Pilgrim Days

[Jolly Roger bus 223]

Originally Posted by s2mikon

Have you tried a 12 point wrench on them yet. Sometimes it works.

yes.
a 12 point wrench or socket works on a square head plug.
if its between 1/4 and 3/8 i would say a 5/16th 12 point.
that means its probably 1/8th inch pipe thread plug.
and i would recommend cleaning the area around the plug and maybe soak it with a penetrant and let it set for a while to help you break it loose.
i would start by figuring out what wrench the 12 point needs to be and then start with a brand new one.
if you round the corners you will really have a hard time of getting it out without breaking(i hate that word in a situation like this) the head off.
alot of my sockets and wrenches are wore out and when you have to use a 12 point to only catch 4 points its always good to have a good socket or wrench or you end up creating more trouble than what you were wanting.

[DrDanger]

WE HAVE HEAT!!!

Yesterday I went to the shop to try to get the Webasto started for the first time. I hooked up the fuel line temporarily to a 2 gal tank, water hoses sitting in a plastic trash can full of water, and the power hooked up to the old pig tail from the original rear heater that I took out at the very beginning. I flipped the switch (or rather, adjusted the set temp on my thermostatic switch) and things started making noise! Seemed like a good sign. The problem was nothing was really happening other than air was sucking in the intake and coming out the exhaust cold. The water was not circulating and I wasn't getting any sound from the fuel pump. A bit frustrated, I went home for dinner and to do some research. I found an old troubleshooting flow chart and returned last night to try and figure it out. Per the troubleshooting guide I put 12V to the water pump and it made noise but water was not circulating. I then guessed that this is not a "self-priming" pump and poured some water in to get it primed. Hit it with 12V and viola! Ok, the water pump was good, then I had to check the fuel pump. I pulled the fuel line out of the Webasto and tried putting 12V to the leads. As someone pointed out earlier, this pump is just an electromagnet so it doesn't "run" continuously, but it did shoot out a little spurt of fuel each time I contacted the leads. The next test was to put a test light on the leads that should go to the fuel pump to see if it is getting the pulses of electricity that it needs about 30 sec after the heater starts. I used a random LED that I had lying around and found some strange behavior. It sort of flickered and then remained on constantly but very dimly. I hooked it all back up again and tried another live test. This time I kept an eye on my voltage coming in not just at the beginning but under load (i.e. when the air pump, water pump, and glow plug were all running at the beginning of the cycle). My voltage dropped to 9V! I didn't know for sure, but I assumed that was the cause of my problems. Given that I was cold and tired and apparently so were my batteries, I called it a night.


Today I went back and hooked it up to my house 12V system instead of the bus 12V system since that is how I want to run it anyway. I tried to start it up as it was just to see if the gremlins had fixed it for me over night. At first it seemed to cause my house 12V system to drop out for a second (the lights in the bus flickered when the pumps kicked on), but after a couple of cycles of trying this phenomenon disappeared. I have a 24V battery bank and a voltage converter to bring it down to 12V my DC loads so I wonder if that convert was having trouble with the peak power of the pump starting, but I don't think it should considering that the Webasto has a 20A fuse and the converter is rated for 40A. Maybe it just had to warm up or something. That sounds stupid, but I have no other explanation. Anyway, as I tried to get it started today the fuel pump started making the tell-tale click-click-click that it is supposed to! It had to cycle a couple of times to get the fuel line filled and actually start delivering fuel. On the next cycle, after the fuel pump pumped for 20-30 sec, I heard the sound of...FIRE! I finally had combustion! The exhaust started to get hot and I knew we were in business. The water started out 45 F and in less than 10 minutes it got up to 135 F. I think the set temp is somewhere around 175 F, but I didn't think my plastic trash can was up for the challenge so I shut it down. It feels so good!


I still need to get the tank plug out. 8mm tank plug socket from Amazon fits, but that sucker is stuck in there pretty good. I'll put some penetrating oil on it and try to get it loose tomorrow.


I am still toying with the idea of making an enclosure to protect the Webasto and my manifold system, but not sure what I should use. Metal is obviously preferable. I doesn't have to be watertight, just protect it from road grime. My dad suggested NEMA enclosures. Any other ideas?

[s2mikon]

Listen to your father. You are fortunate to be able to share your project with him. I would give anything to have mine with me. Cherish your time together.

