phoenix2013

New design addition?

I appreciate your thoughts and prayers, Don had a bit of an uptick, he caught a flu which they are treating now. It is particularly hard when a person nearing the end is a great individual and an incredible talent. We've been close friends since my move to Florida. We are involved with the Jazz and Blues Society of Fort Pierce and I produce the Milestones Newsletter for the Society, check out the link below and the great people who are part of it. https://www.jazzsociety.org/uploads/docs/blocks/458/milestones-2022-03-spring-1.pdf The article I wrote on the "Future is here", touches on some things I mentioned above on being productive with one's time and talents. My friend's name is Don Bestor Jr. he's a Berklee educated pianist, check out what the Senior did? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Bestor

Old Goat is going to get philosophical on you guys. Very good friend of mine and a colleague in an organization we run (he's the Prez, I'm the VP), was 911'd to the hospital this morning and they are moving him to the hospice later today. Stage four COPD, full oxygen, 14 drugs, etc. I've been spending more time with him lately in the anticipation of the inevitable. The philosophical part comes from witnessing something like this and the age, mine being eight decades. I remember that for the first six decades I thought nothing off to undertake tasks/projects that would take years (airplane restoration - 3 years, house restoration and upgrade -30 years). Now I look for things I can finish in days, weeks, or months at most. And I am very selective about things I undertake, are they truly essential to my existence for my remaining time? Spending time with Don brought out another reflection, like, "why is he writing and signing checks? I have the authority and so does the accountant, all he had to do was to sign them". What a waste of precious time he has. Yesterday I had maybe half a dozen conversations with a Jackalopee owner. Bought a kit at the Rally, was fine for about 2,000 miles, melted a wire and funked up the board. He bought an older kit (you get individual wires and you run them throughout the truck) not the one with harnesses. He's an electrician, he knows that melted wire means a solid short between power and ground, or power and chassis. He will need a new board but before he installs it he better finds out where the short is, or the new board will cook as well. So most of the conversations we had were about the stages of troubleshooting, etc. Finally, I posed the question, "obviously the wiring is no good, someplace, what value knowing what that someplace is, or where it is worth, timewise". "Junk the whole friggin' thing and replace it with nice new harnesses, install the new board and be done" This is what he's getting. I've installed scores of Jackalopees over the years (my younger years), few examples of the "starting points" I can guarantee you that the folks who created these, or had these created for them, were at awe with themselves for making things light up and blink. I had less than zero interest in studying their approach, or cleverness to make it happen. Total time sink, throw it in the trash and start fresh.

Peterbilt tech found a bad NOX or knock sensor (something like that), it's by the turbo on the Cummins engine. All is good. The customer still had engine warranty in place (less than 500,000 miles on the engine) so it was done under warranty.

They have new welder/fabricator on ETs and he's sharp. Last time I talked to PopUp (the sales guys) they said he knew about it and fixed it. I had the same problem when I made the ETs, but I would fix it before shipment. Two critical things drive it, the depth of the spring hole in the block and positioning of the slide box in the head welding it in. There was jig for that I made 20 years ago. It was part of all the jigs they got. Maybe there was a need for a new jig after all that time. The heads they are fabricating are much more accurate than I could make them (precision bending etc.). My problems were the cast jaws which were all over the place size wise and the guys doing the secondary machining on the jaws and blocks sometimes would drill the spring hole too deep. My trick was to cut 3/16" slug off a 5/8" bolt and drop it into the spring hole. How did you fix it? The safety pin was a suggestion from RVH Lifestyles, apparently they have more and more customers of the type that requires signs on ladders "DON'T STAND UP ON THE TOP RUNG" and don't latch the hitch completely, not do the tug test, etc. Having the pin in avoids stupid, but on some rigs it interferes with the pin box.

Update, local mechanic hooked his computer to the 680 and it would not talk at all to the truck computer. Local Peterbuilt is coming out Monday to try it. They suggested that with the amber wrench being on for a while we refrain from moving the truck until they diagnose it.

