Okay, okay. I'm guilty of not updating in forever, and I apologize. Still not much new on the bus, but I owe it to everyone who has inspired me with their work to at least say something and post a few photos.
Took from October to April to get four new 8D AGM batteries. Here are the six group 27s before I removed them:
Once they were out I was looking at bare floor and wall space. With a hard winter still firmly in mind, I took care of a bit of insulation work before installing the new batteries:
Some may recall that I'm furring with strips of 5/4 x 6 treated decking. The full inch thickness matches perfectly to an inch of polyiso board insulation. The "back" wall of the battery compartment is the original bulkhead where steps led up to the rear seating area over the transmission and final drive. I used 1-1/2" polyiso on the bulkhead wall. Floor and outside wall of bus got 1". On the floor of the utility area (batteries, fresh tank, waste tank), I will not use additional flooring. Just furring and insulation. No need for floor here, and it would only reduce the height of my tanks. Furring in this area will be on 16" centers. That temporary support wall of 2x4 lumber will be replaced with two steel units welded from 1" square tubing. One between batteries and fresh, the other between fresh and waste.
On the subject of final drive, our bus has an exceptionally small ring and pinion in order to facilitate the "low floor" concept. To make the final gearing, the rear hubs have reduction gears.
Here are the new batteries in place:
For some reason, I don't have a photo of the $200 worth of new 2/0 copper cable I bought for the installation. I'll try to pull the floor sometime soon and take that shot. I discovered recently that our local Kubota tractor dealer has tools and supplies to make battery cables. Their copper cable is all fine strand, and their crimp-on ends are highest quality. I know the folks well, and they let me make up what I want and then joked about not charging me labor. The joke is that they don't charge for labor even when they make cables, but I do a neater job of trimming insulation and lining up ends than they do. Their 2/0 cable is $8.25/foot, and that does not seem unreasonable in today's market.
We've been using the new battery bank for two months, and it is more than satisfactory. I realized a couple weeks ago that I do not nervously check the volt meter several times a day the way I did with the old battery pack. We're not yet running even a small AC or refrigerator, but we do anything else we want and never worry. Our four, 255w Samsung panels are plenty this time of year, in spite of the fact that our bus is in shade for at least half the day.
I've also been working on getting the generator mounted in the old air handler space above the engine. I picked it up with a borrowed tractor about three weeks ago and broke the old exhaust manifold. Since I wanted to refurb it before installation, I took it down a bit further and cleaned it up for paint. Here it is in original livery:
The photo above shows the high performance coil I installed last year. It's yellow. At the same time, I upgraded to a type of electronic ignition that did not require pulling the flywheel. It still uses points, but only to trigger the electronic unit. The two upgrades to the ignition made it start like a dream, and it ran so much better that I had to adjust the governor a good bit to get it down to 120 volts.
Here is the generator in it's new Detroit Diesel garb:
In this upgrade, I replaced the original air breather and crankcase breather. Both involved some modification. The crankcase breather took several trips to the plumbing supply store before I got the right combination. It looks simple here, but you don't see the hours it took me to get to this point. The proper combination proved to be 1/4" black iron pipe fittings with the hex end of a 3/8 x 1/4 bushing as a nut inside the cover:
The breather was off the shelf at one of the big auto parts chains.
The main breather fit required a different approach. It was made for a 2bbl auto carburetor and was much too large at the throat. I cut a circle from 3/8" aluminum plate with a hole saw:
Turned it to OD on my Shopsmith with wood turning chisels:
Then cut out the center with a smaller hole saw:
The resulting bushing worked well:
The breather stud was off center just enough to secure my new breather after I drilled an additional hole in the support:
I have the bent pipes to make the new exhaust manifold — that's right, I've done everything EXCEPT what I started to do — and I hope to get that done tomorrow. Then I can install the genny into the bus.
One of the reasons I've not gotten much done on the bus is that we decided over the winter to radically expand our organic market garden. This little jewel has proven invaluable as well as inexpensive:
Here's a shot or two of the 300 tomato plants which are on the verge of paying their own way:
We have another 100 tomato plants ready to set, and tomatoes are only part of the organic fruits and veggies we're growing. Here's the new roadside stand I'm building so we can find all that growing stuff new homes:
I've also done a fair amount of instrument building and performing this year. All told, I've just not had much time to work on the bus. Hope to do better soon.
In the meanwhile, all of you be well and do good work.
All the best from our little corner of North Carolina
Jim