So, the beginning of October saw us getting a few days of time out camping at Evangola State Park. We had some heavy rains on Wednesday and Thursday, and there was standing water at a number of the places in the campgrounds when I arrived on Thursday. Huzzah for wellies! (Especially with the standing water all along where I could position the door.)
Site 18 at Evangola State Park.
We got site 18 which was farther away from the cliffs than I would have wanted, but it was one of the few sites left for the weekend, which really surprised me. The loop that our site was on only had 3 other RV/campers parked when I arrived, and being that the main area of the loop is a big grassy field, they were easy to see.
A nice clean bus!
One upside of having participated in the Buffalo’s Mini-Maker Faire was that the bus was really nice, clean, and organized! The site was pretty nicely leveled, and had some nice woods right behind.
The view of/from the Master Bedroom.
After arriving, the rain tapered off enough that I could get a fire going, once I elevated things enough that they were above the water level. letting me cook dinner.
Cooking dinner over the fire!I mog di = I like you! (in Bavarian)
While I was doing that, I was visited by a woman with a bit of an accent who asked a bit about the bus. It turned out that she was from Bavaria, and travelling with her parents. After a bit of back and forth, they ended up coming over for a nice evening with some wine and conversation. As they left the next morning, they gave me a lovely Bavarian Oktoberfest cookie (decorated gingerbread!).
The windstorm over that night made the beach into a more interesting place. The beach at Evangola has a base of a shelf of shale, and the huge waves had pushed/pulled the sand away and exposed the stone below. Again, good waterproof boots made for an enjoyable walk, and as the sun came out, the sighting of some fossil wood in the shale!
Evangola Beach without so much beach …Just offshore at the beach, a fossilized branch or small tree trunk?)
The rest of the day was full of relaxing, cooking, and hiking along the cliff trail and beach. Meanwhile, back at the campgrounds, the sites quickly filled, to the point that it looked like a summer weekend, not a cool one in the fall!
The calm after the storm – looking at the beach from the cliff trail.
The clear water over the clean shale-layered shelf.
There was also time enough for a game of Affliction: Salem 1692, a game that we picked up at UBCon a couple of years ago.
A nice game of Affliction: Salem 1692
Later we had some fire- and candlelight for the bus.
The bus by firelight.
The next day we stayed to take a class on making tetrahedral kites, and made one out of recycled/used materials before going home.
Once again, this was an enjoyable trip. But, next time we come, I want to make sure that we get a cliff-side site for that spectacular view, and the sound of the surf.
So, on September 28th, we got to present at the Buffalo Mini-Maker Faire at the Park School. The idea behind Maker Faires is to showcase things that people are doing with their skills, ways they are reusing things that have worn out their intended lifespan, encouraging people to think creatively, and to empower, engage, and encourage people to do things like this themselves. Craftspeople, inventors, innovators, and entrepreneurs were all in attendance, manning booths, giving hands-on demonstrations, and answering all manner of questions.
While my wife was doing a community embroidery display, my son was teaching kids how to solder, and our friend was off making art, I got to show off the bus. We were in a sort of ‘vehicle area’, and the bus was right across the road from a very cool vintage VW Campervan and a boat that was built by local students.
I brought out a solar panel for display, even with the cloudy, rain-threatening afternoon. (Though I really wish that I’d had the time and materials to give it a new coat of paint – what’s there is still the Rustoleum that I put on in 2008!)
I set up a couple of laptops to do slideshows of pictures of the bus in progress, and show some of the dashcam videos, and a few of the books that I have. And of course, people could come right up on the bus and look around.
I got a lot of kids who were amazed by a school bus that wasn’t a school bus and several adults who wanted to do something like building out a skoolie, but felt too intimidated by the prospect. At some level, even though our bus isn’t done, the in-process aspect seemed to make people realize that it’s a big project and it doesn’t all have to be ‘finished’ to be fun.
And that’s a great take-away from an event like this. Hopefully, we’ll get to do it again next year.
