Hello again!
The Ghost has been sitting quietly in the driveway these past couple months enjoying some much needed rest. The return trip from BurningMan 2012 was uneventful although VERY long (multiple construction zones stopped us many times, and we didn’t hit pavement until closer to noon departing BRC). I think we rolled into PDX right around 0230. I don’t like pushing it that hard, but I had a good amount of pre-trip rest stored up to tap into. The ghost never missed a beat and once we got back down under 500ft elevations, it was coming on night so the air cooled off and the horsepower really jumped up to make the I-5 stretch rather speedy.
I took her out last weekend to go service the black water tank (had been sitting in the driveway since early September) and blow the cobwebs out. Unfortunately I once again plugged up a fuel dip tube in the tank so I need to fix that (again). There must be more junk floating around in the tank causing issues. Shy of that annoyance, the rest of the trip was uneventful.
When I brought her back into the parking slot and shut things down, it turns out that some small air leak has reared it’s head under the chassis. Some quick investigation shows it right off the main dry air tank feed line to the brakes in some odd little aluminum block. I will investigate further and either a) repair the block or b) find that it’s other lines run nowhere and it can be replaced with a straight coupling. Half the air line leaks on the coach have been repaired by just removing unused fittings/lines (which used to run air doors, etc.) Otherwise, the only other concerning leak is some small one on the drivers side rear air suspension . To keep things ‘level’ I have to keep her attached to my air compressor for a weekly fill-up of the aux tank.
Next on the list is getting the two new Group 4D batteries installed for hopefully better cold weather starts and also getting the hydronic heating system installed for the early February camp-out we always attend. I usually use a 120V 1500W oil radiator heater but it’d be nice to at least have the system functioning for a full-on test. Roof painting is on hold until the weather becomes more agreeable. I am also going to start working on the coach HVAC control circuity (thermostat that will control two zones of both heat and AC)
I’ve also been slowly bringing the deep cycle batteries up to full charge that I scored out of the old paper mill. The appear to be holding charge nicely and the internal impedance is looking nice and low so far. I will start load testing them soon to see what happens. I have a holder for about 400-500A/hr of these at 24V to run the future desired inverter/charger & onboard systems (the coach itself is 12V).
More to come soon and hopefully some more interior shots as I build it out more and get it all cleaned up.
Thanks,