[DrDanger]

Ran into a snag installing my fuel pick up line for the Webasto. When I removed the plug next to the fuel level sensor I expected to see fuel, instead I saw the inside of a tube that curved away toward the side of the tank. I decided to pull out the fuel level sensor to get a look at it and this is what I saw...


Any idea what the heck this tube is and where it goes? It is not the vent tube or the fuel pick-up line.

The subsequent question is how should I install the fuel pick-up for the Webasto? If this tube doesn't really do anything I could drill straight down through it with a small hole (~1/4in) for the metal pick-up tube. If it is something important (like a turbo encabulator!) then I can use the tap kit that came with the Webasto, but this would require drilling a 1in hole. I think I would prefer putting the least amount of metal shavings in my fuel tank as possible, so the smaller the hole the better.

[Ronnie]

Can you put a scope in there and find where it goes? Maybe it could be used for a fuel pickup. If you blow through it do you hear air bubbling through the fuel, or does it blow freely with no sound?

[s2mikon]

On my god! That is the turbo encabulator! Now you are screwed. Your children will be born naked. You poor soul. That is more than likely a fuel pickup tube that only goes down half to three quarters to the bottom. May be for the large diesel fired bus heater. What size is the pipe plug? 1/4" You may have to run a small flexible plastic fuel line through it and adapt the thread. My chinaspaechers would not pick up fuel with a 3/16" fuel pipe out of a 13" deep tank. When I used the little plastic hose they came with they worked sort of. I know that sucked but they wouldn't. Even with the small plastic hose if I hadn't used them for a week or 2 it would still lose prime occasionally. In the end I just used a separate fuel tank that fed from the bottom. I used a racing fuel cell. Made out of aluminum with a fuel gauge. It did not cost that much and now I don't have to worry about my fuel additives I use.

[DrDanger]

Foiled again!!!
I was just about ready to drill through my turbo encabulator (as it turns out it is just a tube that doesn't go anywhere, I stuck a a piece of hose through it and it came out in the tank, maybe it could be used as a vent?), but then I realized that the hole was a different size than the fitting from Webasto...
What. An. Idiot.


Ok, no problem, I'll just use the kit they supplied to drill a 1in hole and install a new tap. I drilled the hole in the top of the tank there since it is really the only place I can get at the tank, doing my best to prevent metal shavings from going into the tank. I got the hole drilled and started to install the fitting but couldn't quite fit it the way they described in the manual so I used the hole from the fuel level sensor...

...I even found a way to keep from dropping the bottom half of the brass fitting into the tank using a piece of the plastic fuel line.
That's when I discovered...the fitting is too short...
The raised portion of the tank where the fittings are is reinforced with another layer of metal underneath so it is twice as thick as the rest of the tank. I could get a thread or two to engage, but I really couldn't get it tight. SOOOOO frustrating. Anyway, I found something that will hopefully work from the internet so hopefully that will end the saga of the fuel tap.

[DrDanger]

SITREP
I've been making slow but steady progress on the hydronic heat system. The tank fitting I ordered online worked well and I got the fuel tap installed




I got the body prepped for the box that will house the Webasto and manifold



And started building the manifold

I installed garden hose type valve fittings as fill/drain valves at the ends of the supply and return manifold. I also installed a T fitting connecting to the expansion tank which will be housed under the driver's armrest.

Got the box mounted and Webasto and manifold installed in it



And installed the air eliminator on the floor loop since it is the highest loop



I've still got to get the heat exchanger for the engine pre-heat system and finish insulating some of the piping going to the water tanks. I forgot to cap the PEX stubs for the water tank loop when I installed them so those got pretty dirty and need to be flushed out a little.

It has been pretty cold here lately and the antifreeze that I bought to fill the system stayed liquid in the jugs so we should have no problems freezing.

[DrDanger]

With the finishing touch of my air eliminator and antifreeze expansion tank...

...It was time to test out the system!
It fired up and started running pretty well which I was a little surprised about. I guess the bench testing got most of the kinks out (at least in the Webasto itself).
I decided to try to do a little test of how quickly it could heat up the cabin of the bus.

