My Blog Reflection
Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us that do.
I. Asimov
October 25, 2026:
There is a solenoid on Homer that when activated engages to have the converter charge the house batteries when he is plugged into electric. I have had trouble with this solenoid on several occasions over the years. A couple of years ago I purchased a new solenoid and it worked correctly for a while. Now, for whatever reason, sometimes it works and sometimes it does not. I have thumped this solenoid several times to no avail. (This is a legitimate fix with solenoids.) Sometimes they just get stuck, particularly if not used much like Homer.
A few days ago Homer was plugged in and I noticed the house batteries were not being charged. I unplugged Homer from electric and then plugged him back in and I heard the solenoid engage. Weird. It should either work or not work.
The only way I can tell if this solenoid works is if I go inside and look at the battery meter or put a multimeter on the batteries. Upon plugging Homer into electric it is quite inconvenient to have to go in and out to see if the solenoid is working correctly. For convenience I decided to add a voltmeter in the outside electrical compartment. Here is a picture of the compartment which contains all of the solenoids, electrical connections, and the two house batteries. (The yellow thing laying in the picture is my flashlight.) There is not a lot of room to add anything in this compartment. While I know that batteries have to be vented, I have always been surprised that the electrical components are not in some way sealed off from road dirt, etc. In the following picture you can see the gap on the bottom and side of the batteries which is open to the road below. All of the electrical components are to the left of the batteries.
When I ordered a voltmeter for this project I wasn't thinking and did not order one with a switch on it. I do not want the meter to be on all of the time so I need to install a switch.
When driving the coach there is another solenoid that should engage to charge the house batteries from the alternator. This also was not working on Homer so I purchased a new solenoid. With John's help a couple of months back I installed it. The new solenoid would work but it wasn't getting a signal to engage. After some fiddling John and I found that we could add a wire from this solenoid to the hot on the battery, essentially hot wiring it. I do not want this solenoid on all of the time because when camped it could pull down the chassis battery and then the engine wouldn't start. We installed a plug in the line. When I didn't want it working I would just unplug it. I immediately found the plug to be a problem and did not like the fact that when unplugged one end of the plug was still hot. I decided to replace the plug with a switch as part of this voltmeter install.
I purchased a shallow plastic house receptacle box to hold the voltmeter and two switches. It was a little too shallow so I glued on a spacer. I painted the entire box yellow because: a) I had some yellow paint and b) I wanted to be able to see the box in low light. I made the lid out of a scrap piece of masonite. Here is a picture of the box and lid while I wait for the paint to dry.
As I said, there is not a lot of room in the outside electrical compartment to add things. My initial plan was to mount the box on the compartment door, which swings down when opened. I immediately determined that this mounting was not going to work due to the long electrical wires that would have to fold back into the compartment when the door was closed.
There are not a lot of options for mounting the box in the compartment. I ended up fashioning a bracket out of a piece of scrap metal I had on hand. This bracket allowed me to mount the box to the 1/4 inch x 1 1/2 inch metal strap on the top of the compartment. Drilling through this metal proved to be too much for me. Alexa came by and drilled it for me. I just don't have any arm strength anymore.
I was now ready to make all of the electrical connections inside the yellow box. Installing the meter and its wires was a piece of cake. I had bought two cheap toggle switches, one for the voltmeter and one for the solenoid. When installing the first switch it literally fell apart in my hands. The switches were cheap and I guess I got what I paid for.
I was able to find a replacement switch at Tractor Supply for twice the price. I purchased it and installed it with no issues. When when I went to tighten the connections on the second switch IT FLEW APART AS WELL! I knew I should have bought two switches. Back to Tractor Supply. Upon installing the second switch everything tested out fine. I then mounted the box bracket to the top of the compartment with a self-tapping bolt. Here are a couple of pictures.
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