I feel just like Top Gun

I really wish life could be calm and simple.  Growing up that’s how I always imagined it was going to be.  Every day I wake up and… (you know, after a little coffee first), I always think it is going to be a great day.  By the second cup my feelings on this might even be apparent to my close family members.  But being this way puts me at a disadvantage. It kind of boggles my mind, and I have a tough time wrapping it around the fact it isn’t always so for others.  Whether it is the age they are living through, gender, body chemistry or electrical short, they don’t wake thinking the same. I am not saying all those planned great days turned out to be so.  A few of them over the years have royally sucked!  But most day-afters, I still woke with that same optimistic hope.

I really think my whole attitude stems from a friend back in college who brought to my attention an Enzio Ferrari quote.  Reporters were questioning him about the rear view mirror design on the new Ferrari Testarossa.  He scoffed at them and said “What is behind me is of no consequence” (—No, film fans, this pre-dates _Gum Ball Rally_ :-)  )  I loved that quote and took it to heart immediately.  Maybe too much, The Wife, might argue.   I dunno, I don’t think so but you are entitled to your opinions.

You can see the problem.  There are few places
where you can line up eight holes for screws.

The short version of our life is, I haven’t been in the van much these past couple of months. These past couple of weeks I have been living a hotel life in a smaller_than_my_normal city.  A city that only has two Indian food restaurants.  It. Is. Tough.

But tonight I am back in the city.  Sitting in one of my usual pubs.  Walking to it I get to cross a park with some lovely piped in string quartet.  I stopped to listen for a bit.  The temperature tonight is perfect for walking.  The bar is usually quiet on a Monday night but tonight it is fairly busy.  Only three empty tables.  The room is large and they have added acoustic tiles to the ceiling so really the noise in here is not too bad.  They have two waitresses of note and I am happy to see either of them on duty when I walk in.  Were it not for these two, the bar business would suffer.  They are the only two who work in this place that possess the servant’s sixth sense.  They know what the customer needs and they know when the customer needs it.  One of them looks like Megan Fox (a genre I married and it continues to make me weak in the knees :-) ) the other, I kid you not, looks *exactly* like Roz, the floor manager, in the movie Monster’s Inc.  They are both great at their job!

The first install, which looked so
perfect.

Between all the other crisis I am living in right now I have gotten two very important van projects done.   One other is coming along nicely. The first is I got deadbolt locks installed on the side and the bulkhead doors.   The side door was tricky.  I have some rust on that door and I am worried about making it worse if I insulate it.  I have elected instead to think more in terms of blanketing the inside.  I don’t have anything over the metal of the side door.  In a way, this allows me to be sure I am attaching my lock to the steel of the van, but it was certainly tricky to find a spot where most of the holes lined up with steel.

I actually had to install it twice.  What I discovered after the initial install was the bolt would extend slightly out as the door swung.  So it would catch just on the very edge of the opposing door, preventing full closure.  Of course it wasn’t as easy as just moving the bolt side over a little bit for all the afore mentioned reasons.   I had to move both pieces and raise them up about half an inch just so I could get everything to line up.

The bulkhead door bolt was much easier to install.  I discarded the catch side of the lock.  The bolt side I attached it near the bottom of the bulkhead door.  Once it was installed I then marked the floor around the circumference of the bolt.  Then it was just a matter of drilling an 1/8” oversized hole into the floor.

The bulkhead deadbolt.

I have to say, when I was done, I felt immediately more safe.  In my work, I have been the preacher for a long while.  For years I have said “Security through obscurity is not security, it is luck” but I have never really lived by that talk. I have been lucky for a long time.  But I have to be realistic to my situation.  I am not parking in Mayberry. With the window screens in place and the deadbolt, it will take a while for someone to break into the back of my van.

The reason I am happy it will take a while ties in with the second thing I got done.  I got the siren installed.  Under the floor of the van I mounted an ELK Products 30 Watt Siren Dual Tone Indoor/Outdoor Siren that I picked up from Amazon.  This siren is 120db, which is one heck of a lot of noise.  The human pain threshold is 110db.  In terms of shear loudness from a chart the google brought me to, this sits smack dab in the middle between a chain saw at close range and a military jet taking off.

From the relay to the siren I used
16ga extension cord. At the splice,
several layers of heat shrink tubing to
keep it all dry.

The underbody install was not exactly what I wanted to do but space under the hood is super limited.  It is made to be outdoors but I realize this is a little harsher than the manufacture intended.  I mounted it to the underbody, facing the rear wheels.  I have it pointed somewhat down, hoping any water it might collect will drain out.

To control the siren I installed a covered switch at the top of the floor to ceiling shelf.  Number one son asked me, “A covered switch, you mean like the fighter pilots?  Cool!!!” I have been wanting to use of the these ever since I bought a bag of them.  A setup like this is the perfect use case.  I do not want to bump this switch at the wrong time.  The cover will totally prevent accidental discharge.

The covered switch is the only way to activate the siren.  This isn’t about some break-in automated security system.  This is all about making the bad guy go away when I am already inside.

The relay, just a little box under the hood that makes all
the magic happen.

The siren uses quite a bit of juice.  Here is something you need to understand about wiring this stuff.  The voltage is sort of like the water pressure of an electrical system.   An automotive system is 12 volts.  So to put that in water terms, your water pressure ain’t that great.  Not near as good as the water pressure in your house.  But think about that time you strung four garden hoses together to water the trees out at the back of your lot.  It took forever didn’t it?  At times, when someone was running water in the house, you were thinking you could pee faster than what is coming out of the end of that hose.

Back in van terms, if I had to run a wire all the way from the battery up in the front back to the switch, then back to where the horn is mounted.  Well, there is your equivalent to stringing four garden hoses together.  …And the pressure ain’t great. You can kind of fix this problem by using thick wires.  But, thicker wire is expensive and hard to work with.

Pointed rearward.  Just behind my floor vent.

What I did instead was use something called a relay, which is available at most auto parts stores.  --Or should be.  The first auto parts place I went to directed me to dimmer switches and turn signals.  Not the same thing.  A relay is sort of like a remote control for a light switch.  I mounted the relay up under the hood.  Relays themselves take almost no power.  So I was able to run a thin wire from another circuit in the floor to ceiling shelf to the switch, then on to the relay.  On the other side I ran a wire from the fuse box to the relay, then on to the siren.  Stringing the wires was work.  Actually doing the wiring was dead easy.

With these series of installs last night I slept great.  And, after all, isn’t that the point of this whole project?