Hope all my American friends and family are wrapping up a great US Thanksgiving weekend. Christine has been back in Ft. Lauderdale for the past ten days enjoying some much needed Gramma time with our TEN year old Grandson Liam, seen here with his Dad Tim working on a new puzzle. As well as visiting dear friends of many years like Kathleen. Lucky me, while I can’t be there this time I often get to spend time with BOTH of these Gorgeous Galls. The pups and I have been holding down the fort here on Road Runner Ranch in Southern Nevada where the temps have started to drop and so Razz has taken to sunning himself on the solar panels for some extra warmth and seems like a good segue into today’s Lance progress update post on ……………………….. you guessed it; Solar Panels.
Living the nomadic and remote life that we always have, we are big fans having solar power be the primary source for all our daily electrical needs, which are quite extensive. On our boat Mobius we had factored solar panels into the design from the beginning and were able to have 16 large panels on three different roof surfaces on that boat such as these eight panels on the upper Pilot House roof. And here on Road Runner Ranch we have 18 solar panels in two banks, this one just set against one of our 40 foot shipping containers and the others you can see Razz laying on above. These keep our big EG4 Wall Mount 15kW battery charged up every day and running this through our EG4 6000XP Inverter/Charger provides all our electrical power for day to day life here. This is where the time I spent meticulously building Lance in a 3D model using Fusion 360 pays off. I could create a model for each of the different solar panels that I was considering and see how they would fit onto Lance’s roof and on the framing.
With much less surface area available for mounting solar panels on Lance’s rooftop I wanted to fit the maximum amount of solar output as possible and played around with lots of different solar panel models to get the Goldilocks combination that would fit. Over the years I have found it works best to design the overall electrical installation as a complete system because there are a lot of different pieces to this puzzle and they are all very interconnected not just electrically but also features and dependencies. I created 3D models for all of these components as well and you can see most of the components here in the Electrical Cabinet on the front Driver Side corner of Lance’s Hab/Box. There is a LOT to unpack here so I’ll cover the electrical system in a future post and get into all the details then for those interested.
After much deliberation and testing in the model, I decided to go with four SilFab 420 Watt QD panels which I purchased from Current Connected almost a year ago now. I was able to get these all installed this past May in time to help power us on our marathon maiden voyage with Lance driving out to Portland Maine and back this summer. For those interested you can see all the specs of these panels here and of course with the march of time since there would now be even higher output panels but we’ve still ended up with 1680 Watts of solar power and it has been more then enough to keep us fully powered all the time.
We do have additional sources of electrical power such as this 320 Amp 12V 3.8kW alternator on Lances Paccar/Cummins engine that can provide up to 4k of power anytime that engine is running. However on our summer test run I had not completed the installation of the Arco Zeus smart regulator so the alternator wasn’t working that whole trip and the solar kept our batteries filled the entire time so that was a pretty good testament as to how well the solar was working. I decided to use 10 foot lengths of galvanized Super Strut to mount the solar panels on Lance’s roof. I would have preferred to use aluminium Super Strut but the delivery times would not have been in time for me to get the solar panels mounted before our trip so I went with galvanized steel and they have worked out vey well. I laid them out as you see here, two lengths on each side and two down the middle. I added additional 4 foot lengths of Super Strut so that I would have a mounting system for the whole 14 foot length of Lance’s roof for mounting any additional items in the future. I kept the mounting very simple as well by cutting pieces off a length of 2” aluminium L bar, drilling two holes in each one for the mounting bolts, and using the very handy Super Strut M8 threaded inserts to bolt them solidly to the lengths of Super Strut. Quick, strong, simple; what’s not to like?!! I then made up the cables using extra UV rated cables, Red for the positive and Black for negative and crimping the MC4 twist lock connectors that are the most commonly used for solar panel wiring and which I’ve used a lot in previous projects so I have all the specialty tools, crimpers, etc. some of which you see here in the photo. To fasten the brackets to the solar panel frames themselves I inserted aluminium M6 threaded Riv-Nuts into holes I drilled into the vertical AL frame on the solar panel and then used this tool which compresses the threaded inserts and locks them to the frame. End result looks like this. One bolt vertically to fasten to the Super Strut and one horizontal to bolt into the solar panel frame.
For those wondering, I fastened the lengths of Super Strut to the roof using Loctite 8X PL Premium Fast Grab which is supposed to be 8 times stronger than traditional construction adhesives which I’ve used before. Probably overkill but you certainly don’t want solar panels flying off the roof when running down the highway at 70 miles an hour! To prevent any pooling of rainwater between the surfaces of the roof and the Super Strut I caulked all the edges with 3M marine sealant which I have LOTS of experience with on our previous boats. So everything fully sealed and eXtremely well fastened to the roof. Solar panel output drops off significantly with the rise in temperature of the panels, the irony of which isn’t lost on me, so I left this 4” gap where the two panels down each side meet up. This along with the 2+ inch space between the panels and the roof keeps them as well ventilated as possible and the efficiency of their output was very good even in the 40C/105F days we had several times on the trip AND while I was installing these panels! Talk about a cat on a hot tin roof! Ouch! To make it a bit easier to run the cables AND give me a wee bit of shade, I was able to remove the inner brackets and use the outer ones like a hinge and prop up one lengthwise pair of panels while I ran the cables. I ran the eight cables for all four solar panels to converge at this point on the front DS corner as this puts it directly overtop of the Electrical Cabinet below where they need to go and thus provides the shortest cable run for least voltage drop. I drilled the only hole in the roof for this but it was a BIG one as you can see and then I used more 3M 5200 to seal a short length of 2” PVC pipe as a safe conduit through the roof for these and all other cables in the future. The red square you see on the bottom is 3M VHB Very High Bond two sided tape which is a fabulous product for gluing almost anything to anything and it never comes off. PVC box now glued down to the roof over that PVC pipe and the cables run non stop down into the Electrical Compartment below.
Each solar panel needs to have a shut off so I used these DIN rail mini circuit breakers to do that and provide over current protection.
I use threaded glands, the black things you see here and above, to give each cable a watertight entry into all junction boxes. This is what it looked like inside the Electrical Compartment where the cables pass through. The output of solar panels is a much higher voltage than the batteries and needs to be regulated to different charging stages to properly charge the big LiFePO4 Lithium EG4 batteries in Lance so the output of the solar panels goes through a MPPT controller which looks after all of this. Although it isn’t common, the most efficient setup is to have a dedicated MPPT controller for each panel and so that’s how I’ve always built our solar systems. Those are the four Victron Blue boxes you see on the upper Right here. It’s a bit of electrical spaghetti and took a bit of time to route and connect all these cables but keeps all the wiring very well contained in the wire ducts like the one running vertically up the far Right side and will have a cap that snaps onto those fingers you see here. Final cabling is to take the output from each MPPT controller and connect them to the main 12VDC electrical bus bars which are the silver coloured bars you see running up on the far Right here. If you look closely you can see two Red and two Black cables connected together at the top and then the other four below so now all the power from the solar panels is connected into the 12VDC electrical circuit.
And here’s what Lance’s 1680 Watts of solar roof looks like.
The extra length of Super Strut has already come in handy for my temporary for now mounting of our Starlink dish and the 4” PVC tube running down the middle for storing long lengths of material I like to have for ongoing projects while we’re on the road. Go ahead and tell me you’re surprised?!?!
