A very hot and slow start to the week, continuing to work on the electrics. I mounted the isolator switch on its bracket and bolted it to the bottom rail, although I am a bit unhappy with it there as it is stressing the rail slightly under the tension from the cable, but once the cable was clamped to the floor above, it seemed ok. The cable needs further fastening nearer the battery box, but working under the bus was making me dizzy so I checked out the regulator and found one of the contacts furred up and high resistance, so I cleaned it with P600 and a touch of WD40. I’ve ordered some contact cleaner to finish the job, when it arrives, but at least one two out of three contact sets are working now.
All posts by Nigel
29/6/2025
A slow start to the week, continung assembling the top panel and a trial fit to see how the connections need to be altered to to allow for the replacement switches. As a result I reduced the length of two brass connection strips to the switches and carefully drilled a new hole in both strips to take the screws that fasten them to the switches. Next I made two new brass strip jumpers to feed the B+ rail to one side of all the switches, using heat shrink to insulate them. A trial assembly of the top panel revealed that there was no way I could match up the brass strips to the new switches, so an alternative solution was required. This involved bridging the gaps between the power distribution board and the switch terminals with soldered connections. At last I was making progress and I was able to fit the outer top panel and start testing the circuitry with a battery charger. I soon found a few poor connections that needed cleaning up with a tiny wire brush in my minidrill and gradually sorted them out. The main culprits were the fuses and their holders, so made a minor odification to three 10A circuit breakers so these would just plug in to replace the unreliable fuses. At this point everything seemed to be working.
22/6/2025
I started this week by modifiyng the connection points of the new control box panel switches so as to match the connections from the control box. Some alteration to the wiring of the control box was also necessary, due to the slightly different dimensions of the new switches. I decided the best way to do this was to mount all the switches on the support panel first, then fit that and complete the wiring after. In between doing this, I decided that the battery cable problem (too short) would be simply solved by mounting an isolator switch to a bracket bolted through the bottom rail of the body frame, just to the rear of the front O/S wheelarch. Work continued with fitting the top panel up with the starter and toggle switched, a slow process requiring minor alterations to components. As a break from that, I marked out the bracket for the isolator switch, which had arrived by then. The weather being very hot this week meant time spent in the bus shed was restricted, but the following tasks completed: soldering a ring tag to the end of the battery cable that will go from the isolator switch to the control box and making a suitable bracket to mount the isolator switch to the bottom outer frame rail, for which I used 2mm galvanised steel left over from the battery boxes. Last jobs of the week were to modify and fit the last panel switch and paint the isolator bracket ready for assembly and installation.