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MCI 102-C3 coach to RV - Electrical System

Parts and tools came in. Back to machining the nuts with a proper tap on hand. I have another 3' section of the hex bar to chop up. Going to call the local machinist tomorrow to see if he has a band saw so I can spare myself from cutting 18+ more of these with the cordless sawzall.

Shot of the complete tie rod mount assembly. Weather permitting, we'll get a few rivets drilled and tie rods fastened. The coupler-type nuts that I've been machining are 1.4" in length. One side of the hex will butt up against the roof ribs and get welded. I see an awful lot of people bolt to nothing more than the aluminum roof skins and I do not see that holding up in long-term use if they travel a lot.

I can get the cord grips for the PV wiring ordered. We have a pretty good idea of where the cable entry will go. Just have to narrow the location down with a few measurements.

Edit: Found the cord grips. They're Sealcon CD29N1-BR. Roughly $20 cheaper total through Major Electronix/Products for Automation than what the shipped cost would be through McMaster. Ordered.
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A little overlap. I'm going to fab new roof hatch doors later on. Make them a little narrower so they clear the tilted PV panel rails. I'm thinking I may grab a quart of Van Sickle paint at Big R to dunk the bare end of each tie rod end in. I have plenty of POR-15, but that stuff is not the least bit UV resistant without their clearcoat.

Edit: Big R brought the suck again. They no longer carry Van Sickle or Rustoleum. Switched to Krylon and Valspar with half the inventory that they used to have.
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Still have to paint the tie rods, but I got the first one test fit. Spot on. The storm front finally hit our area and dropped the temp too low to paint. Freezing condensation almost caused me to eat shit on the bus roof trying to get the rod put on to plug the hole.
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Cleaned, dipped, and spun. Going to let them dry for a couple days. Dropped off the hex bar to Wayne on Friday. Might have all the tie rods and unistrut mounted some time next week.
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Sealcon grips shipped yesterday and arrived today. Got me curious. Turns out Sealcon is in Centennial, CO. and we drove right by them two days ago.

The grips are nice. Keyed, o-ringed, quality machining and plating. I pulled up the Sealcon site and saw that they have a ton of nice stuff that is similar to what Blue Sea manufactures. Might be stopping in there for a lot of our pneumatic and electrical connections.

Now that all the parts for the cable entry can be assembled, I think I should paint it red and squirt some dog piss on it. Those elbows on the flange are potentially for air or water or whatever else I feel like plumbing up there. I'm machining the OD of some nipples that will act as the bolts to clamp the flanges onto the roof. Figured doing this would be a great way to double up the function of the bolt holes in the flanges and keep me from having to punch more holes in the roof.



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One full row of tie rods on. The unistrut set right on them perfectly. I decided not to remove the red paint off the ribs for welding because that stuff acted a lot like a very high quality weld-thru primer the last time I had to weld around in. None of the coupler nuts will get welded until everything on the roof is torqued. The tie rods will likely move around a little as everything gets snugged up, so I'd like to not fight coupler nuts that are already welded in.

I have the next row of rivets center punched for drilling. Probably going to get that row done tonight. The paint on the tie rods isn't completely hardened, but plenty hard for handling. I'll have to modify a wrench to fit the tie rod flats so that I can tighten those to the unistrut.
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So close to hoisting the first PV panel up there. Everything is fitting up just right. Well, almost. I'll have to shave one face of the 10th coupler nut on the inner rail because it's too close the the roof rib and causing the tie rod end to lean too far forward for the unistrut slot to drop onto it.

As shown: The panel overhang is less than I estimated. Only 1-1/2" beyond the factory drip rails. Inner unistrut rails tilt enough that the roof hatches actually open without interference. Tie rod end ball movement is very smooth and the outer rails tilt to a superb angle if we every decided to set these up for tilting.

Pretty damn happy with this overall. Once I get the rest of the coupler nuts back from Wayne, I can slap them in the lathe for a quick drill and tap and then the other side can be mounted.
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Had enough of the coupler nuts to start on the other side. Yesterday, I had a two or three-hour window between the ridiculous wind stopping and the freezing condensation starting. The roof gets so damn slick when there's frost. These unistruts are going to be my life-saving guard rails for a while.
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Looking good.
You still going with the Battleborns?
I am thinking a Leaf pack re-wired to 48v is a good deal for the $$
 
Because we have a surplus of PV panels, I'm double stacking them on the bus for now. Can't seem to get anybody to buy the extras at the $0.25/watt price we paid. The two panels in series don't quite fulfill the controller capacity. I'll face the bottom layer of panels towards the bus roof so that they can add to the total output. Figure the bottom panels will put out around 25% of their rated output at best, which will be about right to top off the controllers. I'll have to hook this up and measure the output voltage before I connect them to a controller.
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Was in Omaha over the weekend. Stormed here while we were gone and it appears every one of the tie rod ends leaked. I'll get some nylock nuts and see if the nylon will seal the threads. One good thing about not being able to work in any shelter is that everything gets tested for weatherproofing whether I like it or not.
 
