Progressing slowly, but surely......

7:01 am - Saturday - December 28th - TWW - 35° F, humidity 70%, wind 7 mph out of the southeast.....partly cloudy skies today with a forecast high of 62° F. On this date in 2018 TLE and I were 50 miles south of Atlanta, GA taking a break at a Rest Area after slogging through terrible Atlanta traffic in a driving rain storm....

.....we prefer not driving in the rain, and rarely do, but we had reservations at Sunset Isle in Cedar Key the next day, so had to drive in the rain to get there in time....never again....lol!  Combine the heavy rainfall with the always terrible Atlanta traffic, and you get one long, exhausting driving day.  Atlanta traffic is always bad, but rain, and accidents make it almost unbearable. The view right now, this morning....

.....'red sky in the morning, sailor take warning'.

We awoke to find our house batteries dead as a door nail....at least that is what we thought.  This was a first for us.  The only things that run during the night are the two basement Norcolds (freezer and refrigerator), otherwise everything else is off that might drain them.  We need our house batteries (two large 8d batteries) to work properly in order to run those Norcolds, the control board for our  Dometic refrigerator, the house water pump, and all of our interior lighting....it is all 12 volt.  Needless to say, but I'll say it anyway, this issue needed to be dealt with sooner than later.  

Over the past 10 days I had been noticing that the batteries didn't seem to be charging properly, and was beginning to think that I needed to replace the Intelli Power charger/converter.  I know, I know.....my mind always goes to the most expensive and difficult thing that might be the problem.  I do have a spare charger/converter for just such emergencies, but I just replaced the current one back in 2021, so its only 3 years old.  I remembered I had had an issue with the rear electrical panel at the back of the coach a few months ago with one of the two bolts on the shunt being loose, but I had tightened it, and all seemed to be well.  Anyway, I decided to check it again to see if that was the issue, and sure enough it was loose again.  I tried to tighten it, and it would almost get tight, and then get loose again.  I realized at this point the threads in the brass plate into which it is screwed might be stripped, so I removed the bolt to find that is exactly what was wrong.

The 12 volt power passes through the shunt from left to right, and the right bolt was the one that would not tighten

  

I've been carrying with us tap and die kits in both metric and SAE, and have done so for over 10 years, but have rarely used either of them.  The Newell is entirely SAE, so I pulled out the SAE kit, and found the tap that matched the size, and thread pattern of the brass bolt.  I then inserted the tap into the hole with the nonexistent threads, and slowly screwed it into the threadless hole.  When I unscrewed it there were now a fresh set of threads...perfect!  I then reinserted the brass bolt, and tightened it down, and it held.  Suddenly I could hear the charger rev up, and begin charging the aforementioned batteries.  The good thing is the batteries were not dead, but due to the faulty connection were not able to receive the necessary voltage to be charged, or to run anything in the coach.  Fortunately, during this time, I was running the Predator 5000 generator, so we had 12 volt power to the coach while I was repairing the stripped threads.  Within a few hours the batteries about 90% charged, and then the solar panels took them to 100%.  What a relief the issue was so simple, and that I had the correct tools to fix the problem!

A few weeks ago Charles and Phyllis delivered two more 275 gallon IBC water totes that will be used to catch, and store rainwater coming off the house roof.  They've been sitting out by the CONEX waiting for some attention since then.  Charles wanted the steel cages removed from each tote so they would be easier to move around when empty, so TLE and I focused our energies on doing just that.  There are a lot of screws which hold those cages together, so it took a couple of hours to remove them, but now they are ready to be cleaned (inside), and then we can begin to set up the water catchment system.  Progress is slow here at TWW, but we are making progress each and every week.

With the steel cage

Without the cages

The discarded steel cages

Phyllis and TLE prepared a beautiful roast beef accompanied by potatoes, carrots, celery, and onions with a touch of garlic for our dinner fare Friday afternoon....

.....those ladies can cook!  We all cleaned our plates.  As always we had a wide ranging conversation, and good vino to be enjoyed.  Life is good at The Wilson Wilderness!

Thanks for stopping by!