Baked and Fried

Who ever said you can never have to much of a good thing was full of cr@p. I mean a warm summer day is awesome, the heat of the sun is great....but too much heat can cause 'issues'. On the journey back from Manitoba I ran into a problem with my house batteries. The long and the short of it is that they died. Ran down to nothing. I didn't know why, although I had a plethora of tools, I didn't have my power probe and so I couldn't trace what was going on until I got home. A little detective work found that my house batteries were not receiving a charge from the alternator. Connections were good,wiring was good. Next thing to check was the battery isolator.






Waaaaay back behind the fuse panel we find our little friend.

After a few scratched knuckles, I managed to pull it from it's hiding place. Sure enough I was getting conductivity where I shouldn't and none where I should.

The diode in the thing was fried, like a fresh farm egg....but not as tasty.How? Why?....Well, I will take this on my shoulders. A design flaw. My design flaw. The radiator for Fillmore is a side mount design. So I fabricated a mounting place, had perforated custom panels made, and the rest is history...really it all went down just a little while ago...no wait... that was 2011! The practical issue is that the hydraulic fan sucks air from outside in through the rad and exhausts it into the engine room.
On relative short trips in mild temperatures....yes it got warm in  the engine room but not too bad. Now throw in a 14 hour trip in 30+ degree weather and like I said earlier, you could have cooked a roast in there. The engine ran fine, was nice and cool, running in operating parameters....but the engine room was a fricken hot box.  The over heating was too much for the isolator and it must have melted the diode. The good news is that I knew exactly where to go and what to ask for to get it back on the road. Less than 24 hours later I was back in business. My buddy Chris whom I consult with about the mechanical end of things was concerned when I would report my voltage readings. So like any mechanic worth his salt he just said,
Chris: "hmm that puppy just needs to be dialed down just a bit....."
Blake: "Uhhhhhh,....what needs what?....I can do a mean root canal but how do you dial down the alternator just a bit?"
Chris:" Oh ya right...."
So he took a few steps back and removed the assumption that I have a real working knowledge of the basics and told me about adjustments to voltage regulators.

He really wasn't kidding, you just have to dial it back....just a smidgen.

OK, electrical seems to be settled...'tick-tock'...now what other things need to be done...'tick-tock'
Outdoor shower! 95% of this job was already done. Water lines plumbed, bulk head fixtures in place, braided supply hoses attached. I just had to do a wee modification 'tick-tock' to the unit to allow for the rivet line.

Check....NEXT?....tick-tock'

The Grey Owl

This was the year of change, and change is good. Day two of our epic road trip found us heading north from Deloraine Manitoba to Wasagaming Manitoba in Riding mountain national park. A 211 km trip...normally in a car will be a 2 hour trip.  Ours took us about 3.5 hours. all we had planned was a quick stop in Brandon to pick up much needed and important supplies(groceries) but as we have found out on this trip you cannot go anywhere quick in Fillmore. Allow me to explain, although he is powerful enough to rumble down the highway at higher speeds....you pay for it in fuel, so I opt for the slow and go method. The second big reason for the slow progress is curiosity. This thing pulls out all the people with cameras, questions and stories. This morning we had just nicely left Deloraine (shout out to Tammy O who we saw on the road!!) as we headed north at Boissevain when a truck pulled up beside us and emphatically motioned for us to pull over. Thinking that something was wrong, I did just that, but when the driver of the truck hopped out it became obvious that he just wanted to ask questions and see "what the hell this was". After a short talk, and side excursion to his machine shop so he could show the other guys, we were back on track. Late.....but moving once again.

This year my buddy Harold came to the lake to round out our foursome, another change and a good one. Those of you who follow the blog have seen Harold grace these pages before. He and I grew up together and it's hard to believe that we met close to 40 years ago. Although we don't see each other often, when we do it's like we are still neighbors at the cabin. His being there was a change, change is good.

This was a golf weekend, and yes there was plenty of golf, but the pictures from the course are sparse. This is the best picture and whether this is Harold's best side or not is still up for debate.

For years, 15 for Shawn and I, 16 for Ron. We've been coming to the lake and the 'services' in the rooms has been, from the technology standpoint, primitive. Old tube TV's and rabbit ears are still employed. For years we've been romanticizing about bringing a home satellite, this year we did. Fillmore is equipped with a portable satellite dish and of course a LED TV. So we were able to watch NHL playoffs, NBA playoffs. Another change, maybe not a necessity, but change is good.