Did I mention that we LIKE solar panels???
And that wraps it up for this weeks progress update, hope it was informative and enjoyable and let me know what you think in the “Join the Discussion” box below.
As this recent holiday has reminded me I am indeed one eXtremely fortunate fellow with SO much to be thankful for, not the least of which is YOU, for the time you choose to take out of your busy schedule to read and comment here and join us on this latest adventure of the Ambo Nomads.
I’ll be back again next week with the next installment and hope you’ll join me again for that.
Ciao for now,
Wayne and “Sunny Boy” as he tells me he now likes to be called.
You might say that my world has gone to the dogs as Christine is back in Florida getting in some much needed Gramma time with our Grandson Liam, who somehow just turned TEN last week. Yikes! How did THAT happen?!?!?!? So here on Road Runner Ranch it is down to us Three Pupsketeers, Razz, Zoe and me, but we’re doing well and enjoying being surrounded by the beauty here in Southern Nevada.
Some of you may remember that the last post I did with updates on the work on Lance’s transformation was called “Mini-Split = Major Step Up: XRV Lance Update 4 May, 2025” May was a Looooooong time ago now so you may want to click on that link if you’d like a refresher.
Quite a lot of progress has happened with Lance’s transformation during the six months since that last post and I’ll do my best to cover as much as I can here in the coming weeks. To get started I’ll pick up where that update left off and catch you up on what happened between then and June 10 when we took left our place here in Nevada in Lance bound for Portland Maine for the June 21st wedding of my niece Julia to her beau Ben.
In the weeks to follow I will try to post once a week, usually on Sundays, providing updates on the work I’ve done on the different systems such as cabinetry, all the dovetail drawers, the Electrical Cabinet, rooftop solar panels and so on.
So grab a tasty beverage and a comfy seat and let’s get back to where we left off with that air conditioner/heater Mini-Split system you last saw in May.
Mini-Split is Fully Functional!
As per the title of that May 4th post, I had just finished quite literally shoehorning the exterior half of the Mini-Split unit up into the barely big enough space between Lance’s ambo box and the Kenworth frame.
And I’m very happy that I can start this week’s update with the news that I have since finished installing the Mini-Split and it is working even better than we had hoped. For those interested in the details, this is the make and model Mini-Split we decided on. It is a 9k BTU capacity “Pioneer Diamante Ultra” that is one of the most efficient models they make rated at 23.5 SEER for those who know that system. These type of two part aircon/heating systems are referred to as Mini-Splits because they consist of two parts; the outside condenser/compressor and the inside air handler evaporator. If you check out the basic features here this model provides both cooling in up to 131F/55C outside temps as well as heating when it gets down to from –13F/-25C. 9000 BTU is more than we need but the smallest model I could find so just means it won’t take much run time to keep the inside of the “Hab” as we have come to call the Habitat or Box or living quarters in Lance, just the right temperature in both hot and cold climates.
I will cover this in a later blog post but just FYI, in addition to the Mini-Split we will also have a diesel fired boiler that will heats the Glycol solution that flows through a network of PEX tubing in the floor as well as heat for two floor mounted air/glycol heat exchangers (mini radiators) so that when we head up to the Arctic, possibly this summer, we’ll stay nice and toasty. And this boiler also provides all our domestic hot water DHW for sinks and showers so stay tuned for that update in a few weeks. Back to the Mini-Split install, this is the wall mounted interior evaporator half of the system and I mounted this Air Handler above the entry door on the front passenger side of the Hab. Works out well as you can see being almost the same width as the door. There are moving louvers with one large one running across the bottom that you can see partially open here that distributes the cold/hot air up/down vertically and then inside are a set of other smaller louvers that move back and forth sideways and help move the air left and right. So this location works out very well for the heating/cooling of the interior air and yet keeps it from blowing directly on us when we are at the Settee or in bed. As you might have noticed in the earlier photos, I had to cut away part of the upper stair in the entry to fit this top right corner of the exterior half or condenser/compressor. Once I had this all solidly bolted in place to the frame of the Hab underneath (see that May post for details if you’re curious) I finished it off by building a little “cage” using extruded aluminium and some aluminium diamond plate that I had left over from cutting out some of the original ambulance cabinetry. Also added some insulation to keep the other heat/cold from getting into the Hab. The 6mm diamond plate slid nicely into the T-slot grooves of the extruded Aluminium or XAL as you can see here. All these interlocked plates and XAL turned this into somewhat of an Origami project as I needed to be able to slide some of those plates out to get inside to connect the wiring and refrigerant lines but I was quite pleased with the way it turned out in the end and still functioned well as our entry stairs. I chose the 240V model as it is a wee bit more efficient than the 120V versions and I designed our AC system that I’ll cover in more detail in a future post, to be a Split Phase system so it provides both 120 and 240 Volt power. I’m going to break the time sequence a bit here as I actually finished off this l the install of the Mini-Split when we got back from our summer marathon in Lance and was working on him at our place on Saturna Island. Next part of the install was to make up some custom copper line sets that connect the two parts and transfer the refrigerant between the exterior condenser and the interior evaporator. These copper tubes are well insulated to help with efficiency and that’s the white covering you see here.
I could do this because Lance’s ambulance box is 8 feet wide and allowed me to design both really deep drawers and countertops and still have lots of room for working in the Galley between the two countertops. I’m mentioning this because designing this space behind the drawers gives me the perfect place to run electrical cables, PEX water lines and now Mini-Split copper line sets all out of the way and hidden from view and yet easy to access for installing and maintenance. Looking inside the entry door, the drawers on both sides of the Galley are 24” deep but the countertops are 32” so there is a nice space behind the drawers when they are closed. I could do this because Lance’s ambulance box is 8 feet/243cm wide on the outside and the finished inside width is about 7 1/2 ft/2.3m which allowed me to design both really deep drawers and countertops and still have lots of room for working in the Galley between the two countertops. I’m mentioning this because designing this space behind the drawers gives me the perfect place to run electrical cables, PEX water lines and now Mini-Split copper line sets all out of the way and hidden from view and yet easy to access for installing and maintenance. This is the space behind the bottom drawer on the Left side of the stairs as you enter and I drilled a 2” hole through the vinyl flooring, insulation and aluminium floor of the box. The Pioneer unit came with the white PVC insert to protect the copper line set and the white cable is the 240VAC power and the black is the communication cable between the two halves of the Mini-Split. Up above I drilled two overlapping holes in the solid Acrylic countertop, which is fabulous stuff to work with BTW, and ran the electric cables and copper line sets through this. The copper lines in the interior evaporator unit come permanently fitted and they ended up just above the countertop height so I cut the new copper lines and installed new flare nuts that allowed me to connect them here and then run down into the compressor/condenser unit under the floor. The upper parts of the line sets gets covered with this black EPDM insulation and the corrugated clear hose is where the condensation produced by the evaporator drains out and down through the floor onto the road below. To protect and hide all these lines and cords I built a small vertical connector between the countertop and the overhead cabinet you can just see at the very top of this photo. The sides will soon be fitted with Cherry panels same as all the fronts of the doors and drawers that will be the topic of several other future posts. I will maybe guild some small shelves into this space to make it otherwise useful but for now it plays its primary role of protecting all these electrical cords and copper lines. Most importantly, Razz and Zoe use this new little upper step for their water bowl and so they give this new addition two paws up!
