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Share your adventures! / Re: River Adventures

« on: August 18, 2015, 12:09:04 am »

I got this checked out by my local mechanics. They ended replacing all the plug wires. Here's what bugs me: when we bought the van 4 years ago or so, we had them do a full tune up including replacing plug wires. Part of what drove this was a CEL that was sporadically coming on. The van worked great for a year or so, but the the CEL came on again and it was clearly misfiring but fiddling with the spark plug wires seemed to temporarily solve the problem. Took it back in and they replaced the wires (charged for labor and not parts) citing bad wires. Now the same problem crops up again! In 4 years and about 8,000 miles, I'm on my third set of spark plug wires! In my 35 years of driving and a dozen cars or I have never gotten new plug wires. What's the deal?
I'm a bit dismayed at this point because the CEL seems to always come on during big trips involving long river shuttles. Having a reliable vehicle is pretty important for river trips as there are several groups going with you and the river permits are for set dates. A vehicle failure can kill a trip that tools tons of planning and permit acquiring and coordinating several groups.


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Winnebago "Full Campers" / Re: Winnebago AUX/house battery, solar thread.

« on: August 07, 2015, 09:12:02 pm »

I have a ProMariner dual battery 20amp. I happen to have it wired to both the starter and house batteries but when I first put it in I only had it connected to the house battery and it works fine. You need to hook both sets of wires on the ProMariner to your house battery. If you just leave the extras unhooked the charger won't work because it first checks to make sure it is connected properly to good batteries.
With a good charger, I believe that a high amperage won't hurt your battery. The only problem is when the charger continues to supply high current when the battery is close to fully charged. A general sort of rule of thumb is that your charge current should not exceed your rated amp hours divided by 5. For my set up, with 225 amp hours I would not want to go above 45 amps (225/5). Some also recommend to divide by 10 rather than 5 so I should not exceed 22.5 amps. I think you would be fine to stay within these guidelines as long as you get a good 3 or 4 stage charger. More amps equals shorter charge times, and less amps increases charge time.


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Winnebago "Full Campers" / Re: Winnebago AUX/house battery, solar thread.

« on: July 31, 2015, 06:37:19 am »

DRotblatt... I'm not entirely sure what the Norcold actually draws but 10 amps seems about right as it has 20 amp fuses and the fridge uses heat to run. The smart chargers have 3-4 stages. For drained batteries they charge at >14.8V for rapid charging. When the battery gets close to full, the charger reduces voltage to 14.1-14.8V to complete the charge. After charging is complete, the charger reduces voltage to 13.0-13.8V to just maintain the charge. A fourth stage is on some chargers that, after charging is complete and it has been in the third stage for several days, increases voltage to >14.8V for a short period (a few minutes) to increase temperature of the acid in the battery so that the water moves around to prevent stratification and remove accumulated sulfate in the cells. So is it a bad thing to overcharge the battery? For short periods of time, no, it is really a good thing. If overcharged for too long though, you can ruin a battery by boiling off the acid and exposing the cells to air.

This is all for typical lead-acid batteries, and I'm not familiar enough with other battery types to say anything about those but I believe the process is similar.


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Winnebago "Full Campers" / Re: Winnebago AUX/house battery, solar thread.

« on: July 30, 2015, 07:18:06 am »

I think we need some definitions here:
DC: direct current is electricity that flows in one direction. This is the the 12 volt system in the EVC. Always has a positive and negative.

AC: alternating current is electricity that alternates directions by constantly switching polarity usually 50 or 60 times a second (50 or 60 Hz). This is the "shore power" that you plug into. In North America this is 120 Volt. There is a "hot" wire that brings the electricity from where it is generated to the device and a neutral wire that completes the circuit but the electricity does not flow from one to the other as it is constantly switching.

Inverter: changes DC electricity to AC electricity.

Converter: changes AC electricity to DC electricity

Charger: a type of converter that is designed to charge batteries.

"Dumb" chargers are just converters that supply voltage a bit higher than the nominal battery voltage so that the charge flows into the battery. For a 12 volt system these should put out about 13.5 volts. This is what comes in the stock EVC.

"Smart" chargers will vary their voltage based upon the current draw. Drained batteries will draw more current than almost full batteries. These are much better for your batteries than the dumb chargers and with some attention and proper use, your batteries should last quite a long time 5-10 years or more.

If you want to plug a computer or TV or Blender into your EVC when not connected to shore power you will need an inverter to change the 12 VDC to AC. Actually, computers and most electronic devices run on DC and the charger you plug is a converter so if you plug in a computer into your inverter equipped EVC, the whole system changes from DC to AC and back to DC again!

