New owner of Vintage Bus 1980

[Gil_J]

I have and used Coach-Net. No complaints.

[freds]

Time to install the computer after taking it home to learn Node Red and create the web interface; so I could control the system from my phone via the bus's WiFy network from down in the plumbing bay.

Before starting I made sure the diesel boiler was disconnected, as I only wanted to exercise a few of the pumps (pulled the fuses for the others).

Anyway I plugged the Raspberry Pi back in and let it boot up. All of the sudden all the pumps turned on at once!!! WTF is going on?

It turns out that the relay boards that I brought are Active Low once I figured that out it took less then a minute to change the programming in the function node under Node Red that translates true, yes = 1, false, no = 0 for control of the relays.

In hindsight it would make sense to design a external relay board to not trigger on floating inputs that are not hooked to anything, since we are talking digital signals.

I also had to visit the flow nodes for each pin and set the initialization state to logically high. The area's that I changed are circled in blue in the following picture.



The acid test is reboot the computer and while it is coming up; nothing should turn on, until it is commanded too after the computer is fully functional.

I didn't have the relay boards to test with before hand as I had already wired them up in the bus. So, I simply unplugged the Raspberry Pi and took it home to do my initial learning curve (not much, really easy to use) with Node Red.

During the drag and drop programming; I had verified that each target I/O pin was responding to commands with a multi-meter.

So anyway that quick adventure is over and I went onto the next phase of running another heating test of my DIY hydronic system.

This time I had much less air in the main loop which is the diesel boiler, tanks and distribution manifold and the boiler fired right up and steadily roared away (haven't installed the muffler yet).

Crap I haven't wired in the temperature sensors yet to the Raspberry Pi.

I can feel the pipes getting warmer, crap where is the IR gun? I finally find it under the bus's maintenance manual on the couch and hey the system is already up to 130 degrees, now we are cooking with diesel oil!!!

I should have left well enough alone and continued to monitor it, but hey I am roaming around with the IR gun checking temperatures. With gun in hand, I think hey lets turn on the other zones via the cell phone and verify that the heater cores get hot. Yes they did, but bad move on my part as that injected more air into the system and the diesel boiler shut itself down again.

So hey par for the course two steps forward and one back.

Did some more research and I think I have a solution to the trapped air problem; so time to do some more work.

[Gil_J]

More great information...thanks!

[BGLogistics]

Between Raspberry Pi and Node Red - sometimes one gets a humbling reminder of just how little he actually knows :-)

[freds]

With my DIY hydronic system I am having problems with purging the system of air.

To give you an idea of the piping flows in my system:




Red = Diesel boiler
Green = Glycol storage tanks
Blue = Toe kick heater cores through out the bus, each with a separate feed and return.



The Toe kick heater cores do have a manual bleed valve at each core (In green box).

The diesel boiler really, really doesn't like any air bubbles in the coolant flow!!!

With our land yachts, we have a fair number of similarities to our boating brethren. They just run their engines for longer periods of time and use the waste heat for heating through out the boat. They then run the diesel boiler when they are at anchor and the main engines are shutdown.

In looking at a marine catalog they showed the following diagram.



Basically, their expansion tank also performs a degassing function so that the diesel boiler never sees any air in the system.

I queried the price of such a tank and the starting price was $300.00, hey a bit high for a single component.

I did a bit more research and there is a cheaper solution which is this tank:

https://www.butlertechnik.com/header...2-outlet-p1723

However, it only seems to be only available in Europe and it was kind of unknown how long it would take to get it. I did try to order from a web site that had a decent price, but they were unable to process either of my credit cards that I was willing to use.

Sent them an email and after a few days of no response I went looking for another solution.

Most automotive surge tanks have one big hose and smaller overflow hose. They are not constructed for the pass through degassing functionality that we need for our land yachts!!!

So anyway I started looking at various surge tanks on Amazon and the largest manufacturer of these types of tanks in the after market is a company by the name of Dorman. However their web site is totally oriented to the OEM replacement market that gives details on the vehicle that they are replacement parts for.

Absolution nothing about the hose sizes, etc. I did an online chat with one of their people via the web site and he was initially unwilling to help me, but hey I persisted:

================================================== ===============================
Kevin:
unfortunately ... unless you look at what tanks we already have available by vehicle, and give us specific numbers to look at hose sizes on them
Freds:
How about a 603-382 Coolant Reservoir?
Kevin:
let me pull the drawing one moment
Kevin:
unfortunately no good drawing for the nipple sizes
Freds:
How about 603-5201 Coolant Reservoir
Kevin:
ok so on that the lower hose nipple is 19mm and the od is 25.4mm
Freds:
Any detail on the uppers?
Kevin:
well they have metal inserts ... on the insert the ID is 18mm
Freds:
Thanks you very much for your assistance!!!
Kevin:
youre welcome
================================================== ===============================

So any way I called the local auto parts store and they ordered one into stock for me to look at the next day!