It’s been a bit cold the past few days with highs in the day around 10C/50F and brrrrrrrr as low as 4C/40F at night so we Three Pupsketeers have been really appreciating how well the heating function of the Mini-Split has kept us keeping us nice and comfy.
Well, that’s going to do it for this week but at least I’ve started to catch up with all those months of no updates on the progress with Lance and hope you enjoyed it.
Thanks for joining the journey here and don’t hesitate to leave your comments and questions in the Join the Discussion box below.
See you next week which will be Thanksgiving weekend for all my American friends and family.
Back on May 5th I ended my last post here by saying “I will do my best to get out another update before we start on our newest adventure heading to the East Coast and back.”
Hmmmmm, given that this is now the 3rd of November, I think we can safely say that has turned out to be an eXtreme failure! And I do sincerely apologize for any angst or concern this may have caused some of you. However I’ll do my best here to rectify the situation by finally making some time to put together this update, which I will again endeavor to be the first of many more to come.
The short answer to the questions many of you sent asking along the lines of “What’s been happening?!?!” is in the title of this long delayed update and a favorite quote of mine if that wasn’t already painfully obvious.
BTW, that quote of ‘Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans’ is widely remembered as John Lennon’s, thanks to his 1980 song Beautiful Boy. But the phrase first appeared decades earlier, in a 1957 Reader’s Digest piece by Allen Saunders. Lennon gave it wings, but Saunders gave it birth and I’ll just say thanks to them both.
“Life” in my case and Christine’s is lived based on what we refer to as “The No Plan Plan” and is one of constant curiosity and eXploration. These have been traits for both of us for most of our lives and the root of what led us both to become single handed sailors for so many years before our serendipitous meeting back on November 22, 2013 happily turned us into double handed sailors, lovers and life partners on sv Learnativity, mv Möbius and now the XRV Lance.
For those who may not know it or for those interested in a repeat telling of the whole story of how we came to merge our single handed lives into one, you can find all the details in my previous post several years ago “The simple comment that Changed My Life Forever Better”
But I digress………………… (some things never change no matter how long you wait) Both of those traits of endless curiosity and living on The No Plan Plan also helps explain the eXtreme delay in getting this new new update posted for you. Having been so long and with SO much having happened since that last update I think I’ll tackle this the same way as one would do trying to eat an elephant; one bite at a time! My intent then is to start by answering as best I can, some of those questions of “What’s been happening?!?” and “Why not updates for over six months?!!?” by providing a few details as context as to why I simply have not had any time to write any updates since I left off back on May 5th. Suffice it to say my first few posts will be travelogues indeed as since that last update, we have put on over 20,000 km / 12,500 miles on Lance’s first “test drive”.
All this driving time was also interspersed with visiting friends and family all across the US and Canada and it simply did not leave ANY time for writing blog post updates. Hope you can understand and I do sincerely appreciate your eXtreme patience with me for those of you still following along after all this time.
My intent with today’s blog is to provide you with a bit more detail on the four different routes we drove to make what turned out to be a giant counterclockwise loop from Road Runner Ranch (our place here in Searchlight NV) across to the East Cost of the US, up into the Maritime provinces in Canada, back across Canada to RavensRidge on Saturna Island and most recently our move with both Lance and Totu (our 2006 Toyota Tundra pickup) from Saturna back to Searchlight. So get a comfy seat and your beverage of choice and come along for the first leg of the “test drive” as we make our way from Searchlight to Portland Maine in time for Julia’s wedding on June 21st.
June 10-20, 2025 Searchlight NV to Portland ME 5021km/3120 miles
Picking up where I left off in the last post in May, we both had our noses pressed hard against our individual grindstones; Christine finishing the manuscript for her upcoming new novel and me pushing to get Lance further along with his transformation into a livable XRV. We had two hard deadlines to meet;
1. Get Christine’s manuscript sent off to the Developmental Editor in England she has hired
2. Be in Portland Maine in time to attend the wedding of my niece Julia on June 21st.
Oblivious that we had apparently become delirious from the stress and strain of these rapidly approaching deadlines “one of us” had the brilliant idea that driving rather than flying to Portland for Julia’s wedding was the perfect opportunity to take Lance on his “Maiden voyage” to see how well our designs would work out in the real world and return with all the new ideas for improvements and edits to the build. This iterative approach has been a common method for us with our projects such as when we were finishing Mobius and decided to spend a year cruising around the Turkish coasts on extended sea trials to work out the bugs and find out what was working well, what was not and what changes we wanted to make before truly setting off on the high seas.
These cross country driving trips were also in keeping with our past as over the years while we were out sailing the world, we would fly back and taken several similar large road trips all across the US and Canada in rented vehicles we outfitted to be mini RV’s. We are “bi-coastal Grandparents” with two Granddaughters in the LA area and a Grandson in Ft. Lauderdale and our son Skyler up in Vancouver BC. And dear friends and family literally spread out all across both countries and many more.
So I committed to getting Lance to the point of having a comfortable bed to sleep on, counters and cooktops to prep meals with and seating to eat along the way. So was born the agreement that I would get Lance as close as possible to this stage and as soon as Christine hit the button to send her manuscript through the ether to the editor in England we would fire up Lance and hit the road. As time ticked away Christine set a deadline to send off her manuscript the morning of June 10th and the race was on to be on the road by 10 o’clock on the 10th.
Portland Maine here we come!
Well, almost!
A few days before the 10th I had taken Lance into Vegas to put new front steering tires on him. All six tires (duals on the rear axle) still had a pretty good amount of tread on them but for a bit of added confidence and safety putting on a new set of steering tires was a good idea and this also gave me the chance to take Lance out on the highway for the approximately 160 mile round trip up to Vegas and back after he had been sitting here on RoadRunner Ranch for almost six months. Then after the wedding we could take advantage of New Hampshire not having any sales tax to buy the four new tires for the rear axle and give Lance new shoes all the way around for the rest of our marathon test drive up the East coast into the Maritime provinces and across Canada back to the Best Coast and our place on Saturna Island. That all worked out well as you can see as I jump the timeline a bit to June 19th when we put on the four new rear tires.
Meanwhile, back to the morning of June 10th, as Christine was putting the finishing touches on the draft manuscript of her new book getting it ready to sent off, I went out to finish stowing everything we had loaded into Lance for the big test drive out to Julia’s wedding. Of course our co-pilots, Razz and Zoe were even more eXcited and always ready to hit the road.
Just before 10am I fired him up in prep for leaving but turns out he wasn’t going anywhere as the air compressor had decided to stop working. Lance has air brakes and after the air pressure in his 3 tanks gets below about 90 PSI, all the brakes go ON and can’t be taking off until they get back to their topped up pressure of 125PSI.
I informed Christine of this new twist in the plot of my own novel and told her she had a bit more time if she wanted to send off her manuscript.
I had been having some problems previously with the air compressor not cooperating but had always got it going but it took me the better part of the day to find THIS problem with a split in the rubber elbow Not a stock part and too late to get one shipped in so MacGyver time it was.
A a bit of self amalgamating tape (the yellow stuff) and some zip ties and it was time to fire up Lance again and see if this had fixed the problem and the compressor was filling up the air tanks.
It was! It was late by now but we figured it would be psychologically best for us to still leave and put in a few miles just so we had officially started the trip. The weather had been getting hotter and hotter with daytime temps in the low 40’sC well over 100F but being in this dessert area it cools down nicely at night and makes for pleasant sleeping and evening drives.
