Builds Grumble Deluxe

[repentsinner]

Some of the rats nest coming out. Unfortunately the connectors on the back of the gauges are an AMP design that I don't have crimpers or parts for.

 

[repentsinner]

Harnesses pulled in. Somewhat embarrassingly the one to the rear cargo area is about a foot shorter than it should be. Guess measure twice cut once didn't work this time.

I ran an extra two conductors from the rear keyed the opposite to pick up signals from the rear to be routed as sources into the dash panel - reverse and brake (or always on, from the 30A circuit pulled in there). What I forgot to anticipate was picking up a high beam signal as well to tie eventual driving lights to. ::sigh::

 

[repentsinner]

While doing all of this I did find time to go climbing on one of the weekends. Here's a DJI Mini 2 after I crashed it into a tree and had to go up to get it. I guess the additional googlie eyes didn't help for object avoidance

 

[repentsinner]

Rather than hard tapping the factory harness all over the place to pick up stock signals, I opted to build some inline taps that use the original connectors.

This worked great conceptually, but (a) they're a little large and there's not a lot of room right behind the clock and lighter so they're difficult to shoehorn in there, (b) the wire routing would have been cleaner if I'd put the tap lines coming out of the male side of the connector, and (c) the stock harness is really designed to plug directly into the clock and lighter so adding additional length to the harness makes it difficult to bend the connectors around to all land in the right place.

Not sure how to do this better aside from maybe making these a little longer, or maybe biting the bullet and just re-terminating the stock harness to include these taps as double-crimps.

 

[repentsinner]

Here's the engine bay 3rd party junk re-harnessed into the GT-150 connectors. I've got 8 circuits left for future expansion, whatever that might be.

 

[repentsinner]

Dash side connectorized, now the gauge and switch clusters can come out with keyed connectors instead of having to disconnect a dozen 0.250" fast-ons and remember where they go when putting things back in.

I do need to replace one On-Off toggle switch with another On-Off-On.

 

[repentsinner]

I really should have taped off the location of these support pillars and laid out this panel better the first time around. Anyway, replaced a temporary set of relay holders with a 4 pc relay block from Del City. Overall it seems like one of the better relay holders out there, though this whole space is kind of crappy with 0.250" fast-ons providing connectivity to the ISO mini format. Fast-ons really don't seem meant to be retained in a housing very well.

One of the relays controls the radio power - since this is a 24V system and radios all run on 12V analog amp stages, I've got to DC/DC convert down and of course the DC/DC converter has vampire drain. The relay is controlled by a switch that selects ignition or direct power, so I can have the radio come on with the ignition or manually turn it on if I want to run it in camp for some reason. Ironically the radio itself supports this with an ignition sense line, but that wouldn't help with the DC/DC converter vampire drain.

The other relay that's currently operational switches rear lights that I've had installed for years but tried to put on a dimmer that sucked. I highly don't recommend Skene Designs dimmers, they're flickery garbage that you have to install on the ground side of the circuit, making wiring a huge pain in the ass.

Anyway I'm mostly happy with how this panel turned out - I should have skipped the temporary relay block as now I've got extra holes in the panel. It holds all of the electronics pretty well, but it's hard to stuff the cables into the cavity so they don't get pinched when re-installing. I'm not sure if I could have still fit everything without the interference fit of the radio though, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[repentsinner]

Finally, de-rusted some hardware while I was at all of this, as well as started to label switches that now are on their way to doing something!

Oh, and replaced the garbage adapted rigid tubing that came with the boost sensor gauge kit with some regular old, you know, vacuum hose that hopefully won't fail nearly as much as the rigid tubing adaptors.

 

[repentsinner]

So nice to have these rearward facing lights again out in the wilderness, and definitely motivated to get driving lights installed to match.

Also apparently I messed up with the EGT sensor wiring, I hope I just got the polarity reversed. Does anyone know if you can extend a k-type thermocouple (or whatever it is) with regular copper wire? I know they use different wire compositions leaving the probe, but am unclear if it's gotta be that funky alloy all the way back to the electronics.

 

[repentsinner]

Took a flyer on an ARB power socket, apparently there's yet another 'standard' low voltage DC connector that fridge vendors use. If I unscrew the back of the cigarette adaptor on the fridge cable, I'm left with a funky keyed two bladed thing that screws into this socket. I'm all about lower profile connectors and something that's not going to rattle loose, but this hardly seems like the best design. But yet it is the best design, because someone else made it so I don't have to...

 

[repentsinner]

And that's it for now!

Actually not quite. After doing a poor job of keeping track of outstanding issues and their state of progress which often takes me years () to complete, I'm testing using a github issue tracker because it's great for ... tracking issues!

repentsinner/grmbldlx

Grumble Deluxe issue tracker and files repo. Contribute to repentsinner/grmbldlx development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

Hope this helps me forget less of what I've done and need to still do over the next years..

