Thank God It's Friday
I am fortunate to work at a company that has a "summer hours" concept. "What is this 'sumer hours' of which you speak," you ask with curiosity. Simply put, if you're done with your work for the week at noon on Friday (between Memorial Day and Labor Day), you can (and are encouraged to) leave. "Zoiks!" Is what I said when I first learned of this perk. I took the afternoon this weekend, but I didn't have much to show for it. Or, maybe I did. My internet was out when I got home, so I spent an hour or so banging my head against that (and the cable company operator). I ran laundry while I was on hold, though, so the time wasn't completely wasted. I got a service appointment for the following morning, and set to running errands. I hit CostCo for the next month's food-stuffs, and O'Reilly's for more wiring bits. Since I'd be waiting for the cable guy anyway, I figured I better have all my supplies ready. When I got home, my internet was working (of course), so I cancelled the appointment.
Beautiful Day
June in Northwestern Oregon is usually rain-filled. Portland has a big festival in the middle of the month that is usally peppered with rain. In fact, a native Oregonian once told me "its not Rose Festival until the Rose Queen is crying in the rain". Funny, yet twisted. Still, he's right. June is usually 20 days of rain and 10 days of threatening to rain, if not worse. Summer may officially start on June 21st, but it doesn't start here until July 5th, at least weather-wise. So, with that contextual backdrop, enter Saturday, June 25 2011. 72 degrees and sunny with a light breeze. Abso-frickin-perfect weather. With an open double-garage door, the commuter Jetta pulled back into the drive, tunes rolling, I set to knockin' that bus out.... until it was time to get my younger son (C) for the rest of the weekend.
Electric Feel
First, I figured I'd quick hammer-out the rest of the electrical stuff. I ran another 12V accessory outlet next to the sliding door. Reusing the original fire-extinguisher bolt, it is hidden from view, but easily accessible by either the rear seat (passenger side) passenger or from outside by just reaching in. This will be handy when I tailgate with someone with a 12V blender. Margarita's anyone? :) The rest of the rough electrical was relatively quick-work too. I left the ceiling wiring wrapped up out of sight for now, but tying those wires in will be easy work once I'm ready to install the cabinets. The fusebox is wood-screwed into the top of the wood box / surround over the transformer. The feed-side wires (14G each) are tied into their proper fuses, and at a reasonable length, keeping things a little clearer looking than the rat-nest of wires around the engine computer. That harness cleanup is a project by itself. I'll deal with that between camping and snow seasons. I still need to mount the 12V plug by the passenger's visor, but I did tie-in the water pump and 12V accessory from the stove.
Living in Stereo
One of the components I've been wanting to install is my old Pioneer 10-disk CD changer. I know, in this day of iTunes and MP3 players, why would I want to wire in some old-skool technology. Simple, actually. I'm a self-admitted Dead-Head. I have many bootlegs on CD. Ripping those CD's into MP3 or iTunes format is labor intensive, and usually requires re-tagging every track. Yuk. Also, bootlegs don't lend themselves to library-wide shuffles like my studio music does. I don't have time to create special playlists either. Honestly, I don't know who does, but that's a conversation for another day. So, I'll be putting complete shows in the CD changer for when I need some Jerry-therapy, and the shuffle on my iPhone when I need random.
I spent more time than I expected trying to figure out where to put that thing. Its kinda big (10.5" wide, 8" deep, 4" high). First, I thought I could hide it under the dry-goods storage. That would have been uber-clever. I was thinking I could remove that little grille, and have the CD magazine reachable through that. To make it work, though, I would have had to cut a hole in the floor of the cabinet, and it looked like the magazine would not have cleared the bottom of the grille-hole. Sadness. So clever, but not reasonable. Instead, it will fit perfectly in the false-floor I'm putting in the closet. Not as clever, but clever enough. Determining this was important so I could run the wires. The power wires run from the rat-nest under the cabinets to the fuse box under the bed. The signal wires run along the backside of the cabinets, through a hole in the steel behind the driver seat, and will run along the floor of the cab. I don't know where the stereo-head will go, but I ran power wires from the fuse box towards the front as a part of the bundle from the CD changer. I still need to run speaker wires through that hole and behind the cabinets, but once that's done, I should be ready for closing the walls.
She don't Lie, She don't Lie, She don't Lie..... Propane
Okay, that heading stretched the song-title metaphor a bit. shrug. Anyway, when I got the '79 interior a few years back, I got the gray bomb shaped propane tank with it. I never connected it, nor installed it. Instead, the stove was just a space-taker. I pulled the old tank and lines out of the box, and looks into what it would take to install it. My old '72 has those blasted belly pans under the sides of the mid-section, so I'd have to cut most of the passenger-side pan out to fit it. Hmm... Even if I cut out the pan, I can't tell if the cross-members are in the right places to bolt it on. While I thought about it, I straightened the stove/sink unit so it was upright. Then, I pulled the stiffer (inside bus) flexi-hose out of the box, connected it to the stove, threading it out the bottom hole where the waste water goes. All of that fit well, and I now have a way of conecting low-pressure (post regulator) propane to the stove.
This is about where I ran out of time this weekend, so I put everything away, re-parked the Jetta, cleaned up and dashed off to get C. We had a me-cooked dinner and watched "the Return of the King" together. Perfect end to a pretty perfect day.
So, I still haven't test-fired the engine with the new harness. Ideally, I'd have some way of pulling the exhaust out of the garage before I start the engine and perform all kinds of tests. I'll think on that, but I need to at least verify that the original harness is good so I can return the borrowed one to Justin. I should be able to get the computer into "run" position and verify the harness and the additional OBDII without actually starting the engine. I'll try that this week. As always, thanks for following along.
pictures-
top: power inlet. I didn't mention it, but I finished assembling this and installed it too. It's wrapped in plastic film so my greasy mitts don't foul the paint.
middle: accessory fuse box test-positioning. this is where it now lives.
bottom: looking down at the top of the 12V accessory plug near the sliding door (the bed is "open").
