payaso del mar

i'm not laughing.....off the grid and off the radar = freedom from a lot of poop. kind of ironic that this durty fogging heepie technology is now allowing all the other govt skeptics, right and left wing, to cut their dependence on govt and the grid... equally ironic that my first solar panels came from that enviro leader, BP....25-30 yrs old and they still put out. I've never heard of positive ground PV stuff. is it British?

to follow up on my comments on thermoelectric coolers....agreeing with Maineah-----from the Wikipedia page: This technology is far less commonly applied to refrigeration than vapor-compression refrigeration is. The primary advantages of a Peltier cooler compared to a vapor-compression refrigerator are its lack of moving parts or circulating liquid, very long life, invulnerability to leaks, small size and flexible shape. Its main disadvantage is high cost and poor power efficiency. Many researchers and companies are trying to develop Peltier coolers that are both cheap and efficient. Peltier elements are commonly used in consumer products. For example, Peltier elements are used in camping, portable coolers, cooling electronic components and small instruments.[8] The cooling effect of Peltier heat pumps can also be used to extract water from the air in dehumidifiers. A camping/car type electric cooler can typically reduce the temperature by up to 20 °C (36 °F) below the ambient temperature. thus it sounds like 40-45 degrees below ambient would even be charitable. so make that 60 degree beer on a 95 degree day.......... why do jokes about Lucas refirgerators and warm Brit beer keep coming to mind?

thanks! this may be very useful, as I have a bicycle HID headlight that needs new battery, and the new ones from NiteRider are likely Beyond Exorbitant. you don't have to convince me of the power for weight advantages: one of the best things I ever did for my XR650L was replace the lump o lead under the seat with a lithium battery at 1/3 the weight. it really seems like the major issue with lithium batteries is cost, due to limited supply of lithium....else, they'd be the choice for RV setups where weight is an issue. so if your solution to use a buttload of these is workable........ those damn libs and their laws, next thing you know people will be able to breathe in the L.A. basin..... Remember that the de facto libertarian paradise is just south o here, not too many laws there or at least no ability to enforce em due to budget. chugging tequila while driving, no problem, until you crash. John Galt prolly lives somewhere in the Sierra Madre, where there are REALLY no laws.... Just joking there, but really, living out west where you don't have many neighbors (NM, AZ, NV, CO, WY, MT, etc etc) is the way to be able to live your life as you wish w/o too much gummint interference if that's what's important to you....even JD didn't move far enough west to totally escape the nanny state..... IMHO, any cop who pulls you over on an electric scooter is likely looking for business, to the point that they'd find something to pull you over for no matter what you were driving! currently working on a suppression motion where cops claimed FedEx truck was straddling lanes....yeah, right, that's why the patrol car dashcam video shows 6 cops with guns drawn rushing the truck as soon as it stops, a lane violation......

I was trying to find the initial thread you posted on this thing, where you mentioned the model # and where you got it, but no luck. is this the FRF434? I will say that after reading the Amazon reviews, i'm buying it locally if I get one.....30+ people reported damage on arrival! the apparent fragility would be worrisome for "camping" use but for a built-in in a toyhome, should be OK.

OK. that;'s the story of troubleshooting, eliminating possibilities, yes? the headlights dimming is a sign of something else problematic....even at idle, your alternator should still put out enough to run your headlights, and your battery should provide enough of a reserve that even if alternator didn't, it should run the headlights for a traffic light cycle without them dimming. EFI systems don't like low voltage, won't usually even run below about 10.5 volts, and sometimes act erratic before they get that low. check your battery voltage at rest and your system voltage when the engine is idling and see what you see. if this checks out OK, maybe have your local otto partz check the alt amperage output and battery condition. or you could swap in a known good, fully charged battery and see how it idles.

you've been throwing a lot of financial love at the ol girl lately.....but probably well worth it. you'll be a happy camper in July......

lookin good so far. real oak.ply cabinetry; i'm impressed.

