payaso del mar

I'm not 100% sure it was a wall unit but it fits in a cabinet just above the furnace and the hot air exits through a simple return air grille on the outside wall, turned so the louvers face down ....i realize that's not much help w/o pix, i'll try to shoot some and take measurements tonight. I am pretty sure that when it dies, I can fit a 5-6000 btu window unit in the space, even if I have to take the guts of the new unit out of the housing it came in. and I suspect a modern 5-6000 btu unit will put out a lot more cold air than this noisy old cranky thing....looks to be a hybrid of a household unit and an aftermarket car A/C. might not work for you but since you're redoing the cabinets anyway.....

that's one way to put it. or you could say 2x the cost of a cheaper knockoff* to get the known solid engineering and durability I've been accustomed to on all my other Honda-engine stuff over the last 35 years. I guess you'd say all the people who opted for a Camry or Accord instead of a cheaper Malibu over the last howevermany years are stupid too? the cheapest thing is not always the best, or even necessarily the cheapest in the 20+ yr long run. *i'm sure it's only coincidental that many of them are red. remember when you're setting up straw men to debate that i'm coming at this from the standpoint of a motorcycle mechanic, not a unicorn enthusiast, and that a single 1000W Honda would probably run the AC if you don't need a massive roof unit. my toyhome has what looks to be a modified wall unit of 5800 btu, which the amperage draw math indicates should run fine on the 1000. i'm only looking at the 2000 because I figure the 2000 running at 1/2 load will produce less noise and eat less fuel than a 1000 running full tilt boogie. then you probably recall a few pages back where I acknowledged that the bang for the $ award goes elsewhere than Honda. not everyone needs top grade equipment, esp if you usually camp near a Harbor Fright. but for those of us who like to camp in places like back country Mexico, there's a certain comfort in knowing they sweated the details back at the factory and the design floor, and that I can clean the carb if needed. And while all manufactured products can have issues and Hondas are not immune, the % rate is a lot lower than on a cheap knockoff. putting it another way: when you make what is generally acknowledged to be the class of the field, to the point that what you make has spawned an entire class of imitators (inverter gennies) but still sells like hotcakes at 2X their price, you have a VERY good incentive to keep the quality control up.....people's expectations are higher for a Honda or Yamaha than for a HF, and they should be. some of us are willing to pay for that quality-control-held-to-higher-expectations. given where I like to camp, that includes me. you see any HArbor Freight stores in this picture to switcheroo your dead generator? and besides, with the team of unicorns lifting the back end of my rig, I don't even need to worry about weight on the rear axle........

from the pix, looks like the unit was designed to mount to a faceplate cut tightly around it.....that looks like a mounting flange, screw holes and all. or if that would put it too far forward (sticking out of the hole), make a "frame" to fasten the flange to.

pix would help. not least since you may be having to fabricate something up. I like the sound of oversize compartment...seems like you'll have options for mounting bracket. would angle brackets or some aluminum L channel work w/o looking too bozo?

um, I hate to break this to you but I daresay you ain't representative of the average American*. if the rest of the place were like you, we'd have those flying cars they promised us back in the early 60s......... *the average would be more like the folks in the auto parts store who didn't know how many cylinders their car had.....

please, where do i get one of those unicorn tee shirts? Honda has been building small engines for a long time that stand up to hard duty and even abuse. http://www.norra.com/m1k_bikes_scoring.php?stage=overall be sure to let us know when Harbor Freight enters a team in the Baja 1000.......and especially if they win or even finish. No, this doesn't translate directly to gennies.....but it tells us something about engineering for adverse conditions, esp when they're going head to head with the best that high end dirt bike maker KTM has to offer. Lots of these bikes are old crocks (XR650R hasn't been built in 10 years, XR600 hasn't been built since mid90s), maintained by folks like us. and they can get parts for em.......... JD mentioned Hyundais in another thread, and those look like a possible option if weight isn't critical (70 lbs vs about 47 for the Honda "2000") and you can live with a bit more noise. not much more $ than the off brands ($550) but company still likely to be around in 20-30 years when you need parts. but be sure to read the negative reviews on the Hyundai........http://www.amazon.com/Hyundai-HY2000si-Starting-Portable-Compliant/product-reviews/B004919NEK/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_viewpnt_rgt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1&sortBy=helpful&filterByStar=critical&pageNumber=1

My best friend/companion Don showed up 14 years ago for our first date riding an E-bike! Since he had to take a ferry boat across Puget Sound it was an easy and economical choice. First on and first off the boat with no waiting in long lines of cars. Only had to pay for a walk on ticket. Besides what better way is there to make a memorable first impression OK, great, now I have HAL9000 singing "Bicycle built for two" in my mind.......... but I like his plan, learn early on whether the person is interested in you in all yer dubious glory rather than What You Drive....

wow. really nice work!