Unfortunately, after three hours the bus was getting colder, not warmer! I think there is still a fair amount of air in the system despite my best efforts to get rid of it via an air eliminator on the return from the floor loop. I read on a forum that some professional residential installers use a high-flow pump to do the initial fill and air purge so I think I'll try that. I needed to buy a pump to deal with my genius/idiotic idea of lowering the shower pan below floor level anyway, so I ordered a macerator pump that will do something like 11 gpm. I'll connect that to the drain/fill ports on my manifold, close the main valves to the Webasto, and just try to blow the air or whatever out of the lines.



More to follow.

[DrDanger]

Well, it's been a long time since I last posted and a lot has changed. "Life" got in the way of keeping up with posting, but now I have some free time...

I'll try to recap what I have completed since the last update, but currently the bus is broken down in Kearney, NE. We were pushing it to get from Eastern Washington to North Carolina for a family event in June. We were making good time (albeit slow going through the mountains in Idaho, Utah, and Wyoming), but started to have problems in Nebraska. We'd had it die at idle twice in the previous two days, but when we stopped for lunch one day it wouldn't restart (crank but nothing else). I checked all the fuses, relays, and wiring and it all looked ok. I didn't really do anything, but for some reason the bus restarted. We foolishly thought maybe I had wiggled just the right wire or something and fixed it. At that point I had two error codes when I flashed them using the cruise control buttons, but they were body control related and shouldn't affect the engine (according to people on the internet). FYI I also have a Bluefire adapter but it didn't show any error codes so it was pretty much useless. If you want to use it to create a digital dashboard, it works for that, but if you expect it to show trouble codes then you will be disappointed.



Anyway, when we stopped for fuel next I tried to restart it and had the same issue. I tried the same technique again but nothing happened so I had to use my towed vehicle to tow the bus out of the fuel lane

I was able to call a mechanic to look at it the next day and he hooked up the computer. It was showing an error with the IDM (injector driver module) voltage and he thought the three-wire plug in the battery box was to blame. We replaced that with heat-shrink butt connectors but it still had issues. He pulled the relay, cleaned it off a little, and it ran...for 30 minutes...

[DrDanger]

...and then it died while driving at highway speed.


I coasted to a stop safely on the side of the road and tried some of the old tricks, but this time the starter wouldn't even crank. The relays clicked and all the lights worked, but the starter never made a sound. We were about 10 miles outside of Kearney, NE so we found a shop there that could tow us and had some experience working on school buses.

Unfortunately, they had a three week wait to get in the shop and we had to get to a family reunion. We jettisoned the escape pod (towed F150) and left the bus with them. They are just looking at it today...

[DrDanger]

Ok, so get this, the mechanic finally looked at it there was "nothing wrong with it." It started right up, they ran it for three hours, shut it down, started it back up, and drove it for 30 miles. No problems...


There were some codes for the IDM relay again and also for the cam position sensor (which can also give the symptoms I had according to people on the internet) so I am having them replace those. It sounds like I'll just have to cross my fingers and hope that is what was causing the issue.

[musigenesis]

Good news, I guess? I hate it when I know something is wrong but the pros don't see any problem.

[Frochevy]

Originally Posted by DrDanger

Ok, so get this, the mechanic finally looked at it there was "nothing wrong with it." It started right up, they ran it for three hours, shut it down, started it back up, and drove it for 30 miles. No problems...


There were some codes for the IDM relay again and also for the cam position sensor (which can also give the symptoms I had according to people on the internet) so I am having them replace those. It sounds like I'll just have to cross my fingers and hope that is what was causing the issue.

Wow.. That is good and bad at the same time since you really don't know if they fixed the issue. Good luck and I hope you don't have those problems anymore!!

[DrDanger]

Well, I picked up the bus and made it to Virginia. The good news is that the bus ran great the whole way (since I got back I have had a momentary amber engine light at start up and the oil pressure light came on once for five seconds...I feel like there is still an electrical gremlin but I have not idea what to do about it since all the pros just scratch their heads when they look at it and say nothing's wrong).