Shawn rounded out his first year of working as an architect. A successful year, where he's actually making a wage, but the reality is he needs to be productive even when he's on "holidays".Setting up a temp office at the lake is a change, but change is good.

Down time has always been a challenge for me. I have a hard time sitting still and doing nothing. We usually golf once a day, which takes a fair chunk of your day, but when you are not at home to be busied by the other chores of the house, the down time can seem long. This year with Fillmore there....there was plenty to do. I'm not sure the guys were planning on spending all the down time puttering on the bus, but I was grateful for the help. Re sealing windows was the biggest job of the weekend. I started the process..

And then the efficiency experts got in there, next thing you know I was pulling windows and they were re sealing them faster than I could get them back in!

The road block became the window seal. I didn't have enough, and I knew it. Greggs back ordered the seal I needed but I brought what I could. Once the windows were 'done'. The crew was still hungry for more. I put Harold on trying to fix/replace the fuel sender. Valiant effort but in the end we still have reliability issues.

Ron got the dirty job, time to grease up the chassis....any nipple got his attention.....sorry Ron I couldn't help myself....

 

Now that we had bodies under Fillmore, and in Fillmore, I climbed on top of Fillmore and started to work on the roof vents. As I suspected, the vent was replaced after paint but they took a HUGE shortcut on the sealing process.

All they had to seal the unit to the body was a strip of open cell foam. Open cell foam....like a sponge....So off it came, butyl tape and white seam sealer to seal rivet holes and just all around good measure.

After all was said and done, we donned our brightest and most visually obnoxious golf attire and sealed the weekend up with a dinner at the annual "Howl"

Sunday evening found me driving west again, a beautiful night as I drove off into the sunset.

2791kms, 513.8 Liters Diesel later and I was home sweet home. I know there are some guys out there that claim their Flxy gets 8MPG, a number that I am quite skeptical about. Fillmore averaged a efficiency of 18L/100Kms which for my American friends is 15MPG. Frankly I thought that was quite good all things considered. Most of all I was home with little drama (I do have a slight electrical issue yet to be resolved), no break downs and good times. This was an epic first journey, not the feared biggest fail.

Maiden Voyage

 Remember your first date? You probably spent weeks, if not months hoping and praying that you would be successful in acquiring said "date". Planned it out in your mind, researched where to go and what to do, thought about what to wear and even what to talk about. Finally after all the hard work and sweating the details, the time came. The apple of your eye said yes, and now you are faced with the reality of " Holey SH*#! this is REALLY going to happen!" At this point, if you were like me, you realized that you could either have a panic attack, shrivel up into a little sweaty ball of trembling nerves...or puff out your chest, brush off the nay sayers, and say."I got this"....despite the load you just dropped in your drawers.

The day of reckoning, the first date, had come with Fillmore. The moment of truth. For years I had been saying that I would take Fillmore on a road trip to Manitoba to our annual excursion to The Grey Owl golf tournament in Riding Mountain National Park in Manitoba.

 There was a dozen or more reasons, or excuses I could dream up as to why it just wasn't ready, but deep in my heart I knew it was now...the time was upon us. So, showing full support my little brother flew in from Winnipeg and on June 8th at 4:30am, we embarked on what I described as either an epic journey or the biggest fail about to happen.
To say I was a bit tense was an understatement,The new and improved Fillmore had been on numerous 1-2 hour trips, even one 4 hour trip only days before this journey, but never on a 14 hour road trip.

But like the sun rising in the east, our hopes seemed to grow by the hour while the trepidation seemed to slowly ebb away.

We were all smiles and chuckled while we were fueled by fresh coffee.....

But for some of us, the drone of the road and the sweet ride of the air seats was too much and sleep overtook our enthusiasm.

Although I was constantly looking at the temp gauge the entire time, we didn't have much of an issue at all. The cooling system did it's job very well. The engine remained within temperature parameters despite the fact that for almost half the trip we were in 30+ degree Celsius temperatures. At one point in Swift Current we pulled over and removed the louvered window vents from the engine room in an effort to help cool the room. Although the engine was running within parameters  the engine room was hot enough to cook a roast. The trip, which in a car usually takes about 12 hours, took Shawn and I about 14.

Just a whole lot of this really....

After a long day and lots of warm weather it was so wonderful to be welcomed with open arms at my in Laws in Deloraine. Cold drinks and a hot supper were waiting, and it tasted like victory!

The next morning Shawn, Ron and I remounted our trusty steed and headed out on the second leg of our maiden voyage....

