Kelly and Mike's RVing/Traveling Adventures: April 14 - 15, 2025 - A One Project Blog

My Blog Reflection

Every time you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing.

Mother Theresa

Monday April 14, 2025

The project of the day was designing and fabricating brackets to hold Homer's house battery box in place. You will recall that it pulled loose from the floor above by over an inch.

I started at 8:00 a.m. with a trip to Perryville Steel to purchase an eight foot piece of 1 1/4 inch angle iron and a stop at Buchheit's to purchase welding rods and long 3/8 inch bolts, nuts, and washers.

I have to tell you this story because it would only happen in a small town. At Perryville Steel the clerk told me I had to purchase a ten foot piece of angle iron. Okay. I paid by check and she gave me a receipt. I took the receipt into the shop to get the piece of steel. The worker had pulled down a piece of angle iron and was measuring it. It was only nine feet long. He was going to get another piece and cut it to ten foot. I told him that the nine foot piece would be fine because I really only needed eight foot. He said he was sure the clerk charged me $5.00 for cutting a piece to ten feet. He took the nine foot piece into the office and told the clerk that I said this piece would work fine. She voided the receipt and handed me back my check to void. She made out a new receipt and I wrote out a check for $7.00 less than the first one. The worker took the piece of angle iron out and put it in my truck. No big box store would do any of that.

Repairing the battery box:

There was no way to secure the battery box as it was originally installed, i.e. mounted to the floor above. It had been mounted to the floor above using four 3/8 inch bolts. I couldn't see how it was attached above because the battery box is under the furnace. I didn't want to take the furnace out because I was now concerned about the battery box metal being fatigued. Trying to attach it the same way again did not seem smart to me.

My plan was to make two brackets out of angle iron which would come out from the truck frame and go under the box to support it. This idea ended up being somewhat of a challenge because in this area on the truck's frame there are brake lines and the emergency brake cables mounted. I had to find a way to work around both.

Two parallel brackets jutting out from the truck frame was not going to work. I only had room to mount one such bracket. I made one bracket that abutted the side of the frame using bolts top and bottom to attach to a piece of angle iron on the other side.

Here is a picture of that part of the bracket. At the bottom of the picture you can see the bolt running through the angle iron on each side of the rusty truck frame. I wanted to support this long "L" shaped bracket with another piece of metal for further support. I couldn't weld this piece onto the bracket because the black emergency brake cables in the picture had to run through it. I bolted this support bracket on.

In the bottom of the next picture you can see the rest of the first bracket which runs from the truck frame out to the sidewall of Homer.

I couldn't put a parallel bracket on the other end of the box as originally planned due to mechanical things mounted on the frame. In the picture above you can see the second bracket I made. This bracket was bolted to the framework for the generator which was about eight inches higher than the bottom of the battery box. This bracket ran under the box and was bolted to the first bracket so neither bracket can move. This upgrade will certainly outlast me.

I finished at 4:30 p.m. and was exhausted. It is hard to tell how many times I crawled from under Homer to make measurements, fit the pieces, weld pieces, go down to the basement to drill holes, etc. It all amounted to 7500+ steps on my phone.

This is what I looked like when the project was completed. I had rust and dirt on me everywhere. There was so much dirt and rust flakes in my hair that I couldn't even comb it all out when I showered. I had lots of rust and dirt flecks around my eyes despite wearing glasses for protection.

My projects never go smoothly. During the day I had to make two additional trips to Buchheit's for longer bolts. I didn't realize until I got into it that the top of the truck frame is much wider than the bottom. Halfway through the day the locking switch on my angle grinder broke. I could still use it but I could not lock it in the "ON" position, which makes it much easier to operate.

Tomorrow I will put all the tools away, which are strung out on the garage floor, and spray some paint on the new metal brackets to slow down the rusting process. I will then be able to install the house batteries.

I am happy this project is completed. I was dreading all the crawling under and back out. I'm having a lot harder time getting up than I used to. My knees just don't seem to have any strength anymore. I also was not looking forward to laying flat on my back under Homer for periods of time because that now causes me to be nauseous.

At lunch time I called the pest control people about the squirrel in the attic because they had not called me back as promised. Today I was informed that they do not deal with wildlife and told me to call Semo Wildlife. I called them and they will be out Wednesday to assess the situation and look for entry places. There is a $129.00 charge to do this inspection but I don't care. I just want the squirrel or squirrels out of the attic. I wish I had known about this outfit weeks ago. It would probably all be taken care of by now.

Tuesday April 15, 2025

Here are pictures of the brackets after being painted. It was hard to get a decent picture because laying on the ground I cannot get far enough away to get it all in the picture.