Electric bay project

On Wednesday, Carl worked on Gracie's electric bay. He had a couple of objectives:

• Determine what it would take to replace the current Battery Isolation Manager (BIM). Since we upgraded the batteries to Lithium, our batteries are not charged by the alternator as we drive because our current BIM thinks they are fully charged unless they are heavily discharged (below 10% charged which isn't likely to happen for us). We can get a different BIM that is more functionally aware of Lithium batteries and will recognize that they need charging, but we weren't sure how much cord slack there was in the hardwired attachment to the current BIM to allow us to attach to a new one.
• Remove cord reel and re-do wiring in the electric bay so Hughes Autoformer and Power Watchdog could be located within the electric bay instead of at the power pedestal in campground. These are items that are a bit of an effort to hook up each campground, and, since they are subject to theft, we have to keep them locked up. If they were located within the electric bay, they would be always hooked up and behind a locked door.

The current Battery Isolation Manager (BIM). Carl did take it loose to evaluate whether there was enough "give" in the wires to allow a different BIM (with wiring inputs in different locations on the device) could work... and... there wasn't much give in the wires. We've decided that, for now, we'll be happy with the solar panels charging the batteries as we drive - less load on the alternator too.

While he was in there and could see the back of the electrical bay, Carl took some additional pictures. This is the area of the 12V power distribution and fuses (back of electric bay, pretty much requires removing cord reel to access).

Meanwhile I took a picture of Carl taking pictures!

Transfer switch that enables switching between generator and shore power.

Cord reel on the ground outside the electric bay.

Campground owner Mr Steve stopped by to see what we were up to!

Carl preparing the "pigtail" cord with male end to splice into the house circuit. This then would plug into the Hughes Autoformer, the Autoformer into the Power Watchdog, and then the Power Watchdog into a new female end on the cord reel...

Attaching new female end to the cord reel.

Everything in place!!!

It *almost* all works... we have two 120V "lines" in the rig, and one of the lines is not working. Fortunately, that line seems to have on it only the washer and dryer, stove top, and front air conditioning unit -- all of which we can do without for a day or two until Carl can work on finding out where a loose connection may be. We have it narrowed down to the pigtail (we disconnected everything else). So... not *quite* finished, but very close!