 

[repentsinner]

Speaking of years, I finally managed to get the GMRS radio system working.

The remote mount parts I'd found on eBay worked for everything except audio out from the head unit. WTF. The Vertex Standard stuff is generally really well documented, with schematics and pinouts for everything except this remote mount kit. There are a bunch of different flavors depending on what you're trying to do (e.g., Single Head, Dual Head, Dual Band, and Dual Band, Dual Head). I was just trying to do a single head remote so the RF deck could stay in the rear quarter panel with the DC/DC converter, but who knows which remote mount parts I had. It also looks like both sets of used parts I've got have been modified over the years, with some possibly critical components related to the audio signal having been removed.

I managed to find Used-Radios.com - https://used-radios.com/ which had a complete remote kit in stock and finally got everything installed and tested, and now audio finally works. I don't want to spend the time diffing all of the boards to determine what the missing components are - if I'm going to spend time on electronics it'll be the 24V AC Amp that's up next.

While sorting through the mobile unit mess, I picked up almost a dozen commercial hand-helds for the convoy crew, and got them all programmed the same to make it easy to stay connected in Baja. While not designed specifically for GMRS (e.g., the PL codes can't really be overlaid onto the channel mechanism, and just end up as their own channels), I'm happy with the build quality and configurability. The older equipment can also be programmed for full wideband use which is still legal on GMRS as far as I'm aware. Looking forward to testing the range of the mobile unit now that it's working - we were getting at least a mile of range in varied terrain and plenty of vehicle shadow out of the handhelds, which is way better than the FRS units we had last year.

Summary recommendation(s):

* VX-5500-U programmed for GMRS will do 45W (GMRS limit) with 256 channels of programmability. Can handle both DCS and CTCSS privacy codes, but seems to require them programmed per channel.
* EVX-534 seems like the best handheld in this range. the VX-264 only has a 7-segment display, and the bitmap display of the EVX-534 seems worthwhile for about the same money. Both can do 5W, which is considerably more than the FRS handhelds.
* All of the above can be programmed to 5kHz deviation instead of the typical 2.5kHz of FRS and similar, but this does require possibly unlocking the radios and using the international programming software.

 

[repentsinner]

Another month, another partially started project! I've been meaning to get a solar system set up to support multi-day camping w/o needing to worry about the fridge running the starter batteries down and leaving me stranded.

Rough requirements:
* Charge the 24V main system until I get around to building a house battery bank that may/may not be more useful at 12V
* Avoid drilling holes in the roof
* Avoid needing a gutter-mounted roof rack / frame system

It _seems_ like flexible panels (and MPPT controllers) have come a long way recently, but most of the solar tech here is new to me. @TreadingLight and I are having a lively debate on what sucks and what doesn't, so I figured I'd experiment.

Things I've learned(ish):
* Solar panels drop voltage rather than amperage in non-ideal conditions. Most solar controllers (PWM) don't handle this well, jettisoning power generated above Vbat, and not delivering any power at all if the panel isn't putting out at least Vbat. MPPT seems to resolve some of this issue by better managing voltages >> Vbat, giving more headroom before the conversion cuts out completely. This is still all untested theory on my part, however.
* 24V is a PIA (per usual) for most vehicle-based solar equipment. I went with two panels that I can wire in series as all of the single vehicle-specific panels are designed to output 18.xV in ideal conditions, and most all solar controllers are not DC/DC boost controllers able to go from a lower to higher voltage (not sure why this is, it would make life better for everyone incl. 12V users and buck/boost controllers aren't unheard of elsewhere in electronics).
* Lensun has a wide variety of hood-mounted flexible panels. Apparently they can make custom panels, so if this experiment works out favorably I may get them to build a single ~54V panel that will make the most of an MPPT controller's ability to deal with non-ideal conditions (temps, partial shading, etc).
* Almost expired RTV is a sticky mess. If possible, try to run the mounting tape right up to the edge of the panel and avoid a secondary sealant.
* I probably voided any panel warranty by cutting off the MC-4 connectors, but that allowed the use of a simple grommet instead of something like the fancy-but-bulky Scanstrut DS21A-P-BLK. Note that the MC-4 connector is just big enough that one will fit through a DS21A-P-BLK, but once a single conductor is in there, another MC4 won't fit.
* Drill your cable access hole first, feed the cable first, and then position the panel to avoid excessively tight bend radiuses that damage frail cable jackets. Or do your tight bends mid-day when everything is mushy in the sun I might go with the horizontal Scanstrut DS-H10-BLK in future to help with this.
* Test all of this on a scrap hood! The reinforcing ribs on the bottom of the hood extend further than you'd think looking at the top of the hood...

 

[TreadingLight]

I'm glad to see you've got the Tecate Light at the ready.