Laughlin Nevada is about 60 miles south of us right on the banks of the Colorado River and we had been several times so I reminded Christine that I had said we’d leave at “10 on the 10th” but had conveniently left off the AM/PM detail!
And so it was that at 22:00 hours on June 10th, we pulled out of RoadRunner Ranch and headed south on Hwy 95 to Laughlin.
Portland here we come!
Well, almost.
Lance goes to Laughlin
We hadn’t eaten yet so we decided to go to the In-N-Out Burger place in Laughlin and go camp out on the river to enjoy our last night in Nevada for awhile. However, Laughlin sits about 3800 feet lower than our place near Searchlight which we were reminded of as the night time temperatures continued to rise the whole way there and turned out that Laughlin had set a new record that day of 116F/47C!
Just after midnight now and with fresh piping hot burgers and fries the night had cooled down to a mere 112F/42C so we were headed for the banks of the Colorado River less than a mile away as quick as we could. We almost made it to the intersection at the end of Casino Boulevard where we would turn Right down to the river when the low air pressure alarm when off! Drat! Apparently that MacGyver fix hadn’t quite done the job.
I knew we had less than a minute before the pressure would drop below 90psi and the brakes would all come ON so I pulled over into the right hand turn lane at the end of Casino Drive where there is a big boat launching ramp into the river. Just got into that turn lane when the brakes came on. Guess what dear!? This is home for the night!
I’ll skip most of the gory details and just say that I was able to go buy a cordless compressor and get enough air in the tanks to move Lance into that boat launch ramp parking spot that had been freshly paved. It took another two days to finally get back on the road again that involved a rental car to make a trip up to Vegas to get a new cylinder head to rebuild the compressor. Oh, and did I mention that it set a new record of 117F the next day.
My Brilliant Beautiful Bride knew what what we needed to cool down and survive was ELEVATION so once again at 22:00 hours on the 12th Lance was again ready to roll and we headed out of Laughlin bound for Flagstaff Arizona and quickly climbed up to over 4000 ft where we found an ideal little truck stop just after midnight where it was now under 70F/21C and all four of us (Zoe & Razz were along of course) had a much needed and much cooler sleep. By the next night we had climbed up over 8000ft and when we woke up that morning it was a very chilly 34F/1C so as Christine knew, elevation easily solved our high temp problem.
They’re going to get married and we ARE going to be there!
We were now a bit behind schedule so we had relatively full days of driving but enjoyed ever mile of it as the weather and the geography changed as we made our way to Portland for the wedding for sure this time! You can check out that map above (click to enlarge any photo) and see our route if you’re interested. And we still had enough time to get the four new tires as we passed through sales tax free Concord New Hampshire.
Most importantly though, we arrived in Portland the morning of June 20th with plenty of time to spare, by my standards at least and enjoyed the evening with all the other friends and family there for the big day tomorrow. It was very windy that night but we awoke to a beautiful sunny Saturday and Ben & Julia had perfect weather for their outdoor afternoon wedding. Julia is my sisters daughter and so I may be a wee bit biased but THAT is a Beautiful Bride! And they had the perfect backdrop of the inner harbour that included some gorgeous schooners and tall ships for that extra touch. Seems like a pretty ideal ending to this first leg of our test drive in Lance and I’ll be back in MUCH less than six months with the next three legs of this eXtremely wonderful set of adventures we had.
For those interested in the build of Lance I have continued to make quite a bit of progress since I left off back in May, both along the way of those routes and in the time we had at RavensRidge on Saturna. I think I will perhaps change from doing posts that are chronological and instead cover specific parts of the build such as plumbing, electrical, interior cabinetry, etc. Let me know what you think of that change and I’ll do my best to get back to posting a new update every week of so.
Lastly, my sincere thanks for your patience and my apologies for keeping you waiting and somewhat concerned for so long.
See you here again soon and remember you can add any questions, comments or suggestions in the “Join the Discussion” at the bottom of each post.
Wow! Another month races into the history books and the progress on Lance continues. We continue to enjoy the almost always sunny weather here in the deep south of Nevada though being at just over 3800 feet elevation it was still cool temperatures for much of March but warming up more and more each day now as April approaches. This is pretty much “Wayne’s World” these days with my table saw, drill press and chop saw set up alongside Lance in between the two 40’ shipping containers. As you might notice, I share this space with my buddies Zoe & Razz who enjoy their “grassy patch” and outdoor play pen supervising my work most days.
This is about where things were at the end of February and my last update, with the XAL (eXtruded Aluminium) framing in place at the front end of Lance’s Happytat where the Head/Bathroom and Shower areas will live. The cabinet on the far Right here alongside the side door and entryway will be where the fridge/freezer unit goes. To max out volume of storage areas I framed in the space above the Joolca “Gotta Go” separating toilet to create an overhead cabinet. I’ll divide this cupboard into two areas with storage in the front area and have a smaller second area behind it where I’ll mount the thermostatic shower control, hose and showerhead. As you may have noticed I am working my way counterclockwise around the interior spaces and the last part of the main framing for the primary cabinetry is the currently empty area on the far Left you see here, which will be the Drivers Side Galley. I continue to enjoy building all the cabinet framing with 10 Series or 1 inch square eXtruded Aluminium (XAL) and it all goes together relatively quickly having done all the design work as I built the 3D model, hence the ever present laptop running Fusion 360.
Good time to also check the fit and placement of the deep double sink with its great views out the window when washing dishes. The model gives me the precise length of each piece I need to cut on the cut off saw and how each joint goes together. Each of those four vertical spaces will be filled with drawers of different heights and the vertical XAL front and rear provide very strong attachment points for all the undermount drawer slide hardware that I’m about to order. Speaking of windows, we have our always alert security guards keeping a close eye on the comings and goings of the various others we share this fabulous area. No need for any worry about our safety with these two vicious watch dogs on the job! While we don’t see too many people, which is just the way we like it, there is lots of life to see out our windows including the real life versions of Wile E. Coyote & Roadrunner, rabbits large and small, lots of mice and squirrels on the ground and ravens overhead.
Very much a work in progress as you can see but the interior spaces are starting to take shape now. This is taken with me standing in the shower area at the front with the main entry on the far Left, the now completed Drivers Side Galley countertop on the far Right that is 175 cm / 5’ 9” long and a matching countertop opposite that will be 98 cm / 3’ 2” long. Now my attention turns to building the lifting bed platform which is atop the L shaped settee that occupies the area aft of the two countertops. Most of the time the bed platform and mattress will rest as you see here, gently squeezing the mattress up tight against the ceiling with plenty of headroom for sitting underneath in the settee.
Here is a skeleton view of the XAL bed frame in Blue which will then have a plywood panel spanning across the support bars with the mattress tucked firmly inside the outer XAL bed frame. For sleeping, the full size Queen bed lowers down, along with the Settee table, to this easily accessed position. This setup makes it easy to make up the bed every morning and then have it retract fully out of the way with just the push of a button.
No magic tricks required for this! Instead I’m going to install four of these PA-18 Linear Actuators I’ve had built by a Canadian firm in Vancouver; Progressive Automation.
