Yep, I have accomplished another small feat. Even though it was damn cold out this morning I was set on getting those new batteries mounted and working. I did waste an hour or two this morning in the house waiting on the big warm-up. I made a few calls, read my email and did a little stuff for work, even though I am supposed to be on vacation, but eventually I had to get out and get those batteries installed.
As I wrote yesterday, the first accomplishment is to put on those old work clothes that if they get acid on them they can be trashed… Once I was properly dressed I headed out the door. To be properly dressed I had one more thing to put on… another of those great gadgets everyone should have. I invested all of $2 for these a few years ago when it became apparent that my knees and the ground were not made for each other…
They sure feel better than the hard concrete or worse yet the rocks in RV parking areas when you have to crawl around to make connections or hunt for stuff you know you have in the under compartments.
Next thing is get the proper socket to tighten the lugs on the top of the batteries, these have studs and the ends of my cables are screw on types. It seems to make for a cleaner and easier swap of something that is always a pain with corrosion and all but these didn’t have any corrosion on them that I could tell. Cleaned them up a little and put a little light oil on them to make the thread easier. put the batteries on the tray and put on the connections and only had a few sparks when I bumped the wrench against ground while tightening the positive end… that shows the batteries have juice, right? anyway this is the end product…
Note: I didn’t use the crescent wrench but it was handy if I needed it… ha!
Studs and caps in place.
Tray slid back and latched, all well at this point.
Now for the real test, start the engine. So I got in, and first checked the digital meter and it shows 12.4 volts, that is good… then “switch on” wait for all the warning bells to quit and fire it up… started immediately with out any block heat so the new batteries are good to go.
I ran it until it aired up and warmed up, and while running I determined that I should use the new tire pressure/fill unit I wrote of before in Repairs and riding in the rain. That new Astro Pneumatic gauge sure was nice. Topped them all up to 95psi quick and easy… well then why not top up all the Jeep tires too so got them all up to 32 psi and good thing I had one that was running at 19? I should check them more often but they are really hard to notice if they are not at correct pressure with out the gauge.
In that same post I mentioned that this and the Pro-Fill should be added to the RV-Gizmos and Gadgets that I copied from Greg White’s blog – Our RV Adventures. I will probably have to do an update of that at some point as I keep adding “neat” stuff that I really should have or we all should have for that matter. I need to make reference here that if you follow any of the RV specialist than you probably should read RV Tire Safety. He does a good job or presenting facts about tires of all kinds. Seems there is always debates and mis-information on a lot of the forums as well as a lot of good but in my opinion you need to get several sources to compare and sort out the facts. His is real good for that.
Back to my work, the above gauge is so much easier and better than the one I had for the big tires:
Yes it is an old version Truck gauge that at it’s best was inaccurate and in-consistent. It was a “horse-shoe” type gauge when all you really needed was to get close. Today you can get accurate for about the same price so why not.
One more thing, to make it all so much easier to air up the “high pressure” tires I found that in my coach there was an air supply source with plug in the electrical compartment. That connection basically ran the air horns so I got the parts and put in a connection for the air hose and gauge to air up the tires from the engine. Since you need to run the engine to go places then it is best to just add a little time when your ready to leave to check the air in the tires and top them out. They will be at cold temps so you really need to have read the stuff from RV Tire Safety about load and pressure and air up according to your Tire and Manufacturer info. I know the new engines do not need to idle but if your performing service this way it doesn’t hurt. My connections with a valve to keep it shut off until I Need it..
I keep all the air supplies in this small compartment – a 50 ft. hose, chucks, gauge, etc. they are all in a small zip lock bag and this area stays dry and fairly clean. I never leave the hose plugged in. Hidden to the far left is that valve for shutting off the supply to the hose connection.
Believe it or not, I got all this done before noon. I changed clothes and headed to town for lunch with the wife. Todays feast – Qdoba and the “pick-two” menu. Sure do like the Mexican gumbo and the regular bowl is more than enough for two but the “pick-two” bowl is just about right for me. A short stop at Hobby Lobby for the wife and take her back to work and I headed home. My big accomplishment for the day was pretty much done. I did however decide to get the new bike out and put the GPS attachment on the handle-bar for my Etrex. I have had that etrex for several years and use it for Geocaching and travel, etc. but I got a handlebar attachment for it so I and log my biking… I hope I do enough to log? Once that was on I had to try it out. Made a short run, little over a mile with about 150 ft. of elevation change. Some of that is pretty damn steep (to me). You know if you go down you have to come back up? Seems that I can walk that same route with out being near as leg tired as I was on that bike? Something about using different muscles I guess or something like that. That trip only took me a little over 10 minutes so not too bad but still no records there, it says I was averaging 5.6 mph while moving and I did ride the brake hard on the steep down part, nothing worse than a run-away bike with an old fart on it. With that, I felt is was time to rest up so took a seat in the shack (term for Ham radio room) and listened to the guys on 7.195mhz.
The rest of the evening, although had planned to get back to the radio, was spent reading and other slow activates. 
– WD0AJG