Tuesday March 8, 2016 Jenner CA.
Working on some projects
It was raining this morning as I got it going, which was ok with me as I planned to stay home and work on some projects.
New van gauges
My new van temperature and voltage gauges came in yesterday, so I started taking things apart in my dash so I could mount them. I’m replaces the gauges because the old ones are too small and in the wrong place to see easily, especially at night. The new gauges are larger and easier to see.
I had to cut the holes for them with a hole cutout saw. There’s been a rat’s nest of wires behind the dash for a long time as things just got shoved behind there the best they could over the years, so I wanted to take things apart and clean some of that rat nest wiring up. Of course, some of the plastic on the main instrument cluster gauge bezel broke off so I’ll have to do a repair on that.
I got it done to here, before I quit to work on something else.
Testing the old well pump
I stopped there to think about things for a bit and moved to my next project which was to hook up an old well pump I had to power up and see if one of my old wells had any good water in it. I got it hooked up, but the old pump was shot. I think it’s impellers where shot as it barely pumped any water. So, that was a bust, but no big deal. I wanted to use the pump to check one of my brother’s wells, now he’ll just have to buy a new pump for that well.
Switched over to the golf cart job
Just before I was finished with that job, my brother came by with a new main relay for his golf cart I’ve been trying to fix, so I switched over to that job.
That didn’t work
I installed the new relay and hooked everything up and stepped on the go pedal and nothing happened. :O) No relay kicked in.
So, I looked around and pulled the control box socket off again and started measuring things again, pin by pin.
I used a ground wire to short out the pin in the socket that went to the relay and it didn’t fire. I jumped the relay with some wires, at the relay and you could hear the relay click in. Ok, something was wrong between the controller and the relay, so I measured it at the pins and sure enough, the circuit was open, so now what?
A corroded wire
I pulled the wire on the failed pin to give it a stretch and also noticed the wire insulation was all swollen up for about the first twelve inches of the wire. I took it apart and found that it was all full of green corrosion stuff and the wire had been eaten through. I cleaned up what was left of it and had about a half inch of wire on the end of the pin to work with. So I soldered a new piece of wire to the pin in the house. When I brought the wire with the pin outside, I lost it somewhere and couldn’t remember what I did with it so I had to look over and over for it, until I finally found it on the ground on the way to the golf cart after about a half hour. Without that old pin, I wouldn’t be able to fix this today, so lucky I found it.
Here’s the socket I took apart to get the pin out of it with the little wire there in front.
I got her fixed
I soldered the new wire in and tried it, but it didn’t work as I forgot to put a part of the socket back on. I took care of that and put it back together, turned the key on and stepped on the gas pedal and it moved. That got it.
I put it all back together and signed off on that project as fixed.
My new fridge shows up
While I was working on that, the UPS man showed up with my new fridge I want to install in my van, so the next thing I did was get it out of the box so I could see what I had to do to mount it in the van. Something I need to do is give this some thought. One of the drawbacks I’ve discovered already is the controls are on the back bottom and meant to be accessed through the lower vent. It’s going to be hard to get to these controls to turn things off and on and such, so I’m thinking of ways to make that process easier if I can. I need to build a box around the unit as it needs a cabinet to live in.
Here’s the new van fridge I need to get hooked up.
Figuring out how to mount it
The new fridge has to go into this space. I’m thinking of putting it in a free standing wooden box that I can move around to get to the back and also put things under it, to level it, when the van isn’t level so it will run on propane.
Right now, I’m thinking about how to make a box around this unit. Once I have that plan, I will make a box and continue on with the install.
Safety considerations
Now, I know this unit is supposed to be vented to the outside, but I just can’t do that in my little van. But, I intentionally haven’t sealed the van all up in the doors, so there is always some air leaking in. The main thing is I won’t run this at night if I can’t open any windows, so it should be safe enough.
That was a fairly productive day. I got some things accomplished and some things started so I can get them completed soon.
Good day.