If you look closely (click to enlarge any photo) at the renders above you can see these located at each corner of the bed frame and you can see here how the one on the PS Front is bolted to the two vertical lengths of XAL at the end of the PS Galley countertop. All four actuators plug into this FLTCON-4 central control box which provides the 24 volts for each motor. Inside the long aluminium body of each PA-18 linear actuator is a threaded stainless steel rod which is driven by the black motor at the top which in turn causes the black “Car” below it to move up or down the full length of the AL track.
Last piece of this automated lifting bed system is this small set of buttons that is also plugged into the control box. Once the interior panels are all installed this will be the only part you will see and will likely be mounted somewhere out of the way but easily reached when we want to move the bed Down to Sleep or Up to eat. The Up/Down buttons allow you to move the bed Up/Down to any position you want and then you can save this position into memory of button 1, 2, 3 or 4.
Now anytime you press that number, the bed automagically moves to that position. I will likely program #1 to move the XAL bed frame to the max UP position without the mattress in place whenever I’m working on the bed system and want the platform completely up out of the way. Then #2 can be the regular UP position with the mattress in place for whenever we are using the settee, #3 can be the Goldilocks position for best views out the window when in bed and 4 can be the lowest position for ease of getting in/out of the bed. To ensure that the positions of all four actuators are synchronized there is a Hall Effect sensor inside each actuator which communicates the position of each sliding Car to the control box. Here I have all four actuators plugged in so I could test the “synchro” feature which causes all four cars to go to their Home position with all Cars in their max Up position and then I could also test out the memory setting feature before I installed each actuator.
My next challenge was to figure out a way to connect the sides of the XAL bed frame to the four sliding Cars on the linear actuators such that they would move the bed frame would move Up and Down.
Hmmmmm ……..
I work hard to maintain my well deserved reputation as a pack rat and so I had kept ALL the wires, materials, nuts, bolts and hardware when I fully gutted the original Horton ambulance box and took it down to the bare AL frame. One of the pieces of aluminium I kept was this C-channel and it turned out to be my just right Goldilocks solution for building the saddle blocks I would bolt to the cars on the actuators. I cut the C-channel into four short pieces that were the same length as the Black Cars on the actuators. The width of these Black Nylon Cars was just a wee bit larger than the inside width of the AL C-channel so I carefully guided each actuator through my table saw and trimmed off about 2mm from each side. Which allowed them to be a slight press fit onto the Car. The inside corners of the C-channel have a radius to them but it was easy to file the corners of the Nylon Cars to match and Voila! A perfect fit. Progressive Automation manufactures the thick Black Nylon Cars with three threaded mounting holes on each side which go all the way through the body of these Black Cars; a large M10 in the middle with two M6 on either side, so I drilled out matching holes in the sides of the AL C-channel saddles so I could very securely attach each saddle its Black Car mate.
Next question was how to attach the XAL bed frame to these Nylon & AL saddles? This would need to strong enough to safely transfer the full combined weight of Christine, Zoe, Razz and me as well as weight of the bed XAL frame, cross member, panels and mattress but could not be a solid unmoving connection. It needed to be allow for a bit of rotation for any slight changes in orientation as the bed frame travelled up and down the full stroke length of about 110 cm / 44 inches.
Hmmmmmm ……
I decided to use what are called Heim Joints which as pictured here are typically used to join the ends of connecting rods on things like steering links on vehicles and industrial machinery. These are made for eXtreme loads made of heat treated steel plated with hard chrome and readily available from Amazon. I’ve used these with great success in projects for probably 50 years and they’ll be a good fit here as well. I ordered four of these 3/8” Heim joints which are rated for a load capacity of 4,400 Kg/9,544 lbs.
and come with their matching SS threaded inserts and jam nuts. I used the same scrap of C-Channel to cut four more pieces and cut each of those in half ……….. …….. to make these matching L-bar mounting brackets ……….. ………. which I then bolted to the C-Channel saddles with the Heim Joint sandwiched between the two “ears” of the brackets and through bolted. Worked very well and I could then bolt each Heim Joint Saddle to its matching Nylon Car. I then bolted each linear actuator to the vertical XAL support posts using some AL bar stock that I cut to be thick enough to keep the inner surface of the AL saddles spaced clear of the inside of the XAL posts and they moved up and down.
Final part of this puzzle was to mount the SS threaded inserts for each Heim joint you can see here, to the sides of the bed frame. The sides of the bed frame are made from lengths I cut from 3” x 1” XAL and carefully clamped each one in place so I could precisely mark the center of each SS insert and then I drilled undersize holes through the XAL. As you can see in the photos above these SS inserts are tapered so I used my handy dandy Dremel tool with a rotary carbide cutter to enlarge these holes and carefully hand fit the SS inserts to be a slight press fit into the XAL. I will likely build different corner brackets to join the four sides of the bed frame but for now these 90 degree corner brackets will work to lock the frame square and true while I finish mounting the frame to the four Heim joints. I allowed about 5mm / .2” clearance between the moving bed frame sides and the XAL posts so it is a very close fit that was relatively straight forward to adjust by turning the threaded SS inserts with a wrench on the flats I ground on each one (see photos above). The power/comm cables on each actuator need to be extended but I was able to just plug each cable into the control box and hang it in the center which allowed me to test out the whole assembly.
Best of all ………………… IT WORKED first time!! I was able to raise and lower the bed and set four memory positions to the numbered buttons and it all moves up and down smoothly and quietly. We are eXtremely happy with this design as it gives us have a full Queen sized memory foam bed without giving up any space for seating or eating. And also eliminates the need to set up and make up the bed every night and repeat it all every morning. Last update to show you today is that we were able to temporarily slide the fridge/freezer into its home!
This is an Isotherm Cruise 200 that runs off both 12VDC and 120VAC
Total of 7 cubic feet with a 5.3 cubic feet refrigerator and 1.78 cubic feet freezer – each with their own separate side by side doors.
Will go a long way towards enabling us to have plenty of food to go a long way and stay out there a long time. Can’t wait to start using it.
That’s a wrap for this update and my sincere thanks to all of you brave souls who have persevered and made it this far! Probably waaaaaaay too much detail for many of you but hopefully easy enough to scroll through at whatever pace you like.
I’ll leave you with these photos that Christine is so good at taking of the views out our dining room window most evenings here on Road Runner Ranch.
It is difficult to make out in these photos but the Colorado River is running just in front of the mountains you see off in the distance here.
The light at this time of day as the sun is just setting below the mountains behind us makes for some truly spectacular ends to our days we are so fortunate to enjoy most every day. Hope you enjoy and will look forward to answering any questions or comments you leave in the “Join the discussion” box below.
I always liked the John Lennon line from his Beautiful Boy song in 1980 that “Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans” and that’s a good summary since my last update here. It has been a very busy and fun six weeks with no shortage of projects, trips and milestones but not so much time for updates so thanks for your patience. Two birthdays in January, one for me on the 23rd and daughter Lia on the 14th. So we decided to make the relatively quick drive, less than 4 hours, over to the LA area to surprise Lia on her milestone Four Oh!birthday by delivering some some B’day flowers, champagne and hugs in person. As a bonus we went back for a week to see Brynn’s Talent Show at her school and then got to be full time Gramma and Grampa for the weekend while Brian & Lia had a fully unsupervised weekend away for Valentine’s Day. We continue to work away at getting things setup here on “Road Runner Ranch” and this arial shot from Christine’s drone video that you might have seen in the previous post, shows how we are setup so far. The 40’ shipping container above on the left is what I’m setting up for my workshop with Lance parked right beside. The matching container on the Right is what we’re using for storage and is close to our 25’ travel trailer that continues to provide a very comfy home for us and the two pups for now.
