Another part Procured

I have been going around on what type of heat exchanger I would need for hot water in the bus. My thoughts were liquid to liquid from the Wabasto heater I have.  To keep the Wabasto from over heating the water in the exchanger I would need a thermal valve of some type to limit delivered temperature to below scalding plus the exchanger.  The valve I couldn't find a quick source for so I set out to find the exchanger.  Most everything I could find was in the $240.00 price range or higher.  Then on an extensive eBay search I found ...

This unit is a marine hot water tank, 16" in diameter and 31" in length. The heat comes from Engine,Wabasto, or 110 V.  It holds 13 gal of water and that neat knob thing on the front is the thermal limiting valve I needed.  The valve uses hot water from the tank and supplements it with cold water to reduce the temp below the adjusted temp for use by the hot water system.  In short no burning and the 13 gal turns in to 23 to 30 gal of usable hot depending on how hot the tank is.  All for around the same cost of the heat exchanger. 

Seats Filth and TVs

Today I went to the bus to work on removing seats.  I had originally wanted to fire the generator and use my small air compressor to pull mounting bolts and actually break the seats loose from the bus.  My son Andrew called me and informed me he was stranded with the golf cart so I had to rescue him with the battery I was going to start the generator with.  So much for my first plan.  When I finally got to the bus I attempted to remove more of the caps covering the mounting bolts on the feet of the seat sets.

Most of the screws that hold the caps in place are old and corroded and were giving me fits. I decided to focus my efforts in removing seat cushions to allow access to the rail bolts along the side of the seats and bus.  After discovering I had three different types of seats in the bus. One lone replacement seat set, two reversible seats and the rest fixed and of one final style.  I discovered Humans in general are filthy disgusting things. The trash Left behind from years of traveling in the bus are disgusting at the best.

 

 

These last two pictures are from behind the last triple seat in the back of the bus next to the Lav.

 

After recovering from some of the disgust I decided to attack the entertainment system in the bus. I expected to remove the boxes from the overhead and pull little 12" TVs out of them but on dis assembly I found "Custom TV Building at work"

They actually took the time and effort to disassemble two TVs and put the pieces in a plywood cabinet wrapped with vinel and hard wire the antenna and power to the box.

Finally Reliable

As I stated earlier in the Blog it was time to test. After a short trip to the DEPOT I brought back boxes and receptacles to set up a test box.

The 120 plug is split so 1/2 of the 240 feed goes to each plug. and the 240v plug is functional.

 Running with no load the Kill A Watt meter shows 62.4 HZ

 And 122.4 Volts

 After scrounging around for some load to put on the generator I used the two 500w flood lamps and a 950W paint stripping heat gun.

 Still showing a 240v feed from the 220 plug.

 With all loads on the system.

 The HZ dropped to 61.8 with the load so all is still good on generator speed.

 And one of the 110 legs still showing 121.9 with the load on.

I believe at this point in time I can finally say the unit will be reliable enough to install in the coach. Or at least enough that I can take it over to the coach and put it in the basement for 110v power tools as I work on the beast at the storage lot.

Redneck reserection

Today I received from ASAP http://www.partsfortechs.com/ a new regulator for the AC portion along with some new vibration mounts for the control panel.  I put in the mounts, grafted in the new plug for the regulator and assembled the unit.  It started right up.  Voltage from the 240 leads was only 185 volts so after tweaking the voltage pot on the regulator I brought it up to 241 volts with no load.  I let the gen set run on the trailer for 40 minutes with the circuit breakers on and the unit ran flawlessly.  Now smelling like Diesel exhaust I claim Victory!!!  Next step is to connect some kind of load center and load it up to check performance.

Redneck Rebuild

 

Today after running the generator for 17 minutes with a video camera on a Volt Ohm Meter the generator shut down after the voltage from the generator went wild. So it was confirmed that it was a regulator problem. On removal of the regulator for the AC side of the unit I found MORE.

The plug had the bottom pin cut off and an extra wire grafted in to the system when it looks like the contact went bad.  See the red Crimp connector with the bare wire exposed on the bottom?

Here is the other end of the wire soldered to the contact that melted on the old plug when it was plugged in. 

 Do you think there could be a problem here?

It also doesn't look like a good solder job either.

Well Maybe not so much

I just ran the generator set for an extended period of time as an "Acid" test.  After ~45 minutes of run time the diesel engine shut down. It will re-start but exhibited the same symptoms that I started out with. Start and run but only with pulsing the preheat button. I disconnected the safety shut down plug at the overheat sensor but the engine still stops after release of the start button. A new controller board is on the way for it along with some new isolator mounts for the control panel.  Once again time will tell.

It's Alive

 On the trailer with fuel tank lines and battery attached. I was having a hard time starting it.

After some more re wiring on the generator and a replacement battery to get things cranking I found a fuse holder in shall we say heavily used condition.

Not to be put out with having to put fuses in the unit a fast stop at Aircraft Spruce got me some real circuit protection

Now with my VOM I get a good 240 volt feed or two 120 volt feeds at 30 amps each.