I previously stayed out of this discussion cuz I agree with Totem....glad to see i'm not the only one. haven't had one of the cursed things for 40 yrs. coworkers often ask me how I get so much done on the weekends....I tell em my "television deficit disorder" is acting up again. my wife is a career educator, has taught all levels and all grades, currently at a community college.....she agrees that even for "good" TV (PBS, NatGeo, etc), the canned and prepackaged visualization causes visualization and abstract imagery skills in the brain to atrophy.....my shorter version is "it sucks yer brain out through your eyeballs"

if you have any friends who are gittar pickers, an old low "E" string also works very well for coring/dentalflossing out holes....and bronze wound, so not likely to gouge steel

If the 1000 watts is surge capacity, likely not. Maybe borrow a small micro and try it first? JD mentioned a Panasonic inverter micro, which seems to use less juice than most.

if you find one that involves spending $, let me know and i'll split the cost with you to get a copy.

look at the first thread in the "Improvements" sub-forum

finally, the DC fuse panel portion is a bit flimsy so some dielectric grease on terminals may not be a bad idea. for sure hold the adjacent fuses when you pull one.

next, connect the main hot wire from batteries to the "battery pos" terminal. Finally, crimp the hot side of the 12V DC circuit wires to the appropriate hot wire from back of converter (don’t assume wires that come out highest on back of converter necessarily relate to topmost fuses....this was driving me crazy til I figured out I was powering up the wrong hot wire out). Almost done....now, what to do with that gap beside the new converter from where the old one was wider? Cut a small hunk of scrap Lexan or sheet metal and use this space for other electrical stuff....in my case, two switches for PV panel disconnects (switches are only rated for 15A so I had to use separate ones for main and aux panels, each about 12 amps output.), a voltmeter, and a switch to turn the voltmeter off.....it puts out so much light that it works as a nightlight.

The hot side of the DC connections on this unit is connected to wires coming out the back. There are two circuits that are wired with heavier gauge wires than the rest, and this is all I needed for the current electric setup. First, I connected the negative wires of the DC circuits to the "battery neg" terminal of the unit. I’ll eventually run a separate ground wire from here to the battery negative terminal but didn’t have any white 6 gauge wire around....it works OK now even without, since the unit’s ground bar is connected to chassis, but.....I like lots of grounds.

Note that the AC portion of "converter" section of this unit needs to be wired up to work....you can see the converter section wires coming across the bottom of the unit, just below DC fuse panel. I dedicated one breaker to run only the converter to make diagnostics easier. Again, connect the neutral (white) and ground (bare/green) wires to appropriate bars. Now plug in for a moment and test your AC circuits. All good? Unplug and on to the DC circuits.

The converter doesn’t come with AC breakers so you’ll need to buy a few: a 30 amp main and ones for the branch circuits, usually 15 amp. These snap onto the buss bar (rails in the right half of the unit). Manual sets out compatible breakers, and I had no trouble finding the Square-D "HOM" series breakers at local Ace Hdwe. The black wire of the AC input goes to the 30 amp main breaker (furthest one left in pic) and this then energizes the buss bar, which in turn feeds the juice to the individual AC circuit breakers. Connect the white and green/bare wires to the appropriate neutral and ground bars, and the AC circuit black wires to the breakers.

The new unit dropped into place for a test fit. You’ll find it easier if you feed the AC wires through the back of converter as you work it into place, rather than trying to install em after it’s in. As long as I was sawing holes and wiring, I installed the charge controller at the same time.

(Or, If the DOLT OF VOLTS can do it, you can too) Our old Carson converter worked fine, but I couldn’t live with the buzz and the heat output. Progressive Dynamics seems to get really good reviews and also seems to be the one converter manufacturer in the USA (totally aside from any discussions on quality in other threads, I like in principle keeping my neighbors employed, especially if it costs about the same). I’m posting this detail of the swap to encourage you that one need not have Totem’s electrical expertise or JD’s mechanical whizardry and reference library to pull this off without killing oneself or burning the toyhome to the ground. If anyone sees anything I’m doing wrong here, please jump in and correct me....I seem to learn a half dozen new things on motor homes every day since I got this thing! First step is to disconnect the house battery negative terminals and any source of AC power. Then go to pulling the wires from old converter. There will be one AC wire coming in from the shore power plug and 2-3 or so coming out, and an unknown number of DC wires coming out. next, track down what each AC wire is and mark it. I identified the "in" wire by plugging the shore power in for a moment after separating the leads widely and using a simple "hot circuit" tester. Then I temporarily connected a plug to each of the AC "out" wires in sequence via wire nuts and checked what was powered up when I plugged it in. In the case of the Bandit, there is one circuit for the A/C and one for the shore-power outlets and the fridge. Then do the same for the DC wires....I used jumper wires from the house battery to test what each one powered. Next----remove the old unit and check the hole. In my case, the new converter was both taller and less wide than the old one so some hole modification was needed. The white wire sticking up goes to vehicle chassis ground and is connected to the ground bar on new unit. After the hole surgery.......

paper maiche'..........

I asked because it would open up a lot of wheel choices for cheap. 6 lug Taco wheels are like fleas on a dog on local CL, often cheaper than white-spoker generics. altho it sounds like one would need the hubs, rear axle, and wheels, at a minimum. any idea about spindle sizing?

they make it up in other areas....TX property taxes tend to run well over NM ones, and the sales tax in EP is >8% if you lived in TX, you'd realize how much of that secession bluster and BS you hear. I tend to think the fed gummint would send troops in before they'd allow ANY state to secede. I seem to recall something about a prior incident..... as long as you're trashing NM, let me help you: it even beats Mississippi for school performance. bottom of the nation several years in a row. lots of history going into that dynamic, going back to a few hundred years before the Mass. Bay colony......but I like the place, for many of the same reasons JD cites for leaving NY. now back to tires. sorry for detour.

anyone ever looked into the compatibility of Taco PreRunner 6 lug hubs?

none. who first mentioned NISSAN in this discussion?? if they made what I was looking for: a variable speed inverter generator.