We recently got a good deal what they refer to as a “garage fridge” so we’ve now got that set up inside this container to expand the fridge and freezer space that is built into the trailer and keeps us well stocked in food supplies. This panorama shot (click to enlarge any photo) will help you get a sense of the setting we’ve got for our little sanctuary here and might help some of you make a bit more sense of why this is such a Goldilocks location for us.
Best news for me and many of you who I know have been waiting, is that I’m back to working on converting “Lance” our 2017 Kenworth ex medium duty ambulance into our eXploration RV. I’ve picked up where I left off building all the cabinetry framing using lengths of eXtruded ALuminium which I’ll abbreviate as XAL. Looking forward from about mid way inside Lance’s “Happitat” the blank wall on the left is the front wall with the cab on the other side and the main entry door that is on the passenger side PS in the right corner. I’ve put in a scrap of 3/4”/20mm plywood to create a desk for myself on what will eventually become one of the two galley countertops with a larger one yet to be framed on the opposite left or driver side DS. The XAL you see on the ceiling is where the forward side of the lifting Queen bed will go with a large L shaped settee below. Here is a sample of a length of the XAL with several different corner brackets that bolt into the T track grooves in the XAL which turn this into a giant adult version of the Erector sets I used to love playing with as a young boy, long before many of you were born! I’m working my way somewhat counter clockwise around the Happitat walls so my next focus was the XAL framing you see now in the front right PS corner. The Blue poles you see ratcheting cargo support bars that have proved indispensable to me for holding things in place as I build. This full height cabinet will have our fridge/freezer mounted inside the large opening you see here with lots of storage in the spaces above and below.
Shower will be in the middle on the left here and the head/toile over in the far left DS corner that I’ll move onto next. This front DS front corner is a bit more complex as the large vertical exterior access cabinet is also in this corner and it is where I’ll be installing Lance’s whole electrical system with three large lithium batteries on the very bottom and then all the other components such as 12VDC to 120/240VAC inverters, battery chargers, and much more mounted this exterior locker.
Here on the inside is where I now need to finish the XAL framework above the battery frames I’ve built to support the three big batteries. This will give you a sense of the size and shape of the server rack style lithium LiFePO4 batteries that will provide all the 12VDC and 120/240VAC electrical power in Lance. For those interested in the details, this shot the label on one of the three batteries will give you all the numbers.
While 45Kg/90 lbs might sound like a lot when you consider that each one of these provides 5120 WattHours (400Ah @ 12.8VDC) the power density is pretty amazing. Having three of these connected in parallel will provide a total of 15.36Kwh (1200Ah @ 12.8VDC) which will will be more than enough to give us all the power we need for our all electric cooking appliances such as induction cooktop, coffee makers, toaster oven, microwave as well as powering our mini split Air Conditioner. As with all of this build, I had created very accurate 3D models using Fusion 360 of all the XAL framing and each of the components such as this Joolca separating toilet and the EG4 batteries and these have served me very well throughout the build.
I knew that the batteries were going to be a very close fit and I had built the framing for them back when we were in Klamath falls but now was the moment of truth to see if they actually fit?!! The “ears” of the server rack batteries were a few millimeters wider than the opening of the door frame so it took a bit of wiggling them in at an angle and some gentle persuasion, ……..
……. but they fit in snug as a bug in a rug as you can see here and put a big grin on my face.
These server rack style of battery are very safe and easy to work with as they have both an On/Off switch (silver circle upper right) that turns the BMS (Battery Management System) on/off as well as the high amp double pole high amp circuit breaker (White/Blue on bottom left) so I could keep bot of those turned Off and ensure that there was never any danger of a short to the terminals while I was wrestling them in place. Locating the batteries in this front DS location was ideal as it kept the weight down low, centered and on the opposite side from the fuel tank and also enables me to keep all the electrical system components in this one externally accessible locker.
However it did require me to raise the floor and design around them on the inside as you can see here. After playing around with the 3D model for some time, I ended up making this raised area inside be just the right height for the floor under the Joolca Gotta Go separating toilet. With the shower area in the center area the whole bathroom space becomes feels very large and open both when using it as a shower and when seated on the throne. I had my Beautiful Bride check it all out in person this morning and got the two thumbs up so the framing progress can now continue. I also checked in with these two scallywags, Razz on the left, Zoe on the right, and got their approval as well so I’m all systems GO now.
So I will continue to work my way around the DS corner as I move onto framing out the Galley/Kitchen area that runs down the rest of the Drivers Side and you’ll see that in the next update. We continue to get sunsets like this almost every evening and sunrises are pretty spectacular as well so we continue to enjoy our new location a bit more each day. That’s a wrap for this update and I’ll do my best to post the next one much sooner and try to get back to doing one every Sunday as long as “life” doesn’t interfere!
Hope you enjoyed the update and thanks to all who persevered to this point. Be sure to add all your questions and comments in the “Join the discussion” box below and hope you’ll be back for more in the next update.
As predicted when I left off in the last update here, it has been a VERY BUSY time the past month for us but we’ve made the move and are now settling into our new Southern Home Base down near Searchlight Nevada.
There are some photos and details about our new 10 acre property in that PREVIOUS POST back on Dec. 8th so you can check that out if you’d like and I’ll just pick up from where we left off.
BONUS: Be sure to read to the end to see the bonus video that Drone Captain Christine put together.
Our son Skyler flew down from Vancouver BC on the 23rd of December to join us for the holidays in Klamath Falls and he was a HUGE help getting all my tools, equipment, materials and such packed up from the workshop I’d set up in Klamath Falls. Along with our personal belongings and food we managed to get everything loaded into Lance and the beds of the two pickup trucks we now find ourselves with.
We were a bit sad to leave as we had really enjoyed our time getting to know Klamath Falls and the surrounding area of southern Oregon. This is the parting shot just after noon on Boxing Day (Dec 26th) as we bid a very fond adieu to what had worked out to be a great home and workshop and hit the road for the almost 700 mile drive down to our new Southern Home Base just north of Searchlight NV. We broke the trip up into two legs with an overnight stop in Fallon Nevada and it turned out to be a great drive with clear dry roads after we got about a hundred miles south of Klamath Falls and enjoyed the ever increasing temperatures as the miles rolled by. We arrived at the property late in the afternoon of the 27th with big smiles for all three drivers and both pups. And just in time to catch this beautiful sunset which we’ve now discovered is most every night here.
Christine has been getting her drone flying skills dusted off and this shot she grabbed a few days ago from up above the spot we’re setting up to live on for the next few months will give you an idea of the layout. Those two big white rectangles are 40 foot “High Cube” (9’6” high) shipping containers that came with the property along with a lot of great items inside that you’ll soon see. The other white rectangle is the 2012 25 foot travel trailer that will be home for us for now.
** See the Bonus drone video at the end. As Skyler and I unloaded the crates of our belongings and coolers of food, Christine got to work storing it all away and organizing our new home. As sharp eyes might notice, she even baked a loaf of banana bread! Looking aft in the trailer you can see that we’ve got everything we need with a nice U shaped settee and an adjacent full bathroom & shower. Then a separate bedroom in the rear with a Queen bed and even an office for Christine to work at just out of sight in the rear left corner here at the foot of the bed. And check out our views out the windows! This floorplan helps to show how the bedroom & settee are in a slide out section along the right side of the trailer that really helps open up the space.
