Electrical Fix, Next Trip Is…

I have showed this picture above before…it is the heart of my electrical problems…this is he place where the Florida Rat had made a nest, but the rat is unrelated to our problem.

    

To recap what I previously posted, this gizmo to the left is the Intellitec Battery Disconnect Relay, while the one on the right is a 12 Volt Continuous Duty Solenoid, which allows for the interaction between the house batteries and the engine battery.

I replaced the solenoid today with this Cole Hersee 12V Insulated SPST Continuous Duty Solenoid that Amazon delivered Thursday.  Temps were still over 100 on Friday, but a comfortable mid-80’s today…so today was a much better day to do the work in.  Here are my steps:

1)  Disconnect Engine Battery.  Got a voltage meter read on it before and after the disconnect, and after.  Battery was reading 12.6 either way.

2)  Disconnect House Batteries.  Got a voltage reading on them combined and separated…one at 12.86, the other at 12.91.  Combined they were at 12.89.

3)  Did a reading of the Solenoid and there was no juice coming to it.  So I disconnected the wires, making a mental note of what goes where…knowing I ALREADY had a picture just in case…and then removed the old Solenoid.

4)  Installed the new Solenoid, hooked up wires, made sure all wires were tight.   Then hooked up the house batteries.  Then hooked up the engine batteries.  Then tested…..AND…..

Ever have one of those days….everything just seems to be going along just fine, and CRASH!   Well, that’s how my day felt when I tested it…and it still did not work.  Engine running, no charge on house batteries.  Engine off, electricty plugged in, no charge to engine battery.  Time to bring in the big guns….HEY ARNY!!!!!

To make a long story shorter….Arny wants me to look for connection problems, ground wires especially.  While I look, I decide to wiggle the various fuses along the right side.  See those ones in the middle of this fuse bank…the ones which look metallic?  Well, I wiggle the one on top and I hear the Solenoid engage with a very loud CLICK  CLICK  CLICK.  I push it in further, it clicks, and run my tests….all works.

So I run over to the nearest Napa store, and I pick up two, a 5 amp and a 10 amp, Circuit Breaker Fuse.  WHY 2?  Because what I take out is a 10 amp, but it calls for a 5 amp.  The one right below it is a 20 amp, but it calls for a 10 amp. 

If you look at the picture above, along the bottom it says 15A Max, and it has a blue fuse in it, which is a 15 amp fuse.  The next one is a bit hidden, but it says 10A Max, but the gold metallic thing says 20A when I take it out.  The Silver one is hidden, but it says 5A Max, and it had a 10 amp in it…it was the loose one, the one which I needed to replace.

Looking again at the replacements you can see that the metal attachment legs have three parts to it.  The “Universal” to them is that you break off the length to fit what you need.  On the one that we replaced, the person who “broke off the legs” was not careful, and it broke off below the mark…making it too short…so it wiggled (vibrated) out real easy.  Hopefully this will end our problem.  And just to be sure….I have a 5 amp and a 10 amp coming in from Amazon as spares, and I saved the 20 amp that I replaced with the 10 amp because there is a 20 amp in this fuse box at the very top…and it is in a 25 amp max location, so it is definitely good.  These Circuit Breaker Fuses act like a fuse in that they will break the circuit if to much of a load (amps) are put on them.  The difference is, with a fuse, you have to replace it.  With a Circuit Breaker Fuse, it will reset itself once it cools down and will allow for the circuit to connect again.

So now we are ready to test it out on our next little trip….which will be to the Santa Cruz, Pinnacles National Park, and PROBABLY Big Sur areas.  I have reservations at Sunset Beach for Monday-Thursday, September 21st-24th.  Then we will go to the less crowded Pinnacles National Park for the weekend, then PROBABLY go to Big Sur for the Monday-Thursday of the following week.  These popular State Parks are busy on the weekends, but you can get into them on the weekdays this time of year.  Pinnacles National Park is just not busy at all…being one of our new National Parks, they will struggle to get people there for awhile…but the plus is that they have ELECTRICITY at many of their RV sites for under $30 per night (half that for seniors with the senior card).  Another draw….they have California Condors there!   These rare birds nearly went extinct (down to around 20 birds), but now boast a population of nearly 500 birds.  As ugly as they might look, I want to get a picture of them.  Also, this time of year is good whale watching time…and we can’t pass up a visit to the Monterey Aquarium, which I have been to a number of times, but Marcia has never seen yet.  We also hope to find time to visit a cousin or two that live in the area.  And why “PROBABLY” with Big Sur?  Well, we might just want to go back to Sunset Beach again…or try one of the other beach camps in the area.

But first thing first…and on Monday, mom has her surgery.  Mucinous Carcinoma represents approximately 1% to 2% of all breast cancers. The main differentiating features are mucus production and cells that are poorly defined. It also has a favorable prognosis in most cases.  This is the type of Breast Cancer mom has.  So of all the breast cancers out there, she has the one which is the better one to have…not that anyone is standing in lines hoping to catch it.  All Breast Cancers are bad…all Cancers are bad…there are just some which are better to have than others.  This is the case with mom’s.  My next post will probably be “post surgery”, so prayers and precious thoughts for mom from here on out would be appreciated.