Wednesday, July 20, 2016

Success!

In the end, all it takes to fix an intermittent electrical problem is to painstakingly replace every component in said electrical system until you finally stumble on the thing that was causing the heartache and head-hurt in the first place.

What was the magic?  LED tail-lights.  Seems that our precision-manufactured Toyota Matrix has only enough juice on the tail-light circuit for its own bulbs, never mind a few extras.  The added strain of 4 more bulbs, 2 of which were meant to blink sometimes, was far too taxing for its delicate constitution.  This strikes me as strange, because even regular bulbs don't use much power compared to other car-powered electrical things, like, I don't know, engine starters.  How about a little more amperage in that circuit, hmm?

Anyway, the LEDs draw less power, which I guess was what needed to happen.  So, Hooray!  And if anyone needs some electrical components, most of which presumably still work, you know, get in touch.  I've got piles.

Net result -- we got to go camping!  Here's the hatch of the Egg, performing just as it should do:



Here are a couple of dirty happy boys chowing down on whatever they found in the hatch.  Looks like one of them got into the coffee:



The wet weather pointed out the much-needed addition to the Egg -- a rain and shade canopy, which is currently in the design process.  We spent a fair bit of time in the rain on this trip, much of it fiddling with tarps.  I'm planning to rig a simple system to extend a cover in a variety of directions.  Pending.

The rainy weather on both of the Egg's first 2 trips have been an acid test for the sealing system.  I'm pleased with the results.  The hatch is water-tight, while the doors score about 9/10.  I think adding an extra inner frame, planned since the beginning, will help considerably by keeping the mattress out of contact with stray drips.  Pending.

This trip was primarily to go to a mountain bike race a friend and I were entering in Golden.  I was working there for 2 days prior, so I towed the trailer down with the truck.  My partner took the truck home when we were through, and Terri and Fin came over with the car.  When we were done camping for a few nights, we did the inaugural tow with the car towards home.

For those of you who know BC, Roger's Pass, between Golden and Revelstoke, is an intimidating hump for any large load, and I wondered (fretfully) how the trailer would tow and track on the journey home.  Things were fairly sluggish on the long climb from 700m to 1300m, but we kept up with bigger trailers towed by bigger trucks.  It handily descended and made its way through the windy road from Revelstoke to 350m Salmon Arm without incident.  Here's photo evidence from the top of the pass:


Fin seems concerned about the connections.  Who knows, maybe he should be:


Overall, the fine combination tracks well (no sway, no effects from passing large trucks), brakes well, and recovers easily from bumps.  It's sluggish, as expected, but it's by no means the slowest vehicle on the road.  On normal terrain, it keeps up with traffic just fine, and looks pretty good doing it.

A few fellow campers asked about the Egg, but in a "where did you get it" context.  I'm realising that, from a distance, the thing looks factory-made.  That feels nice, but also means it's less of a conversation piece than I expected.  That's fine -- conversations are often easy for me to start!

There are things to improve, but the Thunder Egg is now substantially complete and ready for the remainder of a summer of camping.  I'm pleased with what we've done.

Dare I call the project a success?

Saturday, July 9, 2016

Launch delayed, fixes in progress, weigh-in results

Further to my last post of almost 2 months ago, image this disappointing little scene:

We were all set to go -- literally.  The camper and car were packed, Fin had buckled himself into his car seat early in anxious anticipation (or perhaps worried that he'd be forgotten).  We had food, clothes, camping supplies.  Everything was ready for the grand maiden voyage.

I'd heard that a good trailer owner always checks the lights before pulling away.  So I did -- with trailer hitched to car, I snapped on the 4-way flashers.  I found, to my immense dismay and irritation, that the trailer lights, carefully checked weeks before, now remained dark.  The running lights worked.  An hour of checking and fiddling yielded no results.  The trip was called off, and we had a sweet but anti-climatic "camping" dinner on a blanket in front of the living room fire.

Oh, this *$@#'ing thing.

Two months later, those same lights remain dark.  Well ... in truth, there are major qualifications to add to that statement.  At press time, it's been decided that the root of this evil might in fact be the car -- since, suspiciously, the lights all works like a damn with every truck the Egg's been hooked up to.  In fact, here's a photo of the whole works in action just this last week:


It tows like a dream (as you'd hope behind a full-size pickup), performs admirably in driving rain and general wet weather, and performed all duties as hoped and expected.

I spent 5 days living in this time-consuming project of mine while working on a large field job in Roger's Pass.  It didn't quite fit in with the other slightly larger RVs:



Terri and Fin came up for a night, and, despite an excitable little boy, we all even got a little sleep.  My sense is that we'll be able to fit in there as a family until Fin is ready to either sleep in the fold-flat car back or pitch himself a tent.

Here we are in all our campground glory:



The old Egg even functioned as a mobile command centre for downloading and processing field survey data:


So it's been on a trip, a wet and demanding one at that, and it performed admirably.  What's the problem?

The problem is, those damn lights won't work with the CAR!  Not at all!  And everything (everything) has been checked and double-checked!  I've checked grounds, converter boxes, wiring routes, and harness specifications.  It's been on a trip to the mechanic.  I've spent long hours researching causes and solutions.  In every sense, it should work, but it doesn't.  The running lights work, the flashers and brake lights don't, but the problems go away completely when hooked to another vehicle.  The car may turn out to need a dedicated circuit to handle the extra lights.  The standard "T connector" technique commonly used for car towing may not work with this one.

And yes, I did check the grounding wires.  And the bulbs.  And also the converter box.

Another possible snag regarding car towing came today, when I swung by the dump to check a final weight.  The Egg tips the scales at just over 1300 pounds, which is significantly more than estimated.  It was carrying close to what it would while heading out for a camping trip, but it's uncomfortably close to the car's maximum towing load of 1500 pounds.

I've got access to a truck through work, which is a blessing.  Even once the lights are fixed by the hand of God himself, it'll be needed for rugged or high-elevation trips.  However, it comes loaded with gear, and the first priority is to be used for work.

The point of the project was to make a car-towable camper.  I'm not sure if that objective has really been totally achieved.  Once I get this car-vs-trailer-light issue fixed (and I intend to), we'll see how the trips down the highway and up the hills really go.  Perhaps the next trip to the dump will be for a different purpose!