Keeping in mind that we are both used to living full time in boats, for us this is HUGE!
Skyler started unloading all the crates and materials from Lance and I started to figure out where to put them for now in the two containers. The one you see here on the Left will be my workshop area and the other one out of site in this photo over on the far Right closer to the trailer provides storage for everything else AND houses all our fresh water and electrical power equipment that allows us to live 100% off grid. Could not have been a better present than all the time we got with Skyler and all the hard work he so cheerfully gifted us with to make this latest transition of the Nauti Nomadic Grandparents so memorable. Thanks Sky!
It will take me awhile to build workbenches and storage racks but for now all my tools and equipment are very safely stored away inside the two containers.
Part of what made this property such a Goldilocks just right find for us was that one of the things inside the containers was sixteen 305 Watt solar panels and so Skyler and I got to work setting those up in two different locations to try out for now. Eight of those solar panels we propped up against the wall of the container as you can see here which made it a short run for the power cables to go into the MPPT controller inside. Of course the HIGHEST priority was getting the new Puppy Play Pen set up for Zoe and Razz to enjoy. The other eight solar panels we propped up against the south facing side of the trailer to try out that orientation as I monitor the daily production to see what generates the most power to keep our big new battery bank fully charged every day.
All very rough and tentative till we live with all this for awhile and decide best location on the acreage to build on and then I will build proper ground mount racks for all these and perhaps more solar panels. In that previous post you may recall seeing this pallet full of boxes that had arrived at the Klamath Falls workshop which contained the other two key components of our off grid power system. this 15 kWh 54 Volt upright EG4 lithium battery and ………. …….. this EG4 6000XP all in one MPPT solar charge controller, inverter charger.
The battery weighs a svelte 128kg/282 lbs. but Skyler and were able to get it wrestled out of Lance and into the container and get the 6000XP mounted above it and all secured to the steel walls of the container. These two smaller vertical boxes I mounted on on the side at the mid point are the isolation switches and circuit breakers for the high voltage power coming in on the Red and Black wires you see here which come from each of the two strings of solar panels (8 panels in each). We soon had everything wired up and in this shot I’m busy configuring all the settings before turning it on for the first time. Just amazing how far these kinds of off grid systems have come and we were able to go from no power at all when we arrived to having a full 240VAC split phase power system in less than one day. We had about 190L/50 USG of fresh water that I had filled up the trailer’s water tank with on my way bringing it back from where we bought it in Tucson so we had plenty of potable water for drinking, cooking and showers the first few days but now time for a more full time setup and another part of what made this property such a great find for us. These four 1250L/330USG IBC Totes as they are called (Interim Bulk Containers) also came with the property along with a fifth empty one that we’ll use in the future to bring more fresh water from the town water system in Searchlight that is just a few miles away. The pumps you see at the bottom here are now all set up to provide pressurized fresh water to a tap on the outside of the container and a hose from there to the trailer provides all the fresh water we need for day to day living.
It will take us a bit longer to get everything setup and be able to get back to working on books and Lance but we’re off to a great start and new year.
Can’t be all work and no play so in the midst of all this we also took time to celebrate the new year in our new home base. Christine and I adopted giving “experiences” rather than “stuff” to each other for gifts and this year I got us three tickets to go see the “Immersed in Van Gogh” experience in Las Vegas on New Year’s Eve which is less than an hour’s drive north from our property.
Then Christine had rented a boat for the three of us to go out on Lake Mohave for New Year’s Day. This shot is looking about due East from our place and off in the distance about center (click to expand any photo) you can see the Colorado River flowing South. Hoover/Boulder Dam is to the North and Davis Dam to the South which creates Lake Mohave in between. It only takes about 15 minutes to drive from our place to the marina on Lake Mohave. I will leave you with this shot of what our humble new abode is looking like with yet another super sunset that Christine loves to photograph.
I know many of you are shaking your heads and wondering what drew us here but perhaps these two days with New Years eve in Las Vegas and then New Year’s Day out on the lake both being minutes away from our otherwise eXtremely remote spot might help you understand a wee bit better what makes this such a Goldilocks place for us.
Location, location, location right??!!
BONUS VIDEO:
As promised, here is a short video that Christine has put together as she dusts off her drone flying skills for this quick flyover what we are thinking of calling “RoadRunner Ranch”. Although we have not yet spotted one here yet I hope this quick flyover part of our 10 acres will help you visualize this location and maybe help you see what we see. In any case do enjoy and thanks Captain Christine!
Hope all of you have 2025 off to a great start as well and I’m looking forward to getting back to regular updates in the next few weeks as I get my new workshop up and running and get back to working Lance. Thanks for joining us on yet another adventure and please leave any questions or comments in the “Join the Discussion” box below.
Christine has been back in Ft. Lauderdale for the past ten days enjoying some much needed Gramma time with our TEN year old Grandson Liam, seen here with his Dad Tim working on a new puzzle. 
As well as visiting dear friends of many years like Kathleen. Lucky me, while I can’t be there this time I often get to spend time with BOTH of these Gorgeous Galls. 
The pups and I have been holding down the fort here on Road Runner Ranch in Southern Nevada where the temps have started to drop and so Razz has taken to sunning himself on the solar panels for some extra warmth and seems like a good segue into today’s Lance progress update post on ……………………….. you guessed it; Solar Panels.
Living the nomadic and remote life that we always have, we are big fans having solar power be the primary source for all our daily electrical needs, which are quite extensive. On our boat Mobius we had factored solar panels into the design from the beginning and were able to have 16 large panels on three different roof surfaces on that boat such as these eight panels on the upper Pilot House roof. 
And here on Road Runner Ranch we have 18 solar panels in two banks, this one just set against one of our 40 foot shipping containers and the others you can see Razz laying on above. These keep our big EG4 Wall Mount 15kW battery charged up every day and running this through our EG4 6000XP Inverter/Charger provides all our electrical power for day to day life here. 
This is where the time I spent meticulously building Lance in a 3D model using Fusion 360 pays off. I could create a model for each of the different solar panels that I was considering and see how they would fit onto Lance’s roof and on the framing. 
Over the years I have found it works best to design the overall electrical installation as a complete system because there are a lot of different pieces to this puzzle and they are all very interconnected not just electrically but also features and dependencies. I created 3D models for all of these components as well and you can see most of the components here in the Electrical Cabinet on the front Driver Side corner of Lance’s Hab/Box. There is a LOT to unpack here so I’ll cover the electrical system in a future post and get into all the details then for those interested.
After much deliberation and testing in the model, I decided to go with four SilFab 420 Watt QD panels which I purchased from Current Connected almost a year ago now. I was able to get these all installed this past May in time to help power us on our marathon maiden voyage with Lance driving out to Portland Maine and back this summer. For those interested you can see all the specs of these panels here and of course with the march of time since there would now be even higher output panels but we’ve still ended up with 1680 Watts of solar power and it has been more then enough to keep us fully powered all the time. 
We do have additional sources of electrical power such as this 320 Amp 12V 3.8kW alternator on Lances Paccar/Cummins engine that can provide up to 4k of power anytime that engine is running. However on our summer test run I had not completed the installation of the Arco Zeus smart regulator so the alternator wasn’t working that whole trip and the solar kept our batteries filled the entire time so that was a pretty good testament as to how well the solar was working. 
