Too Much Ruckus

One of the cool items that was stock on Jeff's Vista XL is a set of automatic hydraulic levelers. So much nicer that stacking up boards or Lego blocks.

The manufacturer requires that the jacks are deployed before the slides can be extended. The engine must be running to deploy the jacks or slides, BUT... they're very concerned about someone driving away with the jacks still deployed.

They installed a warning light, but their ergonomics engineer was absent when they did the design. It's not at all visible when an average height person is in the driver's seat.

You must lean significantly forward to find the light shining brightly, but totally hidden behind the steering wheel.  It's just a light, installed in a hole in the plastic dash. Apparently no one has ever considered moving the light to a position much more obvious to the driver.

Since the light is essentially useless for its intended function, they also include a horn. The horn should have a warning to not use it near a cemetery because it will wake the dead!. It's so loud that it becomes a safety issue because you rush to get everything closed up so you can kill the horn. Of course, the horn is buried just about as deep as possible, forward of all the circuit breakers by the driver's left leg.

Removing the fairing around the circuit breaker panel provides hand access, but it also makes the horn more painfully loud while you try to locate it.

Removing the hydraulic leveler control panel gets an angle so you can get some light into some of the darkest recesses of this corner. It's fair to say access is neither easy nor comfortable.

Yup, it's this little critter that is making so much noise it can be heard 200' away with the coach door closed. We debated about removing it entirely, but decided to try a muffler first. I constructed a housing out of 1/2 inch foam that went over the horn. It's still loud, but at least it's not painful. He's going to use it a while and see if that's enough or if it needs even more muzzling.

Lost Dutchman Testing

It was a first for us. We've enjoyed our Scamp for over seven years, but we'd never stayed at Lost Dutchman State Park. BJ spent many hours in the park and surrounding area as a member of the Search & Rescue group, but we'd never camped there. Too close and usually too full.

Since Jeff is leaving his new rig in Arizona for the winter, they came down for a long weekend and we managed to reserve a couple sites right across the road from one another.

We both had to suffer with this view. In our case our large back window framed the mountain while in Jeff's case the front window provided the best seats in the house.

We did work on a couple mods for his rig, but I also got a chance to go geocaching with our grandson for a while one morning until the heat got to be too much.

Always nice to be young - makes the tree climbing easier!

I even loaded up some charcoal and brought a dutch oven for one of our dinners.

Pot roast - the easiest thing to fix - was excellent. Our daughter and son-in-law came out so we managed to have everyone together in one place. The pot was empty when we got finished!

We enjoyed great weather, excellent time together, and beautiful sunsets. No wonder valley visitors rave about Lost Dutchman State Park!

Vista Solar, Part 3

With the controller and the portable panel components in place, it was time to install the roof-mounted panel. We'd already determined that our feed cable would pass down the wall the creates the inboard side of the bathroom and serves as a wire chase for all the annunciators, slide controls, etc. The vent pipe is in the forward end of that wall.

A 3/4 inch Forster bit made quick work of drilling through the fiberglass roof without getting crazy with the 3 inches of foam below the roof.

A matching hole was drilled in the center of a 4x4 plastic junction box and then that box was attached with the fiberglass roof with 3M Very High Bond tape, followed by a bead of 3M5200 marine adhesive sealant around the outer edge.

The mounts that we got from AM Solar came with 3M VHB tape pre-installed on the feet. I marked where they were going to go and wiped down the fiberglass roof with alcohol to insure a clean surface before sticking one pair and then the other to the roof. Like contact cement, you only get one chance! A bead of 3M5200 sealant around the edges of the feet completed the installation.

With the feet in place, the cable was run through conduit from the junction box to the panel and then connected to the panel with the same style waterproof heat-shrink connectors that I used on the portable panel. Both panels have an in-line fuse installed at the panel end of the wiring.

I used flex conduit to provide UV protection to the solar cabling. The conduit is attached to the fiberglass roof with 3M5200.

There's lots of real estate left if additional panels are desired.

I left extra cable in the junction box. If extra panels are added, the junction box can serve as a combiner box.

Inside the bathroom at the ceiling is a triangular box. I'd hoped I wouldn't have to open it, but I couldn't get the solar wiring to feed more than 18 inches down the wall so I popped the four staples that held the wall covering in place to make it easier to feed the wires.

The vent pipe that I pointed out on the roof is at the right side of the wall opening. The solar cables go through a pre-existing hole in the floor, across the top of the grey tank*,

over to the corner of the sink cabinet,

and then down through a hole I drilled in the tunnel cover just ahead of the grey tank,

leaving a short run to the terminal blocks.

* The grey tank has inlets from the shower, the bathroom sink, and the kitchen sink. When we went to pull the wires from the electrical chase to the kitchen cabinet, we discovered the top of the grey tank was wet. Turns out one drain had a hose clamp, one had a hose clamp that had never been tightened, and the kitchen sink one didn't have a hose clamp AND WASN'T EVEN ALIGNED with the tank port. Quality Assurance anyone???

With both panels wired, but being too lazy to go back up on the roof and tilt the roof panel, it was time to install the Bluetooth adapter to the controller and see what we had for results.

This was about 9 a.m. with neither panel oriented optimally. Can't complain! I wasn't sure that the Bluetooth dongle was going to be worthwhile, but once I've played with it a bit, I'm convinced it's required equipment.

The solar install has been fun. Time to do some more mods one of these days soon.

Vista Solar, Part 2

I got the wiring done for the controller and the portable panel before taking time off for a river trip. The buss bars on the left are where the panel feeds come in and feed to the controller. The controller feeds to the coach batteries at the lower left, while the feed from the portable panel comes through at the lower right corner.

The mating Anderson connector, with a red weather guard is mounted to the bottom of the side wall, just behind the entry steps.

