Heavy Fuel

[somewhereinusa]

You should wire anything that draws heavy amps through a relay with a circuit breaker.

[M1031A1]

Originally Posted by somewhereinusa

You should wire anything that draws heavy amps through a solenoid with a circuit breaker.

I believe that's how Thomas has it wired. Once we get the rats nest figured out and cleaned up I'll have more details........

[M1031A1]

Hey all!

Here's a few pics from two weekends ago. We finally have the driver's side of the bus finished with the blanking out of windows. Friday we're working on the passenger side to finish. Weather is predicted to break on Wednesday and so Friday and Saturday should be excellent build days for us.

So here's a few pics:

We started out that Saturday morning looking like this:



We got the first blank in at about 1000 hours:



The second blank took a bit longer. We had to wait for the "fast drying" paint to take its time longer the second time around. We had lunch, Chinese take-out (Super YUMMY) as we waited.

So about 1400 hours or so we had this:



My son is working hard on getting the sheet metal screws set. He and his close friend were working VERY hard to get the blanks done before the sun went down.

So by the end of the day we had this at about 1700 hours:



The interior looks like this now:



More to come this Friday!!!! WoHOO!!!!

[Tango]

Lookin' good M! Keep the pix coming.

[FlyboyHPD]

Nice progress M. Enjoy this nice cool weekend we're about to have.

[M1031A1]

Our objective is to have the windows blanked, rewiring done, and re-routing the coolant lines below the floor before Thanksgiving. I have a good friend who is going to help us big time to do the interior in exchange for our other bus, Big Mac. Wife is working full-speed to get the CAD prints ready in time for HF to go to Louisiana for her interior fitting and head-to-toe new paint job. We have two wide screen TVs and several computer monitors ready to in on the interior as well. NO Samsung (fires and all)... So if we can pull off the timeline we'll be full-timing before the school year is out.

The pressure is ON!!!!!!

[Tango]

Rock & roll Bruddah!

[M1031A1]

New work this weekend!!!! The cooler weather means we're off and running full-tilt! The steel window blanks are now in!!!! WoHOO!!!! Here are some of the pics:

This is what we finished Friday afternoon:



Prep work before the install...

Then Saturday morning:



We got the final part done before noontime:





Here's the interior:



Wife is helping with cleaning and organizing:



We now have ROOM!!!!! YAY!!!!!!

M

[M1031A1]

More pics from this weekend!

First, I took a small trip with HF. Note the far right hand gauge: FULL!!! WoHOO!!!! THAT won't last long.........



Got to a good friend's place and we started to pull dead end wires, then the harness to the over head flashing red lights. After about five hours of working we went from this:



To looking like this:



More work to be done Friday and Saturday!!!! Rewiring will commence!!!

YAY!!!!!

M

[FlyboyHPD]

Great progress "M". Starting to take shape nicely .

[1olfart]

Are you still working on your gear swap? IF you are looking for a parts bus I may know of one. As I remember you were advised against doing a swap, but if interested I can give you the contact. I've had to rethink what direction I can go, so won't be looking at the "big boys" anymore. BTW your build is awesome.

[M1031A1]

I sure am looking to do a gear swap. If I can get 4.10 or better (I have 5.29 right now) that should put me about 63 m.p.h. @ 2000 r.p.m. Safe enough to get out onto the interstate without getting run over. HF has plenty of torque to run the lower ratios. I can feel her searching for a fifth gear as we're going down the road @ 48 m.p.h.

Happy to talk to anyone willing to help with the swap. I've been an A.S.E. certified master diesel mechanic since '97.

Thanks for the compliment. We're getting ready to really build her this winter/spring.

M

[cadillackid]

super cool to see you got out with the bus!!! always fun to get out and roll it!!

-Christopher

[Tango]

Excellent progress M! --- Can't wait to see the interior develop. There are lots of heavy truck parts & wrecking yards in the area so finding the right gears to swap should not be too terribly difficult. Best of luck with it.

[M1031A1]

More work tomorrow afternoon and Saturday!!!!! Pics too!!!!!

[M1031A1]

Well, we spent Friday and Saturday pulling out multiple dead lines and circuits that are no longer needed. I figure we got rid of about 15 pounds of wire. We ended with the circuits we rewired being protected with a blue 1&1/2 inch wide protector:



Can't see it from this pic. but trust me, there's all kinds of wire all over the floor of HF. However, things are getting cleaned up and organized. Speaking of organized, how about this for new wire:



That's (believe it or not) about $300 of wiring...... EXPENSIVE!!!!! But new and worth it!

Here's what we were doing with the utility box:



There were three solenoids hooked up. Two to various systems we no longer need. Believe it or not these guys used RED wire to make a redundant GROUND...... WHAT????????

So we're using just one solenoid to relay to some circuits and there is a fuse panel we're using for internal lighting and other purposes we're bypassing the driver's panel (but still using fuses and switches in other places in the line).

So, on the way back home here's what it looks like:



CAN'T WAIT to get the rear diff. re-geared!!!!!!!

[cadillackid]

lookin good!! I got lucky that the kit i bought to add A/C to my carpenter came with about 10X the wiring I actually needed.. so ive had plenty for adding and replacing stuff in the bus..

the red wire fro ground is nothing compared to my carpenter where people had stuff bare hot terminals in the panel that would randomly short on things and pop the circuit breakers... at least everything is on self-resetting breakers..

in that bus It had 2 solenoids in the driver panel... one is powered by the ACC key position.. and the other is powered in the ON position.. its actually pretty slick.. as there are two HOT bars with about 10 circuit breakers on each bar at 20 amps each... once I ripped out all the jumk I have plenty of breakers available for adding things..

sure feels good to clean that junk up though!

I remember you telling me what gears you are going with but I forgot..
-Christopher

[M1031A1]

Originally Posted by cadillackid

lookin good!! I got lucky that the kit i bought to add A/C to my carpenter came with about 10X the wiring I actually needed.. so ive had plenty for adding and replacing stuff in the bus..

the red wire fro ground is nothing compared to my carpenter where people had stuff bare hot terminals in the panel that would randomly short on things and pop the circuit breakers... at least everything is on self-resetting breakers..

in that bus It had 2 solenoids in the driver panel... one is powered by the ACC key position.. and the other is powered in the ON position.. its actually pretty slick.. as there are two HOT bars with about 10 circuit breakers on each bar at 20 amps each... once I ripped out all the jumk I have plenty of breakers available for adding things..

sure feels good to clean that junk up though!

I remember you telling me what gears you are going with but I forgot..
-Christopher

4.10s Christopher, I have a local shop getting ready to do the job once we get another shot of money coming in.

M

[M1031A1]

Went to HF today to clean up some wires and put an inline fuse on the headlight line. End results looked like this today:



I now have six lines to work with. I'm planning on using those for interior lights, and other 12 volt items - rechargers, GPS, and other things we have to install.

SOOOOOOO excited!!!!!

M

[cadillackid]

sure looks good!! plenty of room in there now!
-Christopher