I wouldn't use nylock nuts, you will just have water coming in around the nut.
I would put a bead of gasket maker or urethane adhesive sealant (such as Locktite PL30) between the tie rod and the roof (and on the bottom if you want, just put it on a washer, not on the nut), snug it, let it set, then tighten it down.

Aaron Z
 
aczlan said:
I wouldn't use nylock nuts, you will just have water coming in around the nut.
I would put a bead of gasket maker or urethane adhesive sealant (such as Locktite PL30) between the tie rod and the roof (and on the bottom if you want, just put it on a washer, not on the nut), snug it, let it set, then tighten it down.

Aaron Z
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Yeah, I'll probably grab some sealer tomorrow while I'm in town. Another $50 for nylocks in the correct thread and would still need a bit of sealer.

I got the last of the coupler nuts done on the lathe today. Should be able to mount the rest of them tomorrow.
 
Scratched the cable entry flanges flat. The gasket ID's were much smaller than the raised portion of the flange faces.
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I've got all the roof rivets center punched, but there's storms all around and the wind is blowing pretty hard. Picked up some thread sealer. I'm going to go ahead and get some nylock nuts because I need to get something plated. The nuts that came on the tie rod ends have the black oxide which is absolutely worthless.
 
I really like the extendable arrays that the "beginning from this morning" and "everlanders" you get increased array size plus shading and redundancy. Are you over voltage or current on the controller?
 
CarterKraft said:
I really like the extendable arrays that the "beginning from this morning" and "everlanders" you get increased array size plus shading and redundancy. Are you over voltage or current on the controller?
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I plan to make the array extendable later on unless we find that we have more than enough power coming in with the currently planned setup. The controllers can take 150 volts constantly and up to 162 volts in hyper VOC. Two panels in series puts out 110 volts when coldest. Have to check the max input current allowed. From the looks of it, there should be room to put the two underside panels in series and parallel them to the two upper panels. I'll be testing open circuit current and voltage when I get a set of panels mounted and in full sun.
 
JNHEscher said:
I plan to make the array extendable later on unless we find that we have more than enough power coming in with the currently planned setup. The controllers can take 150 volts constantly and up to 162 volts in hyper VOC. Two panels in series puts out 110 volts when coldest. Have to check the max input current allowed. From the looks of it, there should be room to put the two underside panels in series and parallel them to the two upper panels. I'll be testing open circuit current and voltage when I get a set of panels mounted and in full sun.
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I have heard but not tested there isn't much trouble with over paneling in current just don't exceed the voltage. If you are going to stay in sunny climates it might not matter but if staying up north in the winter months it might be needed.
 
Cold and dreary day with no funds to order solar hardware has me tinkering on the gauge cluster.

Splitting the gauges between a high-priority screen and low-priority screen. The high-priority tablet will be the one that I unplug and tote to the rear of the bus with me for diagnostics. I think I already explained that, but I'm elaborating. All this stuff needs to be charted out so I can sketch the graphics with some direction.

Every measurement listed but the EGT's is on the screen that I think I want them on. However, I wouldn't mind hearing from others about it. Would you switch any gauge from one side to the other? I'm sort of attempting to even out the number of gauges between the two screens. Doesn't have to be an exact split, but only in the interest of keep one screen or the other from becoming too full.
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What kind of gauges are you able to set up with this system?
I would probably prefer to have speedometer on the main one and have the "screens" be saved as a config file that's accessible from both tablets or saved on both tablets so that if you drop something on the screen of the main tablet while you're checking things in the back you can switch the secondary tablet to cover what it would normally do.

For gauges, for a lot of what you're doing (such as left and right coolant temperatures) I would either do a pair of 180° sweep gauges one going from 12:00 to 6:00 the other going from 6:00 to 12:00 so that you have left and right as opposite sides of the same circle. Or do 90° sweep gauges and have left and right coolant temps at the top L and R, coolant pressure in the bottom R and return coolant temperature from the radiator in the bottom L with set points to change the background of the gauge green, yellow or red if the reading for the gauge is out of the acceptable range.

Aaron Z
 
You can do just about anything with RealDash. RealDash | Gallery I'm drawing completely one-off graphics for mine. Something more organic-looking with a tribal/filigree type vine that divides and curls into each gauge face. Weird, I know. I got tired of the robotic looks.

