondering whether a smaller back window would be more appropriate. That's easily doable using the steel available.

The problem with solar charge controllers.

Well, more accurately, the problem with every solar charge controller - regardless of whether it is PWM or MPPT or even direct charging is that they just don't work well.

Picture this scenario: Loads of sunlight, full batteries and the charge controller is doing what it should be - trickle-charging the battery. That's fine. Then say you want to run something like a pair of electric fans that demand a hefty current. That's where the charge controllers all go belly up.

What seems to happen is that they keep trickle-charging the battery while the fans draw current from the battery at a higher rate.  Picture this - fans drawing 4A from the battery and 7A of solar panels in full, glorious sunlight. What you'd imagine would be happening is that the charge controller would be saying "hey, we have plenty sunlight so we can run these fan things directly from the panel power, supplementing that as needed from the battery. That would be the sane, sensible thing to do.

Um, no. That kind of thinking is far too advanced for makers of solar charge controllers. What actually happens (it doesn't matter if it's MPPT or PWM or any other flavor) is that the charge controller keeps putting that trickle charge in until the voltage of the battery drops low enough to merit drawing more power from the panels. So the net effect is the solar panel power is just being wasted and the battery used instead. It's akin to having a free lunch offered to you but opting to go to a restaurant and paying instead.

As far as I can see, most of the solar charge controller engineers need to be lined up against a wall and used for ballistic testing by the ammunition companies. That's all they're worth. What a cockamamie way of building charge controllers!

Wow! More progress...

Again I was in the bus. I spent rather longer than I wanted to, installing the cabling for the shower fan. This was made easier because I'd already installed a spare cable to the inlet on this side of the bus. I have no spare cables ready run now. I don't think at this point that really is at all relevant since I have just about everything that I can think of connected.

I have to report that installing the switch and the fan were a complete success. I still have 4 rivet holes to fill but that's small work. I will probably have to rebuild my riveter.

Today started with rain and it rained heavily last night. Later it dried up and was quite pleasant. I started a new project - covering over the lower window of the back door. For that I needed some sheet steel and what better donor of sheet steel than an old washing machine?

Here, people buy a lot of secondhand appliances. This was a washing machine. Somebody seems to have painted it black over the white. The front had a lovely sized sheet of steel. Of course the only problem with using an angle grinder on sheet steel is that it really eats up cutting disks.

Nevertheless, the front was removed in short order and the remains of the washing machine returned to the storage area. Out of curiosity I tried the lid against some of the smaller windows but it was substantially too small. The big sheet from the front will have to be cut carefully to size.

There it is and it's a pretty big chunk. Well, after that I started cutting it to the right size but my grinding wheel didn't particularly care for the thin metal. Thus I have to get more grinding wheels when I'm out tomorrow.

It has got to the point where it's not really usable. There's only about an inch and a half to two inches of usable disk before they become so stumpy that they're unusable. I don't get this problem cutting thick metal. It's the thin stuff that does my disks in.

Well, that was all my achievements for the day. Not much and there's a pile left to work on.