The smart chargers may get confused if there are other draws on the system besides the battery it is designed to charge if the draw is large enough. If you plopped a nice smart charger straight into a stock EVC and ran the dometic fridge (technically an absorption refrigerator) in DC mode while plugged into shore power,  the charger would see a draw of 10 amps or so and would assume the battery is very low even if your battery is completely topped off. If your draws are relatively low like electronic devices, LED lights, or a good compressor run refrigerator (e.g. TruckFridge or Vitrifrigo) then the smart should work as intended.

If you want to upgrade the stock EVC converter to smart charger for your AUX battery, then you should think about the entire electrical system and all the draws that you could have on it. There are converter/chargers out there that supply a 12 VDC power source as well as a battery charger but then you would have to change the wiring in your van to install it properly.

I got a dual smart charger that can charge both Aux battery and starter battery independently (ProMariner 20amp dual charger). It's a long run to the starter battery but was not too difficult to accomplish. I also replaced the stock fridge with a 2.5 amp TruckFridge to reduce my potential draw to something that would not alter the behavior of the charger.


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Share your adventures! / Re: Advantures

« on: July 24, 2015, 10:56:04 pm »

I got my. truck Fridge for about $600!


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Share your adventures! / Re: Advantures

« on: July 23, 2015, 09:36:41 pm »

Thanks for the tale! Sorry to hear you had so many issues! I hope future trips go better. The fridge/battery issue may be related to the fridge. Those Dometic fridges draw a lot of amps (15ish) which will limit the recharge of your battery while driving. Not sure what your aux battery is rated for but my previous was rated for 80 amp hours, which only gives you about 5 hours DC run time on your fridge. The DC function of the Norcolds are serious energy hogs and you really have to be careful. I was having some serious battery charging issues before I changed everything and it turns out my converter was only putting out 9V when plugged in to shore power so it actually drain my battery rather than charge it!


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7

Share your adventures! / River Adventures

« on: July 23, 2015, 09:21:53 pm »

Took the EVC on a river trip. Well, we didn't take the van on the river but used it to get to the put, run the shuttle, and return. The trip up from Corvallis, Oregon to The Dalles, Oregon (about 3.5 hours driving) went fine towing the raft on the trailer. We camped at the take-out for the river with some good friends. They had just given up on their Vanagon and raft/trailer set-up similar to ours. Here's a picture both of us parked next to each other for the night. Instead of their Vanagon, they got an A-Liner pop up and pack their gear in a Toyota Tacoma pickup.

We were camped at Deschutes State Park which was nice but campers were packed in like sardines and trains ran all night blowing their whistles.

Next day was HOT (100+). We packed up and headed to the put in which is an hours drive up and over a pass (about 2000'). On one of the last climbs, the check engine light popped on and we lost some power and the engine seemed to be missing under high torque situations like going up hill, towing a trailer (1000+ pounds with all the food and gear), and carrying 4 people (3 adults and a 9 year old). We were more than halfway to put-in without any towns nearby on Sunday, so we kept going. Got to put-in, rigged rafts, and then got in the rigs to run shuttle (bring cars back to take-out). Here I am on the way out of the take-out just below Shearer's Falls.

Drove slowly and gently all the way back and parked the van. Left ice cream Oreo Klondikes in the freezer and a cold beer in the fridge (TruckFridge TF-65, DC only) and closed all the shades and opened top vent.
Got a ride back to put in with one of our party in another Toyota Tacoma ( we chipped in and paid someone to drive that truck back to put-in. Then spent the next 3.5 days on the Deschutes River. Next day was again hot, but then it cooled to 85 or so for the last 2 days with some fierce winds. Got to take-out, put raft on trailer and derigged for the trip home.

When the work was done, I enjoyed an ice cold beer, and my family all indulged in the Oreo Klondikes (my lovely wife and 17 year-old son here).

The fridge did a great job keeping things cold and frozen over 4 days with some battery power leftover (2 225-amp hour Trojan T-105s). On the other hand our friends with the brand new A-Liner trailer with a dometic 3-way fridge similar to the original EVC fridges had to throw out a bunch of food because their fridge failed on propane mode! Glad I made the switch to the DC only fridge .

Got a read on the OBD check engine light and it showed "secondary air flow incorrect" and "misfire in cylinder 3". I won't have time to get this checked out until after next week, but any thoughts out there as to what is going on?


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Winnebago "Full Campers" / Re: Winnebago AUX/house battery, solar thread.

« on: July 15, 2015, 11:33:56 pm »

Cole, I'm willing to share my information as well. I still have the OEM battery box so can measure the dimensions and can tell you what've did for replacement. A lot depends on what loads the user has and expects to see, so maybe we can figure out a way to organize things based upon different "typical" loading scenarios. I pretty busy for the next month or so, so I may not be able to do much until things settle down here a bit.