I did start out with the tach and speedo mostly overlapped. Makes sense to watch the two side-by-side. And spot on about swapping screens in the event of a catastrophic failure. Both RealDash configs will be saved on both tablets for that very reason. I'll probably have a third tablet ready to go as a backup. The second tablet is intended to display everything that I need but can do without if I just need to make it to the next city or something.

All gauges will be bunched in clusters of like measurements. The graphics can be positioned anywhere. I'm drawing the main layout which includes the background and dial faces, (in my case, the vine). Dial needles are drawn separately, inserted and adjusted by pixel position. Colors, relays, audible alarms, etc. can all be fully programmed to change upon receiving a defined threshold signal, much like how Autometer Elite (was Nexus) and Stack Pro-Control gauges do.

One of the coolest things I like about this digital setup is that I can draw it all in a CAD program, (Fusion 360), layout overlapping layers at different depths, and render the entire screen with my own light source shining from outside the viewing area. This should make for some nifty depth.
 
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Machined and nipple down to fit into the cable entry flange bolt holes. Loving this idea, but I think I'll have to get 2" nipples instead of 2-1/2" I tried to estimate the length and how much thread engagement the fitting would have. After machining the gasket side of the flanges flat and the elbows not engaging very far, the length is about 1/2" over.
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And that's how it came out. One elbow was tapped deeper than the others. Pipe threads as usual. I think I have a 3/8" NPT tap. Might grind it down so I can open up the threads in the other elbows.
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The new hardware combo. High-pressure bonded washers from McMaster because they were the only place I could find that carried them in 9/16". Plated nuts from Ace Hardware. I've been buying out every store in town. Two stores left to hit up.

I'm able to torque these down. The silicone washers would squeeze all the way out. Loaded the threads with teflon tape. All seems to be holding now. I have three of the four rails all mounted and I'm worn the hell out.
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Two days of tornadoes, rain, and hail and the hardware upgrade has shown to be leak-free. Got the last seven tie rods in and one section of unistrut on today, once the storms had passed. Need to grab three more unistrut sections to finish this portion off. I might try to mock up a couple rails and panels in the house to figure out what I want as far as laterals and fasteners. It's a toss-up between rambunctious children inside and gusts of wind outside. At least I can bring out the dad voice to settle the kids down.
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Last-minute solar stuff before we head to MO. Everybody has been out of low-profile unistrut and 1/2" cone nuts for the last week or so. Home Depot on Platte and Academy got a bunch in today, so I snagged some. More struts and a whole box of nuts. Got the last three struts on tonight.
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Austin said:
That needs to report to Kayla's Sunsets Thread.

What are you coming to MO for?
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I did check that thread out not long ago out of curiosity. No idea who Kayla was. There's some awesome sunset pics in there and I take a lot of pics of the horizon out here.

The MO trip is for visiting family in Columbia and STL while I am a host of my mom's celebration of life on Sunday. We're going to detour down south around the Ozarks on our way back to CO to see some land in person that we're may purchase. We're actually from MO. Spent the last 7 years in CO for career purposes and are ready to get out.
 
Just placed the orders for the last of the PV mounting hardware. Enough time has passed since I put together the order that I had to go back to SketchUp and add some pieces to confirm measurements and quantities. 4-1/2" bolts will pass through a padded washer, along an upper panel, through a nylon spacer, along the lower panel, and through unistrut and unistrut nut.

We're planning to have the bus moved to MO by the end of this month. Because we're hiring out the haul, I'm very hesitant to put the panels on the bus roof prior to the haul because I'm seeing several haulers damaging vehicles and attempting to avoid all responsibility. We'll have all the hardware on hand and haul the stack of panels to MO ourselves so that we're ready to mount them on the bus right away once this is on our property.

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Gathering up all the solar parts to figure out what we have and what we need. I was going to switch to Midnite Solar remote trip breakers. The 250-amp and 20-30 amp. Went over the dimensional diagram of the 250 and it's way too large for the Blue Sea breaker box. Their 20-amp is a four-wide DIN rail mount and I'm going panel-mount. No remote trip. Again, not necessary, but I thought it to be a great solution to an emergency situation that could arise. I guess if I'm building this better than the RV's that are out there, electrical fires shouldn't be such a problem.

Back to what I had already ordered from Blue Sea, which are Carling breakers. I like these a lot. Somewhere one page 5, I think I mention that the bus bar and the back of the 250-amp breaker interferes with the box. I'm going to search the interwebs for either some new bars that will fit this breaker pack and box, or grab some copper bar to make them myself. I have to shift the cable lug stud position from the end of the bars to offset center where there's ample room for cable mounting and routing. I may actually be able to find a two-holers cable lug for 4/0 that would fit the 1/4" studs on the breaker. Could just zip the end off the bars so that they fit.

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