I was looking through my unpublished folder and saw this. I wrote it while I was hanging out in Chicago a year ago but thought it still had some value, illustrating the battery struggle I was beginning to go through. Really my batteries should have been replaced last year but I eeked by. I thought I would go ahead and publish it.
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My time in the north is a cold grey existence. This is something that affects the body mind and soul. But it also effects the batteries in my van. The number of good solar days is limited and even the ones we get, the sun is low and not very effective at getting me a good charge. I haven’t seen my batteries above 80%. Most of the time they are hovering around the low 60s and I am only getting 30-40 watts off the panels. I have been working mornings from coffee shops just to save the juice.
This wouldn’t so much be an issue if not for another problem. I have the fuse pulled on the wire between the engine and the house batteries. Normally, running the engine for a bit, even just moving from my night time parking spot to my daytime spot can really put a lot of charge into the house batteries. But, as I say, I had to disconnect it.
For the past couple of years I have had an odd random occurrence. I would be driving down the road and suddenly I was coasting. The dash and headlights would go out. Most times, seconds later, *poof*, everything would be back to normal and I would just keep rolling down the road. I am not kidding, the first time I said to myself, “did that just happen or am I falling asleep?” A couple of other times the poof did not occur immediately and I would pull into the shoulder. A turn of the key, it would always restart. This happened maybe every month and a half or so. I was afraid it was my main fuse & control box going out. Something I have heard to be an issue with these Chevy Express vans. An eight hundred dollar part.
Then one day it occurred to me maybe it only seemed to happen when I had the front to back wire hooked up and the fuses on both ends in working order. I pulled the fuse and was in this mode when I was under the van for a totally different purpose. I realized I had this huge abrasion in my front to back charging cable. Ok, well that certainly explains why I would blow a 200a fuse every so often. It would short out and kill the engine until the fuse blew.
Replacing thirty feed of heavy gauge wire was not a fiscal possibility for me. Money is always tight these days despite my living situation. I had to figure out a way cut it clean and splice it. Here I have to give a shout out here to O’Reilly Autoparts. I went to their shop in Milford Michigan looking for a battery cable splice kit. I figured that had to be a thing, right. No. I guess not. What they had could splice two cable ends but it had a battery terminal post in the middle and it was $60. The second option was to buy two lug end terminals. Put one on each end of the splice point then bolt them together in the middle. Either option would have some ugly component of it needing to be wrapped up in a wad of electrical tape. I explained to the workers both of these options would suck and why. The younger of the two said, “Ahhh. Here’s what chyah do…”
I did just what he told me. I went to Lowes and picked up a short hunk of 3/8” soft copper pipe and a package of heat shrink tubing. I cut a 3” piece off the length of tubing. I slide three pieces of heat shrink tubing over the wire. The cut cable ends fit perfectly inside these bits of copper pipe. I then put the pipe into a bench vise and tightened it down on the wire. Then covered it in the two layers of heat shrink. It was a perfect splice job. I hereby faithfully promise to be an O’Reilly’s customer whenever possible.
Examining the cable further along its path I discovered other spots showing signs of wear. It is only going to be a matter of time until I would be having this problem in a multitude of spots. My solution is to put this cable inside a protective layer. While I had the cable out for the splice, when reinstalled it, I put it inside Pex tubing. This will keep this sort of thing from ever being a problem again. Pex is tough stuff and will protect the wire from any sort of abrasions.
Also while I was at it I replaced the battery isolator solenoid. I had purchased a new one almost a year prior, just never gotten it installed. What a battery isolator does is make sure you can’t drain the engine battery by something you do in the house. But when the engine is running it senses that and acts like a turned on switch. So the engine charges the house batteries. This one had an additional feature. It could also sense charging current on other side, it could actually charge the engine battery from the solar panels.
The other thing, it had a higher amp rating. One of the theories for the fuse blowing, prior to finding the big abrasion, was that this device was too small and overheating when engine-starting-level current was passing through it. Ah well, it can’t hurt.
I thank my friend The Cowgirl, for getting me access to the shop and working some horses while giving me some time to wire.
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