BTW--Totem, thanks for that info on the batteries. how many volts is each cell? and yes, after something over 1200 transactions on fleebay, I do tend to discount the sellers' claims.....for Chinese goods, which will be most all fridges these days, I tend to discount the specs from the manufacturer too.........

true in the US or Europe. not always so if you travel elsewhere.....sun is much more readily available in rural Mexico than propane. i'm not trying to argue there's only one right answer here. i see merit in both approaches depending on your situation. in a Bandit, weight is always an issue and you can store a hell of a lot of energy in a pound of hydrocarbons. but I think JD is right on this when he notes that PV technology is the way of the future and is quickly making propane fridges more or less obsolete, the biggest snag being, yes, the energy storage. (the person who comes up with better energy storage will make the guy who invented Viagra look like a pauper.....) the 150 watt panel I just got for the top of my Bandit weighs about 24 lbs. it cost me $120 + about 40 shipping. 900 watt-hours a day at 6 hrs/day. to be conservative, let's assume that due to panel temp and other factors, we're actually gonna see more like 750 watt-hours per day. also bought a 2d one that I plan to hook up as a free standing exterior auxiliary and plug in via a 12v marine outlet, so double all those figures. I'm cannibalizing the charge controller from our last cabin (Blue Sky 2512iX) so I already have that, but would be another $250 otherwise. I have one house battery already in my MH, as do most of you. gonna add a second one so an additional $90 or in my case 200 for an AGM. 35 lbs each and total of 110 amp-hours or 1320 watt-hours. the factory 110/12V Norcold fridge....no empirical tests but rated at 5.5 amps @ 12v......so 66 watts/hour and 1584 watt-hours a day! (guess I need to look into one of those Igloos...). This figure is inflated since it's based on when the compressor is running, and with enough insulation, you can cut the run time quite a bit, but ouch. still, the two panels (i'd put em both up top if I wouldn't have to hoist em when I raised the poptop) will generate enough per day to run even this juice hawg in Sonoran or Baja Sur summers. indefinitely. without beating the crap out of your vehicle over the 20 miles of washboard back into whatever resembles a town for propane, assuming you can find it. without depleting your travel budget since you already spent the $ (I can afford it now, but when I retire, avoiding the $20 propane fills will be nice.......). so yeah, when you add it all up, I think DC fridge on PVs is mostly the way to go....plus, with a battery combiner, you always have the option of charging via the alternator in an emergency.

would love to see lots of photos of the top refurb....i'm afraid I have the same job coming on the fiberglass poptop of the Bandit....a fair amount of sag in the center on both fore-aft and lateral axes.

not entirely a bad idea, although ultimately not entirely sustainable.....viz the problems they have with buggies getting hit by cars. but the more I see of most of the human race, the more I want to get away from all 7 billion of it.........

one reason i'm a heathen. sophisticated theology is way over my head....... you don't have to convince me of the long term economics of solar vs. propane. especially when you insert the word "used" and shop CL for your panels. my 300 watts of panels just arrived yesterday for the Bandit, and wife and i are in the middle of installing a 2.8 KW/day system at the "cabin".....maybe $2500 total and never worry about the electric bill or county bldg. inspectors (since the latter doesn't know you're there without utility hookups....) or property taxes (same reason, your property is "unimproved" on paper). However, until lithium batteries get cheaper, for someone on the move, the amount of energy you can store in a tank of propane for the weight still has attractions compared to any energy storage in lead-acid batteries. when I win the lottery, the Bandit will get a 6.3 GW Tesla Powerwall....

oh duh....now I understand why I see all the Amish made refurb bits for these. Totem, the "cabin" actually is a 21' Nomad traila for now, and the ammonia refer is stock. why was that one giving off fumes? you mean just the propane-combustion exhaust? in theory, that should be just CO2 and water, but in practice, it does seem like it always has a sweet organic-compound odor. how much $ would the lithium batteries run for that power pack? you say old laptop batteries, but my (admittedly limited!) experience has been that the battery is usually one of the first things to die on a laptop. is there a way to refurb em? that thing on ebay is a thermostatic fridge and won't get things that cold....they claim 54 degrees F below ambient....after factoring in the "ebay seller claim discount", i'd guess more like 40-45 degrees below ambient. sorry, I want my beer colder on a 95 degree Mexico summer day than 50 degrees, and it sounds like you'd have trouble keeping a lot of food cold enough to prevent spoilage in the summer, esp if your RV interior gets hotter than outside. and it's not like the juice usage is all that low....you can run a real compressor-style fridge on 6 amps. Engel, ARB, FridgeFreeze, JD's $130 Igloo..........