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Exterior / Re: Exterior Detailing Stuff

« on: June 23, 2015, 09:35:11 pm »

Thanks guys! I'll give it a shot at some point with your advice.


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Show off your projects here! / Re: The Ubiquitous Roofrack Shower Setup

« on: June 23, 2015, 09:34:07 pm »

Why pressurize? Why not just open a relief valve at the high point and let gravity do the rest? I lived a couple of summers in remote Alaska and used a 5 gallon bucket 2/3 filled with water slightly above bath temperature with a spigot in the bottom. We had an outdoor shower stall with a shelf up high to hold the water. Worked great! My friend said she once used it at minus 20 in the winter!


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Exterior / Re: Exterior Detailing Stuff

« on: June 22, 2015, 10:11:37 pm »

Would it take off the Winnebago sticker off the top of an EVC? The lettering seems to be sticker of some sort. 

Also, I was thinking about painting the ugly, yellowing vents on the sides of my EVC to be black. Here are the covers in question and the lettering.



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12

Exterior / Re: Bike Racks

« on: June 22, 2015, 10:03:36 pm »

Okay, you asked for it! The maker is "1-Up" and it's a small USA company (1upusa.com).  The racks are all aluminum with very nice fits and finishes.  The down side to these is the price. I got the super duty single for 2" hitch and it cost $399 and it can carry bikes up to 75 pounds! The add-on was another $269. I could add one more for a total of three bike racks with my set up. They also make slightly less robust versions for a bit less money. The black that I got is $30-60 more than the silver. You can also get a double to start with and add on two more slots for a total of 4 bikes.
I was leaning towards a Kuat bike rack (http://kuatracks.com) before one of our work clients turned me onto these. The Kuat is more widespread and carried by bike stores and REI and others, but I really liked the 1Up racks. We had a hitch mount rack that the bikes hung from and I always hated it and have long since forgotten the price, so figured I would just spend the money now and get something I like and in a few years I will forget the price as well

I may get the hitch extension at some point because I have to have the hitch a bit farther out than recommended for the back hatch to clear in single bike mode. They also have some other nifty add ons as well.


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13

Exterior / Bike Racks

« on: June 21, 2015, 05:47:48 pm »

Just got my new bike rack from 1 Up and I love it! The one I got is a single bike version but you can add on up to two more racks, but I only got 1 add on for now. When it's in single bike mode with no bike, I can open the back hatch without moving it at all. With bikes on, they can pivot out of the way to get the hatch. Converting between single and double and removing the rack takes about 30 seconds. Loading bikes is really easy and you don't have to worry about scratching the bike or car paint.
I thought about all the different ways to carry bikes on a van and concluded this was the best option. I might consider putting the rack on the front of the van at some point to have better access to the rear but I think this a good solution for now.
Tried it out today on a solo ride up our local mountain, driving to the base and riding up (about 3000') and back down. Then changed and had a cool drink from the fridge


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CaveVan Stuff / Re: Free CaveVan Stickers

« on: June 15, 2015, 08:54:21 pm »

I love these stickers! I would love to have one with black letters to put on my "no choice of color" EVC! What I REALLY want to do is dump the Winnebago sticker on the pop top and put one these up there in its place! Not much Winnebago left in mine


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Show off your projects here! / Re: Removing the Winnebago from an EVC

« on: June 15, 2015, 08:48:07 pm »

Thanks! The heater ducts were goofy to start with . The heat outlet is a 4" hole and Winnebago put about 10" of flex duct to a sheet metal plenum (about 4" x4" x10") that had 2 4" ducts coming out of it. There was flex duct between those and the two vents you see in the original EVC. I didn't see the need to spilt the heater output into two separate vents that go to the same place, so I made the new cabinet shorter and just ran one duct straight to the end of the new cabinet, keeping it high so I had additional storage space via the cubby. I haven't tried out the heater yet but the new vent does blow I to the back of the rear seat a bit in both seat and bed configurations. I just figured it didn't matter much with such a small space to heat .
The aluminum for the cabinets comes from a company named "80/20". I used the 1" series because it was the smallest that I could get the quarter round extrusions and the nifty quarter round tri corner pieces. You can get the extrusions and some parts on Amazon. But if you go through a dealer, you can have the pieces cut to length and tap the ends and drill access holes where needed. That's usually what we do at work where use the stuff frequently, and it goes together quickly. I could probably come up with a cut list of parts needed and all the modifications but it would take awhile. I pretty much made it up as I went and did not keep a record of any dimensions .
No need for vents since the cubbies are just open to the interior of the cabinets. The heater brings in outside air through one of the vents on the outside and exhausts through the other so it doesn't need the interior vents for combustion but may for some sort of cooling of surfaces. I suspect the interior vents were mostly for the archaic stock converter that came with the EVC. If you put in a modern charger or converter, you could likely get away with less ventilation.


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