The lower outlet hose was one inch which was the same as my last tank and the other two hoses inlets were half an inch.

[freds]

Turns out going from a half an inch to 3/4 inch is a bit of chore:



You first have to convert the 1/2 into 5/8 inch and then 3/4 inch!!! Oh yeah, it also has a sensor hole that needs plugged and takes a 14mm bolt in 1.25mm pitch to plug it.

So anyway I just threw it into the engine compartment before I fabricated a mount for it to test it out.



I had partially drained the system before hooking in this tank. I made no special effort to purge air out of the system, simply filled it up and turned the zone and stir pumps on for about twenty minutes.

And hey it automatically started purging air from the system; as it did that you would see the level drop in the surge tank!!! Which I had to top off a few times before the level stabilized.

Time for another test run!!! Pulled out my cell phone and commanded via the bus's web page to start the diesel boiler and hey it fired right up!!!

Simply magic (grin)....

This time there was no hesitation or early shutdowns and the system reached 145 degrees before the boiler started idling.

Since this boiler was part of a military kit for generators in the arctic it may have be programmed for lower set points. I have the diagnostic software and USB interface; will have to figure out how to hook it up and investigate the settings.

But hey a major step forward, time to finish it up!!!

[freds]

Well made my first mini trip which was a couple hour run to have a crab fest with buds. I was running late so it's a few hours later before getting a chance to look at the numbers.

Here's the engine coolant temperature monitoring of the flow in the heater hoses.




The temperature was fairly rock solid at 175 degrees. I think the rapid fall off is simply the cooling of about 20 ft of heater hose. It would have been interesting to kick in a circulation pump for the engine coolant and see what the decline curve actually looks like.

The next graph is for the two glycol storage tanks with a re-circulation pump running.




Note the maximum temperature reached was about 125 degrees after a two hour run.

This is with the engine coolant running through one ten gallon tank and constant stirring between the two ten gallon tanks.

In the above graph the increase in the decline is where I turned off the stir pump.

Just for grins, I decided to turn the engine pre-heat and the strip pumps on to see what would happen.



So it looks like my automation needs a sensor input of is the engine running and as long as the engine coolant is warmer the storage glycol harvest more heat by circulating the engine coolant.

I probably also should consider insulating the pipes...

[Joe Camper]

Fred that's pretty special. U r not suppose to be going anywhere cold.

Really.......what do u have planned next? I'm wondering.

Thst was a boatload of smarts and effort. Well done.

U and Chad from KC, he's here, 84 Liberty, u 2 need to get hooked up. U both went to different schools togeather.

Please tell whats next.

POG should do a community bus and build one from scratch with input and labor from all. Design and everything. Inagine how that might turn out with all the talent and input here. If it ever got done LOL

We would need a Donor and the barn and we could get started. could plan get togethers around it. Even better, Do 2, an east coast verses west coat then sell them and see who looses more. And then we can do it again.

[freds]

Hi Joe

I am equipping the bus to live in full time and really planning on chasing 70 degree weather around the country; with lots of boondocking.

However, I do have family and friends in Wyoming and Montana; so not ruling out cold weather adventures.

I will be doing more Node Red IOT automation's, next up is the climate control for the hydronic system and the air-conditioners. There is a Wify switch that is less then $20.00 that I will install in each air-conditioner which will bring them under computer control.

I am also going to do power monitoring; so, it will automatically shut down the inverter to eliminate phantom power draw when AC power is not needed.

The inverter already responses to voice commands "Alexa, power on or power off" as the first step in automating it.

So after I finish that out, I am going to put a boat load of solar on the roof, remove the refrigerator/freezer absorption unit and replace with a more efficient DC compressor and then work on the kitchen. I am not too great on carpentry, so just going to make it functional for now.

One thing at a time. However the bus has a cellular modem and a company router that allows it to participate as a sub net on our internal network. So, it's easy to reach out to the bus to tinker with the software remotely.

I am also noodling away on a automated robotic storage and retrieval system for one of my bays. So, I can say "Alexa open bar" and it will rise up out of the floor. Thinking I can have it store or retrieve a number of different storage units either to the cabin or passenger side bay door if it is open.

Maintenance wise:

1. Diesel generator still leaks diesel
2. Generator needs mounts replaced
3. Generator has to be manually started and stopped. Previous owner removed the run/stop solenoid which was probably a $20.00 part 30-40 years ago, but they want $1200.00 for it now.
4. Cruise control doesn't work.
5. Emergency blinker switch is busted off on the steering column.
6. Previous owner dash upgrade was never finished, rats nest of wires and gauges with inappropriate temperature ranges.
7. Original drivers air-conditioning system is inoperative, might have gotten lost in the dash upgrade. Oh did I mention most of the switches are unlabeled?

So anyway I will be tinkering away for sometime to come...

[Ck2hans]

With your talents you should change out the dash to the new full glass dash like a lot of the new airplanes have.
Chuck