Storing rooftop panels is easier once you get the work done. For now we'll have one up here but with plenty of room to add a couple more if they decide it's necessary.

The roof panel feeds will enter the controller compartment through a couple grommeted holes just above the yellow arrow in the first picture.

The portable panel will be stored in the rear compartment. Thankfully, the plywood deck for the bed provides plenty of structure. I added a pair of carriage bolts in two places and put the mattress back in place.

I fabbed up a plywood receiver on the street side end that is screwed and glued to the plywood. The receiver is designed so that one end of the portable panel goes there, and then the other end is lifted up and retained by a 2" nylon strap with a Fastex buckle. The panel is kept on the street-side 'shelf' by a similarly constructed stop that is also screwed and glued to the plywood ceiling.

Closed cell foam bumpers will be added to the back of the panel frame to restrict vertical bouncing. The face of the panel is protected from any extraneous damage by a thin plywood panel retained by a couple smaller straps.

Once our river trip is over we'll see about getting the roof panel in place and running the cabling for that panel and the battery monitor.

Vista Solar, Part 1

With a couple years experience using solar in his travel trailer, I didn't have to spend any time discussing the issues related to installing a larger, true sine wave inverter to power the microwave since I knew it wasn't considered essential. Instead, I concentrated on those items that would be used while boondocking.

I was pleased to see that the inverter idle draw was only 10 watts. None the less, the inverter is not likely to be powered except when using one of the TVs.

The big draw will be the large TV which won't be used that much. It's quite likely that 200 watts of panels will be more than enough for their typical use patterns. We selected the same Renogy 100 watt monocrystalline panel that we used on his trailer because of its compact size and high Vmp. One will be configured for portable placement and the other will be roof mounted with tilting capabilities.

I brainstormed a shopping list and shortly thereafter, stuff magically started showing up at my door. Like the other systems I've put together, this one will use 8 AWG cable to reduce the line losses.

I did some of the stuff at home where tools were easily available. Some aluminum angle was used to create legs for the portable panel.

The secret to the legs is the plastic washer and self locking nut. With the plastic washer between the leg and the frame, the self locking nut can be tightened down enough to put some friction on the hinge angle.

The installation is using two different 8 AWG wire styles. The feed wire from the portable panel is 'zip cord' from PowerWerx. The red/black paired cable uses finer wire for more flexibility, which makes it much easier to use with the portable panel. The roof-mounted panel/s will use MC4 Solar cable. It has fewer strands of thicker wire resulting in a stiffer wire, but it also has a UV resistant cover.

The extension cable for the portable panel was permanently connected to the panel leads with waterproof, heat sink butt connectors. They're waterproof and serve as a strain relief across the connection.

The other end of the portable panel cable got an Anderson SB50 Power Pole connector. These connectors have beefy contacts and result in a connector that cannot be inserted with reverse polarity. We used these on Jeff's trailer project a couple years ago and it has served well.

Unlike last time, this time I spec'd the extra Tee handle to make it a bit easier to connect and disconnect the pair of Anderson connectors.

The rood top panel gets fitted with AM Solar's mounting system. This system is fabricated from stainless steel, and allows the panel to tilt in two directions. It's a quick and easy installation on the panel.

Each corner gets a bracket that is retained by one bolt with self-locking nut.

The mounting foot connects to the adapter with a threaded knob. The foot will be attached to the fiberglass roof with 3M Very High Bond tape and then sealed around the edges with 3M 5200 Marine Adhesive.

The Victron controller* and all the system connections have a home in the forward curb-side bay, as close as I could get to the coach batteries.

*We considered the TriMetric TM2030 / SC2030 combination, but the Victron combo got the nod because of the cleaner looking monitor. The MPPT controller is a bit of overkill, but will work nicely with the high Vmp of the Renogy panels.

Initial Mods for the Vista

I promised that I wasn't going to work full time on the mod list for the Vista since I had all winter to get them done. I started by cutting up a couple old 2x10 boards to create some ramps. The RV is low enough that I can't get under it from the sides using a creeper, so I decided to help it grow up.

Driving this rig from Iowa was like trying to herd cats in a rain storm. It wallowed badly and got worse in cross winds. Turns out, lots of other people had already experienced the same thing with this chassis which is essentially unchanged since the early 1990's. The inter web crowds had a cheap fix. I didn't think it would be enough, but decided to try it.  The upper mount remained untouched,

while the lower end of the front sway bar links were moved from the original placement at the outer end of the sway bar arm to the inner, pre-existing hole.

A super quick change that made an incredible improvement. Still not as good as I'd like to to be, but definitely much, much better.

Haven't done the rear ones yet since its reported that it doesn't make as much change, but I expect to do them before the rig heads north. The rear sway bar installation is the same except that it has the extra bracket to put the link bolt into a double shear situation.

The next project was to install the shunt for the Victron battery monitor. I put it in next to the existing fuse for the stock inverter. I needed to get this installed so that I could do an energy audit before determining how many panels would be needed for the solar installation.

With the inverter off, there was still 3 to 4 watts of phantom draw. I think it might be the propane detector, but I haven't taken the time to dig deep enough to temporarily discount it.

In the process of doing the energy audit, I discovered that several lights were still sporting incandescent bulbs. The three lights in the service bays, the porch light, and the two bulbs in the dinette light were all incandescent bulbs that draw about 18 watts each.

The dinette bulbs (with a T5 base) were replaced with LED lamps that draw 3 watts each. The other incandescent bulbs will be changed out in the near future.

I did a pretty complete power audit, but did skip testing the power draw on the furnace - with our temps still running above 90 degrees on average, I'm not really interested in adding more heat to the equation.

Next up will be starting on the solar installation and wiring.