I mentioned I did another truck recently, interesting story. I got a phone call from a guy in Miami who purchased just the Jackalopee recently, he also bought a DirecLink brake controller, installed it, nothing works. Can he and his buddy bring the truck up and have me look at it. Sure, bring it up, it's only about 100 miles. It's a Volvo they are converting. I got my trusty 12V test light out when they showed up and this is the interesting part. They were two Russians, an older guy, obviously he has been here for a while, his English was perfect and a younger guy probably early 30s, has been in this country for two years. His English was at the two year level, pretty good, wanted to talk a lot, practice it and asked a lot of questions about everything. The older guy mentioned that Pavel was a big shot in Russia, I asked what he was doing there and he said he ran state owned construction company building state owned facilities. My father did exactly the same thing when we lived in communist Poland. Once we got into details it was obvious that this was his job there. I did not pry but there is a pretty good coincidence. It was about two years ago that sophisticated Russians of military age, over half a million of them, decided that Vladimir's Ukrainian "adventure" was to be avoided at all costs. And state enterprises were ordered to identify and "supply" a specific number of their employees for the "adventure". Back to the Volvo. They did not buy a kit and Pavel did the wiring. Half of it worked, the part where you wire the 7 wire cables, the remaining "harness" (?) looked like it came out of Moscow apartment and nothing worked. I attempted little troubleshooting, then decided on a better option. Out came the kit with two premade harnesses, I have stock of them. The Jackalopee was mounted in the rear compartment and it took the Russians about ten minutes to run the harnesses, under the floor mat and under the truck to the firewall. The older Russian gently gathered the Moscow apartment style wiring bundle and handed it to me, I gently deposited it into a cardboard box in the garage (next to the trash barrel). Next I tie wrapped and wired the two breakers in the same manner you see here and the question became where to go from here with the four wires for the brake controller. After bit of poking we found that Volvo's pass through area with grommets is hidden under truck harnesses in the upper right corner of the firewall. About two hours work (for three guys)😀😀😀

The shop is ready to work on the 680, they installed the bison catcher, and started prepping the rails to put rail extensions on it. Here's the question for all you gurus. The truck had a green wrench on the display for a while. Today when the shop moved it a message came on "The engine will derate in 5 minutes". They are nervous about moving it into the shop. They are a welding shop, not a truck service shop. It has Cummins X15 with a full auto transmission (D-N-R). Someone mentioned to the customer that the wrench might be about tranny computer, it doesn't shift down "nicely" under heavier breaking. Any thoughts would be appreciated before tomorrow morning.

So what comes with the latest version of the Jackalopee kit? It is packaged in the Large size Post Office Priority box for 2-3 days shipping anywhere in the USA. There are two layers in the box. The bottom layer has the Jackalopee, DOT plug for the semi, RV socket, RV socket bracket with hardware, 20 feet of the seven wire RV cable and the crimp connectors for connecting the seven wire cables inside the Jackalopee. The top layer has the 16 page Jackalopee manual, 2 page Cliff note and 4 page kit installation manual containing what has been talked about above in this thread. It has the 20 foot long harness, the 8 foot long harness. It has 15 feet of loom for the long harness and 4 feet of loom for the short harness. There are tags identifying all the wires with hardware needed for those wires. There is also a 20 Amp resettable breaker and a 40 Amp resettable breaker, each with an insulating rubber boot.

Since I like this approach I needed to come up with a rudimentary "manufacturing process" to make the harnesses. It starts with "Wiring Center", wires, cable and loom. Grab red, black and blue, tape the three ends together and hook it up to the garage door. Stretch it, cut at 20 feet, tape the ends, hook it up to the cart. Tape the bundle at 4-5 feet intervals. Coil the harness on a jig. Jig components courtesy of Hobby Lobby. Rotation mechanism, old beat up rotating stool. Twist tie the harness on the jig, remove from jig, add four instruction tags with hardware. Hardware being the ring terminals, female push-ons, barrels, etc., shown in the picture and stapled in a little baggie to each tag. The eight foot harness is done the same way and there a jigs for that harness and for the 15 feet and 4 feet looms.

I know all about that training regimen. This summer it will be 55th anniversary, preceded by 3 year courtship. I think that those extended courtships prepare you for the extended training. But let's bring it to the subject at hand, "the new" Jackalopee wiring. I did another truck couple days back (more on that later), it was a Volvo this time. I mounted the resettable breakers in the same fashion on the vertical harness tie wrapping these in place, it works well and easy. Couple of pointers here. On resettable breakers the brass terminal is the input (from the batteries). So if you mount these vertically put the brass stud on the bottom to meet the harness coming up. Here's the whole thing by the firewall. You can see where the two looms stop about three inches above that horizontal tube and why do you need 4 feet of wires here. The two black wires from the battery harness are tied about foot up and get cut to reach the bottoms of the breakers. However, the full four feet of white wire continues up through the firewall into the cab. The four feet of the red wire and the blue wire from the long harness continue up through the firewall into the cab. The black wire in the long harness gets cut and attached to the top of the 40A breaker. The piece you cut off attaches to the top of the 20A breaker and joins the other three wires through the firewall into the cab. So, everything is connected an you are about to make the brake controller very happy, it's eagerly waiting to meet black & white, red & blue wires. Here's the view inside the cab. You can see the happy four marriages of the Jackalopee harnesses to the brake controller harness.

