GO SEE THE PHOTOS FIRST, THEN RETURN IF YOU WISH TO READ.
The rear engine power panel compartment was artrosis. It too was overwhelming to my patience after all this in the past. You can see how bad the power panel is inside with all the debris etc. covering everything and just looking like real crap. After the alternator cable breaking in my hand I made up my mind this bus was to be rewired completely, (back to front). Well this did not go as smoothly as I wished.
I tore into this project knowing I was doing the correct thing as I have no idea what other wires may be over cooked and brittle etc and just a fire hazard. I removed all the wiring from back to front and what a freakin mess here too, dirt up to the ying yang every night pulling this old crap out and finding where it is hung up cause it will not all come out from pulling. Well you can imagine, I finally got everything out I could find, stripped out both power panels, (front & back) and cleaned the utility tunnel that goes from front to back of the bus. Oh man this was filthy and so was I. After getting the wiring and all solenoids and relays all removed, now I have to switch gears in my mind and try to figure out what the hell I do now and where do I start.
I went to HD and Lowes to price primary wire. Forget that I thought, I will not pay that price at that time. I then went to a metal salvage yard, just on a whim, and low and behold, right there as I entered their building was a pallet of about 8 400-500 ft. rolls of all different colored 12 ga wire. It was sent to salvage as the electrical co. had all this wire but it had a plastic coating on the wire and they did not want that. I SURE AS HELL DID!! And bought it all for $.25 cents per pound. Now I had a supply to do my project. Much thicker than called for on the Eagle drawings which mostly is 14 ga. Wire. But what the heck, this bigger wire means less resistance to me from back to front of the bus and I used it to rewire my entire bus.
Now before I get into telling you I made a wiring snake of all different colored wires I had an accident and broke my right hand wrist, (I am right handed) and with my broken wrist I made up a wiring snake and taped it all together from one end to the other 50 ft. long. Man was this a pretty heavy bundle when done. With a broken wrist I had to figure out how to pull this snake from one end of the bus to the other and I decided to do it from inside of the bus, right in the middle of the bus and pushing, tugging, swearing and yanking one end of this snake to the front of the bus through the utility tunnel was awful. Then to go back in the bus after getting the front wire run, I had to do the same to the back of the bus power panel, and ALONE STILL. The broken wrist was a real challenge to deal with, you can’t imagine how bad it looked and I had to go to my DR. during this and show him how good my wrist was doing. What ass chewing I got!! I went back home and continued to yank etc, and got “R” done. Well just pulled into where it will be used anyhow.
Well now I got schematic drawings of the bus and having not ever read any schematics before I thought I could do this. Well, that is BS, this was way above my pay grade I now admit and actually the only thing I need help with in my entire conversion at that time so far. But I gave it one hell of a college try. I sat for days and tried to figure out the drawings. I took the ones I had to the Staple Store and had them enlarged and laminated them so I could read them. My eyesight now is starting to go!! But the enlargement of the drawings was not the best solution for learning how to read schematics. I went to the library to get books, (RV wiring for dummies, I fitted this right in). Well that too was BS, no way could I speed read this book and learn anything. I threw the damn book away. I started with just one wire from back to front and tried to follow the drawings but they are not really clear etc. Anyhow, I worked about 8 months trying to figure out how to wire and connect up everything. When I thought I had it was done and I felt at the time very confident I did one fantastic job I could not wait to test it out. I turned on the main 12v power and nothing worked, nothing!! I thought I could figure out which relays and solenoids to eliminate as there are no passenger seat lights, no lights to the bathroom door and no air conditioning from the bus engine etc, etc. Well that was all BS too, I just screwed everything up. So after getting pissed, discouraged, my wings clipped, my ass handed back to me I quit this process and went on.
Then years later I asked my good friend from GE, Henry Gossett to help me and even he had a difficult time understanding some of the things they did in the schematics and of course I took the initiative to delete things I thought were not needed. This is funny eh?? Well I had this dream and still do of having every light on the bus be LED and they now are installed, (temporarily). Henry never worked on 12v led lighting equipment before and this was a first for him also. Well to make a real real long story short we both learned from mistakes from those that are supposed to be in the business of LED’s and we find out they knew as much as we did. Anyhow we found out we had to use, (LED ONLY FLASHERS, INSTEAD OF LED COMPATIBLE FLASHERS). Let this be a lesson to you that are converting to led lights and they do not work correctly. Poor Henry worked for days front and back to get them to work until it was suggested by another friend (Greg Valente) that I need to investigate using LED only Flashers for turn signals and emergency light flashers to work properly. They just will not work the way you wish unless you know this. I hope this helps others trying to do this.
Henry and I come to the conclusion to say to hell with the Eagle Drawings and let’s wire this baby up OUR WAY and we now are. After getting flashers for LED only I now have turn signals that work, I have emergency flashers that work and all when I turn them on. All the running lights now are also connected to Henry’s way and all work really fine. I am finally elated to find something working on this bus correctly as I wish. We have to now work on the brake lights and at the time of writing this post that is not done.
NOTE: if you try to upgrade your bus without learning or knowing some of this stuff you will fail eventually unless you are an Einstein. Only saying here. WE all don’t know everything even if we think we can learn it on our own, that does not work sometimes as hard as you try.
Enough of that learning curve, I hope it helps from my mistakes to prevent YOU from falling into the same pitfalls. Now onto the photos, ENJOY.