The only issue I had on the way across was purely due to driver error. I tried to do some freedom camping in the Daniel Boone National Forest near Morehead, KY and ended up on some windy mountain road as the sun was going down. I decided that I couldn't go any further and attempted to turn around on a sketchy pull off. I scouted the turn on foot and it looked doable, but when I started backing up I cut the turn too early. This sent my tires into a muddy ditch that I didn't notice before and I stopped moving. At first I just thought my tires were stuck in a little bit of mud so I dug out a little ramp for them, but I still couldn't move forward or back. I went back to check it out further and after knocking through the weeds a bit, I discovered that I was actually resting on my gray water tank frame.
The rut closer to the bus in that picture is where the tires where, the water filled hole behind that is where I dug out three large rocks that the tank frame was resting on. I was super unprepared and the only thing I had that I could dig with was a mountaineering ice axe. After I dug the rocks out and cleared the tank frame, I did my best to get my snow chains on the tires using ratchet straps and bungies. Three hours after pulling into the ditch, by the grace of God, I drove out of it.


Surprisingly the only real damage that I did (that I know of so far) was breaking off my gray tank drain pipe.

Actually, after a closer inspection yesterday, I only broke the glue that was holding the pipe in place. The fitting inside the tank looks OK and I am going to try to just glue another pipe up in there. It may actually have been a blessing in disguise because now I can adjust the angle to better integrate with my shower drain system.

[DrDanger]

Ok, time to catch up on progress.
--Kitchen--

Pantry drawers- all I did here was build several drawers and then link them together with a strip at the back and a temporary front (drawer fronts are one of the few things that won't be DIY)


More drawers in the kitchen

Fitting the new countertop. We went with the pre-made Acacia butcherblock from Home Depot.

[DrDanger]

Progress Update: Roof
I welded up some racks to mount the solar panels

They are attached to the roof with these feet. I put two bolts down through the hat channel and then one bolt connecting each foot to the legs of the frame.


This is the rear solar rack

And the front solar rack (I have to say, it is nice to have a dad who is a farmer with a giant tractor in these situations)


I plan to eventually be able to tilt my solar panels so I mounted them on these piano hinges

The front two panels are separate, but the rear two are right next to each other so I decided to gang them together. That way when I make the tilt mechanism they will move together.

I wasn't going to bother with a roof deck yet since I had limited time and other tasks were higher priority, but my dad really wanted to do something special so he designed and built this rack for my rear deck. He built it with sockets for poles to support a shade structure/tent. I'm on the hunt for a lightweight decking material still (keeping an eye out for old aluminum bleachers). Any other ideas?

[DrDanger]

Other random stuff...
I caved in and bought a MaxxFan. I figured I needed an exhaust fan, but I was just mad that they cost so much. There is no good reason for them to cost as much as they do for what they are. But, until someone makes a better, cheaper option I guess there is no getting around it.




I built this platform to be the hearth for my tiny wood stove.

The plan is to put tile on the top and then on the walls behind it as a heat shield. I also plan to be able to remove the stove in the winter so we can just use that as an extra seat or something.


Reading lights and USB chargers in the kids bunks area



Front window shade/movie screen



Vent fan for composting toilet area (it is just and IP rated computer fan)

[DrDanger]

I guess the most visible change is that I finally got the beast painted. It was the most labor intensive project yet and I still don't think I did the best job possible. I have never done any kind of body work on any vehicle so I didn't realize how much small imperfections show through in the paint. I am happy enough with how it turned out, but it is definitely not as good as a pro job.



Step One: prep and mask
So. Much. Work. It was probably 80+ hours of work to scrape decals, sand, wash, and mask. Thankfully I had some family in town and got a lot of help with all that.


We used my dad's 35 year old siphon paint gun which he has used to paint all of his farm equipment. We thought maybe we could get away with shooting the color right over the original yellow, but there were so many variations with the black rails and various other paint patches. I did a test patch of color and I could see the variations show through so I decided to go with a dark gray primer first.

I called an automotive paint store and had a bit of sticker shock when they told me it was $175 per gallon so we decided to go with some equipment enamel from a local farm store for $35 per gallon. I used an accelerant/hardner and the required thinner to get it to spray well. It definitely took a while to get the hang of spraying without getting drips/sags in the paint, but I started at the back so by the time I got around to the front it actually looks pretty good


One big recommendation I have is use an actual respirator if you are painting indoors. I started out using an N95 type of mask and I still ended up with blue boogers after the first day. I used the respirator on the second coat and it was so much better (gotta protect those brain cells ya know).

[HazeltheMooseWagon]

It’s looking great! I really like that dark blue and I think the primer was a good idea. Several Skoolies I follow on Instagram have been painted over the past couple weeks. I hope I can paint mine before it gets cold here.