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 all three contact sets have been cleaned with P320 and P600 and are working now.  Frequent use will probably help.  Next job was to prepare the wiring for  and install the voltmeter, which was awkward as the body of the voltmeter was not insulated from internal bulb power, which I achieved by wrapping the bulb holder in heatshrink.  The whole installation took far longer than I felt it should have, including having to make an alternative fixing bracket for the meter itself, due to lack of room for the one that it came with.    Some rearrangement of the battery cables became apparent when I tried to clip the battery crossover cable to the floor, so some time was spent under the bus, my vertigo making this difficult, so I completed assembly of the control box whilst I recovered from that.  The battery cables still need some work though.  Final job of the week was to temporarily fit the cable cover behind the O/S front wheelarch, so I could drill the fixing holes in it and the bulkhead.  The latter are marked but not yet drilled, first job for next week.

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.