yeah, that's kind of where I was going. hard to have anything too well grounded. I often add a short jumper and a 2d grounding point to any grounds, just for redundancy when things start to corrode and oxidize down the line.....

sorry, I seem to have gotten away from your initial Q there. the compressor bracketry would be pretty easy for any welder to make up, although if you found someone parting a truck or 4skinner, you could probably just buy it pretty cheap. Sanden compressors and idler pulleys/swing arms are pretty generic. here's a good site with info on planning the system and a source for small components (altho I suspect you could get stuff cheaper at your local auto A/C shop).....haven't dealt with em but they seem to have a good rep with the hot rodder crowd: http://vintageair.com/

good points. now you got me thinking about not replacing the propane fridge in our cabin but just doing some work on it..........

yeah, that's the deal killer right there on the manual. i'm fortunate to have a wife who prefers a stick. probably is compatible automatic, if it's compatible with the 22RE crankshaft. might require some fabrication of mounts and some driveshaft shortening. improvement probably wouldn't be worth the cost/effort, though. not least, most of the high tech automatics are linked into the ECM or another computer and you'd have to get all the wiring and sensors to make it work right. would almost be easier to just swap in entire 3.4 drivetrain, complete with all sensors, from wrecked vehicle.

the Bandit uses a 5800 btu "ChillAir" unit built into the wall. 7.8 amps on DC., IIRC. when it dies i'll likely replace with the guts from a 5-6000 btu window unit. one guy claims be have been able to run a 5000btu Haier (common cheap window unit brand) on a 1000 watt Honda gen.....

something else I thought of last night while helping a friend do similar job on car that had been dormant for a mere 8 mos. switches. you can count on many of them seeming wonky or even toasted due to dust n crud buildup and non-use. don't order new ones until after you pull em out, bang em on something to loosen the crud, blow em out with compressed air, and if this doesn't get it, carefully squirt some contact cleaner into the internals.....I say "carefully" because some plastics don't stand up to the stuff. I once dropped my cellphone into a cup of coffee and had the bright idea to flush it out with contact cleaner.....not pretty, it was like watching the last scene of the vampire movie where the sun comes up and the vampires cracks into dust.....the bakelite or whatever the switch casing is made of should be OK but I wouldn't try to spray any of em in place. also, the window regulator (crank) assembly will likely be really crusty. these just require pulling the door panel, blowing out the dust, getting the old grease n crud out of tracks and linkage pivot points, and re-greasing as appropriate.

you can probably sell your old 22RE locally....plenty of market for those.

YES!!! he's absolutely right. especially with the 70s-tech oh-so-magic trans they put in these. current automatics almooost go up hills and get mpg as good as a manual, but the ones from the 80s didn't. the rule of thumb back when was that 15-20% of your go-power got lost in the slush. as a practical matter, most of your highway running will be in top gear anyway unless there are more and bigger hills in MI than I'm visualizing. the biggest issue for many would be how the significant other felt about using a clutch........ I guess I didn't realize you had an automatic. this change alone would make a big difference in how your rig goes and will nicely complement any engine work you do.

beautiful work on that square tube. how'd you bend it that neatly?

I was being less than accurate with my terminology....I realize that connecting to the vehicle frame is not a "ground" but that's what I was referring to. and I don't think the county code compliance folks will be knocking on the door of yer toyhomes any time soon, but I also think it's still worth trying to wire to NEC and/or ABYC standards when you can. unlike AC GFCIs, ground-fault protection on DC circuits is not for personal safety, it's fire prevention. yes, this probably isn't necessary....but I could visualize the hot wire possibly wearing through the insulation if it touches the panel frame.

que weird. but yeah, I kinda like it. the Stude folks might be less enamored, esp anyone who's looking for that nose. why, after all that work, they left it outside to rot, I dunno.

JD, are you becoming the Chinook tycoon? ya can only drive one at a time. that's the biggest issue I see with the plan. unless you're planning on flipping one. or is this a hedge against the 5 yr cycle for vehicles to rust out from under you?