Ah, the truth shall set you free!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well, I spotted that the internal wiring in your Jackalopee is in this class. Truly Masterful

Here a quick and dirty way mounting the two resettable breakers under the hood and in the area where you need to be. Used couple of tie wraps which were already there and added couple more.

Indeed you are a Master Rickeieio I defer. I must point out the ageism and it's factors I described at the top, this had to be one of the results.

What a clever group of padawans. Indeed, a dark force of water incursion would disturb the lifeforce in the Jackalopee sphere. The Master has siliconed that dastardly cable end where it enters that sphere. But I am so proud that I taught you well, that you have absorbed the wisdom and that you share it with other Jackalopians.

The Kenworth 680 project has moved to another shop, which should improve it's standing in the scheduling que. You should be able to follow its progress. In the meantime the Old Goat got "persuaded" to install these two. Being old, or really old changes one's mindset. It is driven by aches, pains, general weakness, compromised mobility, laziness, etc. If one can't avoid the task one seeks ways to make it "less tasking". Wiring the two seven wire cables is what it is and there are good instructions in the manual how to make it "less tasking". Wiring the remaining six circuits of power and brake controller has been a bit of a wild, wild west of crawling under the truck, through the truck, into the engine compartment, under the dash, in the battery compartment. A wild west battle with Indians winning. Having the truck in front of oneself contemplating the battle was good for "inspiration". What if we reduced the six wires to two? Two harnesses that is. Having the truck in front was was also good at establishing that one needed to be 20 feet long and the other 8 feet long. The 20 foot harness has three wires for power, brake lights and brake controller. It has 15 feet of protective loom with 6-8 inches of wire exposed at the Jackalopee and about 4 feet exposed in the engine compartment. The 8 foot harness has 3 wires, two for +12V and one for ground. It has 4 feet of protective loom with about 12 inches of exposed wires in the battery compartment and about 3 feet exposed in the engine compartment. I was a little surprised by the length of wires required but this is a big truck with a full size sleeper. The 6-8 inches of wires in the 20 foot harness get wired in the Jackaloppee, the loomed portion goes down to the left rail, gets tie wrapped to other harnesses there and the loom and the wires exit in the vicinity of the firewall. More on what we do there later. The short harness in the battery compartment. The 12 inches of the exposed wires start and are terminated there. Cut the two black wires to about 3 inches long and terminate these with two yellow 3/8" ring terminals. Terminate full 12 inch white wire with a blue 3/8" ring terminal. White goes on the ground stud, black wires go on the +12V stud. I would suggest to insulate the yellow terminals (temporarily) and not install these on the +12V stud until you deal with the other ends of those wires and terminate those on fuses by the firewall. You can see how I mounted the fuses in the picture above. The black wires are terminated with #10 ring terminals and go to fuse bottoms (brass terminals). The white wire goes through the firewall into the cab to provide ground to the brake controller. Ok that's enough for tonight, tomorrow we will continue wiring and manufacturing kits.

I had a conversation with the folks at Youngs Welding about the lower capacity ET hitches (besides the ones I'm working on for pickups), with four 1,500 lbs. bags to make these work with the 2,500 - 3,000 lbs. pin weights. Chance remembered it, I forgot (!!!) that I solved that problem years back. I redesigned the ET Junior to accept four of these bags and do the job. The other part of the redesign was to build the Junior with a Senior style mounting plate ready for install in the semis. I'll see if I can dig out these drawings.

GenY will certainly work for you. I saw on their website one that goes .5-2K, but I saw one that seem to go higher (didn't see specs). H

The Old Goat made a video of the process of wiring. What's the posting sequence of the video (vs. pictures). Does it have to be on utube?

This is the big day, these two will be installed in the truck, follow the process. We are counting on the help of Eric, the owner. Tommy and I were discussing the need to go under the truck to install the harness, however we decided against it, because of our advanced ages. The only way for either one of us to go under there would be with a rope tied to our ankles to egress. Our solution is to send Eric under there.

