Electrickery.

Building an electrical system for the Pathfinder.

At the end of last week, as I write (Early April) I had the boat ready to start adding components towards having a fixed electrical system starting with as large a battery as I could fit – and within my ability to lift and move. This week we made a visit to the battery store in town and came away with an AGM exide battery of some 140 Ah in capacity and 45 Kg in weight. That me, post stroke, and my partner (has PMR) managed to heave it out of the car boot, carry it around to the boat and then heave it over the gunnel and into the battery compartment was quite the achievement.

Right now, as I write, I am waiting on some distant internet seller to post me some of the other parts – right now, for example the main batttery isolator switch and a natty little 5 gang switch panel. This evening though I failed with the internet when I tracked down the right size of semi flexible solar panel, tried to order and pay for it but must have been doing something wrong throughout because all I got was ‘internet says no’…..I even tried to phone the company but they are obviously taking all year off for Easter. My second fail of the day happened when I went out to the boat to experiment with different positions for the isolator switch and the smart charger’s croc clips in that I realized that I had cut the hole for accessing the battery compartment at the opposite end of the covering board.

Spot the mistake……

I have learnt, in the first three weeks of my stroke recovery, to not give myself too many problems to solve and tasks to get done all at once ; rather that it pays to focus on one or maybe 2 things and try to get those done in any session, day or week of working. This week I want to finish the battery tie down straps and their connections to the boat and after that i’ll play around with fitting the battery isolator switch and after that the main switch panel. As iv’e said before the current rain cloud on my horizon is wiring the main switch panel and most of my reason for that is because the job will be very fiddly and as with typing a post at the moment my main problem is

Progress – end of April.

Rather than try to create a third electric video out of just wiring things up I thought to do a written update so…..one of my boating friends pointed out that my new plan of taking short leads to stud connectors just outside the battery box was actually a bad idea because I would then have potentially an ‘exposed’ battery – instead he suggested having something like a 12 volt deck plug in the side of the box (inside the main compartment) and having a plug-in connector. The whole problem kind-of solved itself when I had a look at my ‘smart’ charger – while it’s terminations are a pair of croc clips it also has a simple 2 pin connector in the same circuit and by replacing the croc clips with crimp terminals I have a ready made solution to go straight on the battery terminals.

My new plan reverts back to adding an access port near the battery terminals so that I can get the charger on and off – that’s in next week’s round of jobs along with fitting the isolator switch and switch panel somewhere as far forrad under the cuddy as I can get them…..small problems one at a time !

On three wheels – trike update.

A quick update on the trike is that I did a bit of a ‘creative’ repair after the battery came loose last week and on the day after I went out for my longest ride so far – about 20 miles I reckon. This week I might farm out the next problem in that I want to try running a larger chainring to give me higher gearing – I seem to run out of gears on easy downhill sections and a new chainring is a far cheaper option than changing the rear wheel size…..which would also necessitate having a complete new back end and new cables. A very quick health update (regarding the trike) is that I did think I would use it for most of my exercise because it seems to allow me to exercise for longer per session but I don’t perhaps get the same workload as when I am rucking or even pacing the hills with a long stride – oddly, walking hard with a long stride seems to make me work harder than spinning the pedals on the trike.

This week I went into total brain failure mode when I went out on a ride, in fact went out with the intention of leaving the trike at my nearest cycle shop in the hope that they would change the chainring and modify the chainring for me. I say intended to because I left the drive having failed to do a pre-flight check – I failed to notice that the battery was nearly empty, got a few miles up the road and the motor went dead. I ended up limping in to my favorite cafe with a dead trike and sore knees from having to pedal the last few miles in the lowest gears.

This week…..with the new, larger chainring on and a full battery iv’e been able to do some longer rides as routine, pedaling the trike with the larger chainring is a much more positive (and obviously faster) experience and all it needs different on the harder climbs is to use a lower gear.

Week 3/4 health update.

There isn’t really anything new I can say about my stroke recovery at this point and TBH I think it best to leave the subject be for a while and concentrate on my projects because with clambering in and out of the boat I am doing far more balance and strength exercises than the physio had up her sleeve. This week for instance I will ride the trike most days but I will also go back to good old plain walking because I note that striding hard on the hills round here gives me a harder workout than the (now) electrically assisted trike does ; the way to incorporate that into my exercise regime (I think) is to do occasional much longer rides. The only new thing I have to report is, like many, i’m not tolerating a high dose of statins so iv’e just taken the executive decision to halve my dose – the result this morning is that I didn’t wake up feeling that I had DOMS.

This week I have both a face to face GP appointment – mainly to discuss my ‘numbers’ and medicines and then later in the week i’m booked to have a transthoracic echo (cardiac echo) to make sure the pump isn’t doing anything dodgy………