Thursday, October 16, 2014

Bug it!

This is a leak free workplace.  It has proudly been ZERO days since the last incident!

Yep, well ...yeah, another leak, sigh.  A couple weeks back I sealed one long roof seam with Acryl R and the other long roof seam with Tempro 635.  Just doing my best for you all in the name of research.... The plan was to check them in the spring to see which held up better.

Well the Acryl R seam was leaking in at least two areas.... and winter is coming (said in my very best Game of Thrones imitation).   So I got up on the roof, removed the Acryl R and used Trempro 635.  It rained last night and I was worried about whether it had cured.  So I grabbed my camera and when I looked at the roof seam I see this.  Ignore the morning dew, concentrate on the seam, this was about 6 inches of it.

Every mother-loving black fly left in the Northeast committed suicide on my roof seam.   LITERALLY hundreds.  It was like 40 degrees, there shouldn't have been ANY black flies with 100 miles of my roof!

Well they better "wear off" cause I'm not doing it again. Just saying.

Update, well it POURED 2 inches today, think I got this licked, the only thing that leaked was where the wind blew it in the refrigerator roof vent.  Might have to think of someway to put a waterproof pan under the frig.

PS  Yes, I checked, the bugs are still there :(

Monday, October 13, 2014

A Eureka moment!!

As in ....we have light!   There probably are other things I should write about first, but tonight was very exciting!  Peter finally wired the last light (the license plate light)  and we have LIGHTS! YIPPEE!

Proof by picture...


As in all great epiphanies,there was a lot of work that led up to this moment.  Here's Peter wiring in the last light,  surrounded by a summers worth of insulation work, rib taping and electrical.   And then there was the reworking of all the lights to make them LED, and installing them!
 The batteries are going in the front of the trailer, so this is going to be my 12 volt Power central!  The seven way wires come into a junction box.  I know the truck would be fused but does anyone also add fuses to the junction box to protect the truck?

All the teardrop grounds are accessed from outside the trailer.  The Stop/tail/turns are grounded to the inside ribs.  If need be, I left enough wire so that they could get pulled and an outside ground added if there are issues.

We still don't have a truck (waiting on seeing the new aluminum Ford trucks) so we used one of these to test it
And following the instructions on this youtube video on how to test the Bargman plug,  I'm sure some of you are snickering about needing instructions...YOU BE QUIET!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-VYf5MltgI

Anyway, I'm as happy as a bird with a french fry!

On a side note, I found a new product that's really kinda cool,   If you notice in the picture of the lights, my license plate light is installed way off to the left on a curved side section of metal.  This is because I still intend to put the tire in a continental kit on the back bumper.   But I needed a gasket that was bigger on one side than the other, and narrower in the center.  Yes,  I probably could have built up some buytl tape but I was looking for something a little more elegant.    What I found was a moldable gasket material called Versimold.

This stuff is cool!   This is the gap before I had a gasket.


Basically you mold it, shape it, then cure it in the oven (or with a heat gun) and it becomes a custom gasket. 

The first time I tried to remove it from the light to cure it..... but it got stretched out and didn't fit nicely enough.  The second time I left it on the light and put the whole thing in the oven with much better results. Sweet!   Best of all I gave it the hose test and no leaks!
.
This light is grounded by the screws.  But I did manage to find an LED bulb that fits.  LED's don't like water but this is sealed in the little glass cylinder so hopefully it will be okay.  I used  this one.

That's all for now!  I love my lights