Took the Kenworth for a spin around the town. Did little bit of shopping. and parked it at Old Goat's domicile. Tomorrow we are starting the prep for frame extension and prep (removing unneeded stuff), Jackalopee install and DirecLink brake controller install. Few interesting details cropped up, more on those later. As you can see there quite a transition from the street, up the driveway (flat street steep driveway). Slow approach didn't work, as the rear axle went up the middle axle just freewheeled in the air. I thought the rear axle was the driving axle and you could lock the middle, what gives on Kenworth, help the Volvo guy. But, all the good feelings just rushed right back in after more than a decade away from semi. Offered wife to take it for a spin, she said "no way, I might want one again".

Wife is looking at the Old Goat with a jaundice eye and says "what happened to your retirement" and "chasing nannies, forget it!" It all started few months back with this, this morning there is an another "offspring". And in a week or so this prodigal son is coming back for a checkup. The rig is on the third owner and apparently required some skilled work, which turned out to be not so "skilled". Will have to have a heart to heart with the "son". Visits are OK, moving back into the spare room is not.

Had another conversation with a Jackalopee self-installer. He wired one few months back, we worked through challenges like a missing relay in the lighting portion of the truck motherboard, but in the end he did a very nice job. He's persistent. During our latest phone call he sent me a picture. Aha, the Running Lights wire. He wanted a new board, I sent it to him but with an admonishment, "don't swap the boards until you find the REAL PROBLEM". OK, so what are the running lights in your trailer? Those are the two lights in the back that stay on permanently when you turn the lights switch ON in your truck. Depending how much money you spent on your trailer it could have just these two, or in addition, it could have a row of lights at the top of the sidewalls, middle of the sidewalls, top of the front cap, rear cap, etc., etc. In the Jackalopee it's a very simple circuit. It comes in from the truck's brown wire, runs on top of the board for an inch or so, goes through two massive feedthroughs to the bottom of the board, and continues to the trailer side of the board and a tab marked, RUNNING LIGHTS, GREEN wire. This copper trace is capable of delivering Amps of 12VDC power or whatever truck puts out on that wire. Why Amps? That's the legacy of the pre-LED era when trailers could have a bunch of incandescent lights each requiring up to a half an Amp of power each. A total overkill today where LEDs require only 20-30 milliamps each. OK, what's the relevance here? The Old Goat has seen a fair amount of Recreational Vehicle (??) electrical circuitry and even attempted to work with it. Let me show you, and you be the judge whether it can be classifies as "Recreation". This one was at the top of the pinnacle. It all went into the trash to be replaced with a harness to a custom instrument cluster and other things. There was one contribution to the trash that I found truly unique. They needed to connect two things that were approximately six feet apart, their solution can be classified as a work of art, worthy of an exhibit in the museum of technology. Thee different colors, two different wire gauges. Second example is the International MDT conversion I owned and this was their attempt of wiring a truck into a puller conversion. Again, their "attempt" under the dash went into the trash to be replaced with one in the back compartment. You might say, "so what, bad luck couple of times". To which I'd say, "ah, my young padawan, the dark side is strong and the Emperor lives in Elkhart, Indiana". "This is what the droids in Elkhart produce every day". These examples didn't come from "entry level" bargains, these came from rigs that make your relatives worry whether you will leave enough money behind to bury your ass. How I got those pictures? I stuck my head (and the camera) where the salesman doesn't want you to stick your head and the camera. I made an enlargement of the third picture. I asked the salesman, "what the hell is that for"? "Oh, it's an option, the guy wanted an electric awning, so we had to run a power and ground to it". Which brings us back to the melted wire in the first picture. Power and ground, power and ground, power and ground! In the plywood trailers there is very little metal ground, pretty much everything that requires electrical power will have that pair running to it. What happens when edge of the plywood chafes through the black and white insulation and let the two inner copper wires come together. Welding time and fire if it comes from the batteries, melted wires if the source is "less capable". I pity the customer with the melted running lights wire. If all his running lights were run in parallel from a central point (less likely) he might be able to disable the one that's shorted. If they were daisy chained in series (more likely) he's really screwed.

Time to resume and "FINISH" the project, making more CAD parts, what do you think this is a part off. I'm having conversations with another "Floridian" who might want this bed. We are starting next week with the frame extensions, an ET hitch install, Jackalopee and a brake controller. Bed will follow in the future. He's thinking four door Jeep, I'm saying "how about two door". For an "eye opener" I produced this. Awfully friggin' long, isn't it? Put a bed on it. and park a two door on it, this two door. Guess what you have left? 57-59 inches, depending how close you park it to the truck. Typical trailer radius is 52 inches while you are turning. I have a quote for 8 feet of frame rails, waiting for numbers on wheelbase and existing frame rails lengths.