The first test was to check for a short in the system, which will also track phantom loads as well. For this, I took my multimeter and set it to test for amps. If you’re going to try this, make sure you set for DC amps and that you switch your positive lead to that one that you never normally use when looking for resistance or for how much charge a battery has.
Then, make sure that all your vehicle’s switches are off, no key in the ignition, etc. You want to try and eliminate all EXTRA power draws and find just those that exist when the vehicle is just sitting there.
Next, unhook the a battery terminal connection to your bus (or car, or motorcycle), and bridge between the batteries and the connection with the multimeter. I chose the positive lead for my test because when I slide my battery box tray out, those leads are well exposed and really unlikely to short on anything, but you can choose negative and it will work the same way. What you’ll see is a number of amps that are being drawn by the electrical systems of your vehicle from the batteries.
When doing this, start with your amp setting at it’s highest range, then slowly bring it down. My draw came out at about .7 amps, which is what the ECM draws at rest. If you come up with some higher number, you can try to pull fuses and see if you can find a system that’s drawing load when it shouldn’t. If you come up with a fairly high amp load that you can’t account for through your existing vehicle systems, you might have a short, and then you have to start tracking your wiring harness(es)!
The next thing I did was to check the voltages of the batteries individually. As I had already started on taking off the positive batter connection to the vehicle, taking the batteries out of parallel to test was simple. And one of the batteries was only holding 10 volts while the other held 11, and this was after being on a charger for about 2 days. I tried charging them separately, and while I could get the one holding 11 up to 12.6 volts of charge, it dropped really rapidly. The one that was only a 10 volts just stayed at 10, but made boiling sounds that a sealed battery just shouldn’t while charging.
My multimeter doesn’t have a min/max function and I don’t have a load-tester (which basically creates a load using a high resistance draw), so I couldn’t verify that neither battery dropped below 9.6 volts when trying to start. But the fact that they weren’t holding the charge, or even able to charge to full showed that it was time for new batteries.
I ended up being able to get them from Batteries + Bulbs which had a couple of (basically) local stores. This allowed me to order online and get a 10% discount, but go to the store and pick up the batteries. I got two nice Group 31 sealed batteries which had more amps than the ones I removed! (And as an aside, they are Duracell batteries – which I didn’t realize they made such a big battery!)
Hatch secured!
So, how to actually change the batteries? First, open up the battery box and make sure that the hatch is secured, so it doesn’t slam down on your head before you get ready to go out to the theater. (Yes, of course it has happened.)
Batteries and power cords/cables galore.
Next pull the pins and pull out the battery tray. From the picture, you can see why I chose my positive terminals to disconnect – they’re well away from any of the bodywork that might short. Next, remove the main connection to the bus (I chose positive again), then the other and any ‘jumper’ cables that run the batteries in parallel (or series), but remember where they go (or went).
The battery securing system in our bus.
Then, remove the other connector line from the bus, then from the batteries themselves. After that, it’s a matter of removing the means of securing the batteries into the tray. On my bus, this is essentially a piece of angle iron with holes to fit a threaded ‘J’ rod that hooks into holes on the tray about halfway up the width of the battery. These are easily removed, but otherwise secure because of the wingnuts that hold them in.
Once the batteries are loose, it’s an easy matter to remove the batteries. I took the time to clean out the tray, and put in a layer of the non-skid shelf liner that I had around.
This is a sort of puffy and grippy foam screen. On the one hand, I thought this would help to secure the batteries, and on the other, it might provide them with a little shock-dampening.
New batteries in place.
Then it was simply a matter of doing all these things in reverse. The new batteries went in and were secured. I then reattached the negative jumper to the batteries, and then the negative contact to the bus. Next came the positive jumper and the positive contact to the bus, and everything was ready to go!
I have to say that when I went to try everything out, I was amazed at how the new batteries spun the engine up. The new batteries had a great charge and so much more power that the old ones. I reattached the battery minder, and hopefully these will have the same life-span as the ones I just replaced.
The clear water over the clean shale-layered shelf.
