msinabottle Samba Member
Joined: September 20, 2005 Posts: 3492 Location: Denver Area, Colorado
|
Posted: Tue May 17, 2011 9:28 pm Post subject: Winston's Spring Mods I: Speakers to 12v. Outlets (VERBOSE) |
|
|
These two VERBOSE posts are to let you all follow along with the two long-delayed mods I've of late performed on Winston, my '84 1.9L Westy Camper. It was mostly a case of getting disgusted with myself at letting things go for so long when I'd set such a break-neck pace in his early repairs and mods. These two should have followed right on the last projects, but, blast it, I got more interested in USING the van than IMPROVING the van!
Well, I finally got over THAT!
When I bought Winston in 2006, this is what his rear bench looked like:
Those two speakers there on the lower bench were disconnected in favor of the larger and new speakers mounted by the last owner up under the central cabinet. Between those in the bench there was a 100W Amp. When I wired in Winston's 2nd battery, I realized that the amp was powered by a single small wire from the fuse box, when I added my new fuse box, I put in a much heavier fused wire and felt very virtuous. But the two old speakers were taking up room and weight and doing... Nothing.
I toyed around with converting the speakers to sub-woofers, thought about yanking them and putting in delete plates, which I'd have had to make, and finally I figured I'd just screw-and-glue some wooden pieces over them and get back the weight and storage space. Step 1 was removing the old speakers, that was easy, man were those holes BIG. Then I began examining the wiring... How did the amp employ the power supply of which I'd so lovingly improved the connection to drive the two speakers further up? It... didn't.
The amp was connected to nothing. It was POWERED, but I found an RCA twin-cable running from the amp to... Nothing, next to the radio. The new Pioneer radio Nick the last owner had installed couldn't use that amp, and hadn't needed the amp to convince me that the amp was working.
Well, I'm an idiot. I THOUGHT about hooking up the amp, somehow, and then, just annoyed at myself, I yanked it. Anybody want an old early '90's 100 watt amp? I took the opportunity to straighten out the wiring leading up to the two newer speakers and to staple that safely against the wood of the bench's interior. They hadn't done that when installing them.
I found two plaques at JoAnn's that would... just... barely cover the holes left when I removed the speakers! Yaaay. I painted them with three coats of the Krylon Almond 'Fusion' spray paint I had left over from my earlier projects. Krylon Almond anything is a good match for the interior of an '84 Westy.
I shouldn't have used Yellow Wood Glue to glue them to the bench, the paint gave the glue some trouble, something else would have been better. I also shouldn't have kept missing with the screws, I could have done without the gouged edges on my painted plaques and the new holes in the bench. The right idea was to use the screws against the irregular holes where the speakers had been and go into the plaques that way. Well, I'm saving you from my mistakes. Let's hear it for plastic wood and a Dremel sander!
While I was at all that, I realized that the wooden cover over Winston's rear heater core--which I'm still using, the NEW one, that is--was at the point of disintegrating and not even balanced on the floor of the bench. I removed the long, thin, skinny old German staples that had failed to hold the thing together. I applied a line of yellow glue followed up by long THICK American staples applied by a Swingline staple gun that scares the heck of me, with good reason, considering how easily it slammed those suckers into the cover, to which I also attached rubber bumpers to keep it level and reduce the strain on it. That all went well.
I was getting ready to cut or cap the heavy wire that ran to where the amp had been when I had an idea... belatedly. Off to West Marine! Then it was a matter of a hole saw (don't use one with a battery drill!), and a great deal of care (and needless delay) in cutting two holes of the right and specified diameter for... this:
That's a waterproof twin 12v. DC outlet with covers. I prefer using West Marine or other boat fittings for Winston, they tend to be water proof for some reason, and better built. Note the 2 RCA dongles coming down from Winston's bench.
As I looked at the Amp's wiring, I realized that the RCA cable was still running up and under his front dash. I got a couple of male to female adapters at Radio Shack and converted it from an 'output' to an 'input' cable, because a long time ago I'd bought a dongle for the newer Pioneer radio that allowed for RCA input at that end.
I also bought a couple of 'Y' adapters for the Pioneer's 'AUX' input jack, which let me use my MP3 player over the sound system at the front, or any other RCA compatible sound source at the back. Now, then, I can power my laptop (I bought a DC adapter for that) back at the bench, and plug its sound output into the Pioneer's speakers on the front doors and above the bench! Surround Sound! Yaaaaaaay. Movie night while camping will be a bit more spectacular than it was, particularly when I convert my laptop to a solid state hard drive and use it for digital movies. That'll save the batteries in the laptop and Winston.
I looked at the heavily-insulated connectors at the back of the panel, remembered that there are heavy things liable to shift in the bench, and decided that some additional protection was needed. An OUTLET box from the local Ace didn't work, but a Switch box did... Ecce:
That's all fused back at the Blue Sea box next to the Odyssey in the auxiliary battery compartment.
I have recently acquired a Kindle. Accordingly, I am less likely to be WATCHING movies in camp, since I am rediscovering my joy in reading. With the Kindle in mind, I acquired a USB charger dongle, the good Belkin one with the flush fit and the Apple-acceptable output, and plugged that into the West Marine Outlet, like so:
The Kindle charged at it beautifully. I could also run a Garmin or the like off either those outlets or the power sockets I already had where the lighter was and on the side of the refrigerator cabinet. All to the good, although I can't close the outlet cover with the adapter plugged in. I'll keep it in the overhead cabinet for now.
While all this was going on, I was discussing it with a friend of mine, an old and wise electrical engineer, who expressed misgivings about the rate of charge my old Yandina VSR was putting into the Odyssey 1200 I've had since the days of my justly-legendary 'Winston Gets Wired' post. He worried about under-charging and sulfiting, I panicked and bought this:
http://www.batterymart.com/p-batteryminder-12v-2-4-8a-battery-charger.html
Officially it's a BatteryMinder Model 12248. It's got technology to de-sulfite even an AGM battery like the Odyssey, and I figured it would have time to work before I got Winston out for the Summer, the process can take weeks. I bought the cigarette lighter adapter. having, as coincidence would have it, two new places to plug it, it arrived, I rigged the thermistor to the Oddyssey's terminal, turned OFF the Yandina, plugged it in, set it, and it told me... It told me...
That everything with both batteries was hunky-dory and they were at full charge and that there was no sulfiting at all. Well, great, except for the coin dropped on the new charger. Score one for the faithful old Schumacher I've long had under the cabinet. Still, the new gadget should yet prove useful. I'm also getting a battery condition indicator from VDC, ( a free offer which expires this summer) I'll see if I want to wire that in somewhere when it arrives.
So, here's what my rear bench looks like as of this morning:
There is... a LOT more room in the bench! And I was very tired when I finished THAT... but there was still one more long-delayed project...
To be continued... _________________ 'Winston,' '84 1.9 WBX Westy
Vanagon Poet Laureate: "I have suffered in
many ways, but never, never, never in silence."
Last edited by msinabottle on Tue May 17, 2011 9:35 pm; edited 1 time in total |
|