Repair or Replace?

One of my most favorite times of the day is early morning. The world is still quiet and sleepy as the bright sun is caressing the dew on the grass and the leaves in the trees gently whisper in the morning breeze. The birds chirp and whistle, singing in a round, while I quietly sit on our bench in the front yard with my steaming cup of coffee and marvel at the beauty of the world around me.

I generally get in 2.5 cups of coffee before I get antsy and need to get up and move. It's time to get things done! Today's agenda includes windows, windows and more windows. After my mishap with mother nature I realized that I must address the issue ASAP.

I decided to start on the destination window. I called to a few automotive 'glass shops' and most just said..."can't help you" or "we don't do that". The best I found was a shop that I have used before, they were reluctant but were willing to walk me through re-sealing the window, when I showed up with pictures about what I needed to do. Thankfully the guy took one look at this pic and said...."they used the wrong seal"

He explained that the rubber was sitting too proud and was uneven. When I got home and took a better look....I could see what he meant. It's along story but lets just say I had pre-ordered the correct seals for the body shop that did the paint, but the shop decided to use their own (favorite) seal....

Seeing as though I had the correct seal in a box in the garage...what did I have to loose top replace it myself?  As Eleanor Roosevelt said "Do one thing every day that scares you".....

Thank you Mrs. Roosevelt....I think I should be good for a week now...

Like any good surgery, I laid out my tools.....

Draped the patient.....








And set forward with 'wild abandon'....OK wild abandon in this case was more like moving forward at a turtles pace because I did not want to mess this up. Thankfully in my technique research (U Tube), I realized that I needed a specialty tool. Now there was a company that exclaimed I NEEDED to have their hard plastic angled window installer tool....which looked a lot like a plastic round tipped screw driver.Educating yourself on U tube is great, it's kind of like looking for a muffin recipe on line... you look at a whole bunch, gleam all the good stuff and then create your own technique.

So I sacrificed a small phillips screwdriver that I had previously damaged, rounded the tip and presto chango I have a high end specialty tool that I didn't need to order from Wisconsin!

I really would love to show you pictures of me straddling the two ladders with the damn specialty tool in my mouth, shouting word of encouragement to my daughter who was in the bus trying to prevent me from pushing the window right through the opening....but discretion is the better part of valor.....it was bad enough my daughter saw how I can react under high stress situations.....but at least I didn't cry.....much.....

In the end, I was a little embarrassed by allowing my emotions to get the better of me and regretted my audible verbal outbursts at myself. The end product was bang on. The seal was nice and flat, it hugged the body panel and the glass was snug as a bug in a rug.

The final test(later that afternoon- when I had summoned the courage to face failure if it didn't work) was the high volume water test. And I am proud to say it passed with flying colors

Another hour of re connecting the wiring for the stereo and speakers, and we were set for the next project...but time is ticking away....

play clay

There is a child in all of us, and no matter how old we get we love to revel in the inner child realm every now and again. I had to find a way to figure out where my windows were leaking from. Did I have a gap somewhere? Did the seals fall short? In dentistry we have special spray powder you can put inside a crown and it will show you your high points and low points. Something on this scale requires something a little bigger. I needed to flow a material in and around the window frame so I could see where it was touching the frame and where there was a space. From the outside it looks great, but obviously that's not the case.

I needed to take an impression!

In the dental medical world we use this stuff all the time to show us the details of small things and unseen surfaces!





But using dental impression material is a pretty costly venture on the scale we are talking about, plus the fact that all of that is at my office and I want to do it now!

In comes the inner child! Crayola modelling clay!

My brother once used this stuff to create a very clever sculpture for my work shop. Digging through our craft cupboard we were able to find a package....as the great Shrek once said, "That'll do donkey, that'll do!"

So I got to play with it and form little rolls, which I placed over the seals and flattened them slightly.

I then installed the windows, allowing the material out or into the voids behind the frame. what I saw in the end was disheartening. The seals were doing little if anything.Now I will journey to find new seals....and fast.

All the while, I must find out where the roof leak is coming from. And I think I have found the culprit.There are two roof vents that draw air in from outside. The path of the air after it enters into this "hood" is up and down as it goes over and under little barriers along the way. As it does this water (if any) is physically removed as it passes over these barriers, and then drains away out the side drain holes. For this to work the unit has to be sealed. I noticed two things. The body shop did not use a seam sealer but rather a foam (so the rivets are not sealed) and second, the foam is blocking the drain holes!!

Lets hope this is it!