I decided to use 10 foot lengths of galvanized Super Strut to mount the solar panels on Lance’s roof. I would have preferred to use aluminium Super Strut but the delivery times would not have been in time for me to get the solar panels mounted before our trip so I went with galvanized steel and they have worked out vey well. I laid them out as you see here, two lengths on each side and two down the middle. 
I added additional 4 foot lengths of Super Strut so that I would have a mounting system for the whole 14 foot length of Lance’s roof for mounting any additional items in the future. 
I kept the mounting very simple as well by cutting pieces off a length of 2” aluminium L bar, 
drilling two holes in each one for the mounting bolts, 
and using the very handy Super Strut M8 threaded inserts to bolt them solidly to the lengths of Super Strut. 
Quick, strong, simple; what’s not to like?!! 
I then made up the cables using extra UV rated cables, Red for the positive and Black for negative and crimping the MC4 twist lock connectors that are the most commonly used for solar panel wiring and which I’ve used a lot in previous projects so I have all the specialty tools, crimpers, etc. some of which you see here in the photo. 
To fasten the brackets to the solar panel frames themselves I inserted aluminium M6 threaded Riv-Nuts into holes I drilled into the vertical AL frame on the solar panel and then used this tool which compresses the threaded inserts and locks them to the frame. 
End result looks like this. 
One bolt vertically to fasten to the Super Strut and one horizontal to bolt into the solar panel frame. 
For those wondering, I fastened the lengths of Super Strut to the roof using Loctite 8X PL Premium Fast Grab which is supposed to be 8 times stronger than traditional construction adhesives which I’ve used before. Probably overkill but you certainly don’t want solar panels flying off the roof when running down the highway at 70 miles an hour! To prevent any pooling of rainwater between the surfaces of the roof and the Super Strut I caulked all the edges with 3M marine sealant which I have LOTS of experience with on our previous boats. So everything fully sealed and eXtremely well fastened to the roof. 
Solar panel output drops off significantly with the rise in temperature of the panels, the irony of which isn’t lost on me, so I left this 4” gap where the two panels down each side meet up. This along with the 2+ inch space between the panels and the roof keeps them as well ventilated as possible and the efficiency of their output was very good even in the 40C/105F days we had several times on the trip AND while I was installing these panels! Talk about a cat on a hot tin roof! Ouch! 
To make it a bit easier to run the cables AND give me a wee bit of shade, I was able to remove the inner brackets and use the outer ones like a hinge and prop up one lengthwise pair of panels while I ran the cables. 
I ran the eight cables for all four solar panels to converge at this point on the front DS corner as this puts it directly overtop of the Electrical Cabinet below where they need to go and thus provides the shortest cable run for least voltage drop. I drilled the only hole in the roof for this but it was a BIG one as you can see and then I used more 3M 5200 to seal a short length of 2” PVC pipe as a safe conduit through the roof for these and all other cables in the future. The red square you see on the bottom is 3M VHB Very High Bond two sided tape which is a fabulous product for gluing almost anything to anything and it never comes off. 
PVC box now glued down to the roof over that PVC pipe and the cables run non stop down into the Electrical Compartment below.
Each solar panel needs to have a shut off so I used these DIN rail mini circuit breakers to do that and provide over current protection. 
This is what it looked like inside the Electrical Compartment where the cables pass through. 
The output of solar panels is a much higher voltage than the batteries and needs to be regulated to different charging stages to properly charge the big LiFePO4 Lithium EG4 batteries in Lance so the output of the solar panels goes through a MPPT controller which looks after all of this. Although it isn’t common, the most efficient setup is to have a dedicated MPPT controller for each panel and so that’s how I’ve always built our solar systems. Those are the four Victron Blue boxes you see on the upper Right here. 
It’s a bit of electrical spaghetti and took a bit of time to route and connect all these cables but keeps all the wiring very well contained in the wire ducts like the one running vertically up the far Right side and will have a cap that snaps onto those fingers you see here. 
Final cabling is to take the output from each MPPT controller and connect them to the main 12VDC electrical bus bars which are the silver coloured bars you see running up on the far Right here. If you look closely you can see two Red and two Black cables connected together at the top and then the other four below so now all the power from the solar panels is connected into the 12VDC electrical circuit.
And here’s what Lance’s 1680 Watts of solar roof looks like.
The extra length of Super Strut has already come in handy for my temporary for now mounting of our Starlink dish and the 4” PVC tube running down the middle for storing long lengths of material I like to have for ongoing projects while we’re on the road. Go ahead and tell me you’re surprised?!?!
and “Sunny Boy” as he tells me he now likes to be called.
For those interested in the details, this is the make and model Mini-Split we decided on. It is a 9k BTU capacity “Pioneer Diamante Ultra” that is one of the most efficient models they make rated at 23.5 SEER for those who know that system. These type of two part aircon/heating systems are referred to as Mini-Splits because they consist of two parts; the outside condenser/compressor and the inside air handler evaporator. 
Back to the Mini-Split install, this is the wall mounted interior evaporator half of the system and I mounted this Air Handler above the entry door on the front passenger side of the Hab. Works out well as you can see being almost the same width as the door. There are moving louvers with one large one running across the bottom that you can see partially open here that distributes the cold/hot air up/down vertically and then inside are a set of other smaller louvers that move back and forth sideways and help move the air left and right. So this location works out very well for the heating/cooling of the interior air and yet keeps it from blowing directly on us when we are at the Settee or in bed. 
As you might have noticed in the earlier photos, I had to cut away part of the upper stair in the entry to fit this top right corner of the exterior half or condenser/compressor. Once I had this all solidly bolted in place to the frame of the Hab underneath (see that May post for details if you’re curious) I finished it off by building a little “cage” using extruded aluminium and some aluminium diamond plate that I had left over from cutting out some of the original ambulance cabinetry. Also added some insulation to keep the other heat/cold from getting into the Hab. 
The 6mm diamond plate slid nicely into the T-slot grooves of the extruded Aluminium or XAL as you can see here. 
All these interlocked plates and XAL turned this into somewhat of an Origami project as I needed to be able to slide some of those plates out to get inside to connect the wiring and refrigerant lines but I was quite pleased with the way it turned out in the end and still functioned well as our entry stairs. 
I chose the 240V model as it is a wee bit more efficient than the 120V versions and I designed our AC system that I’ll cover in more detail in a future post, to be a Split Phase system so it provides both 120 and 240 Volt power. 
Looking inside the entry door, the drawers on both sides of the Galley are 24” deep but the countertops are 32” so there is a nice space behind the drawers when they are closed. 
This is the space behind the bottom drawer on the Left side of the stairs as you enter and I drilled a 2” hole through the vinyl flooring, insulation and aluminium floor of the box. The Pioneer unit came with the white PVC insert to protect the copper line set and the white cable is the 240VAC power and the black is the communication cable between the two halves of the Mini-Split. 
Up above I drilled two overlapping holes in the solid Acrylic countertop, which is fabulous stuff to work with BTW, and ran the electric cables and copper line sets through this. The copper lines in the interior evaporator unit come permanently fitted and they ended up just above the countertop height so I cut the new copper lines and installed new flare nuts that allowed me to connect them here and then run down into the compressor/condenser unit under the floor. 
The upper parts of the line sets gets covered with this black EPDM insulation and the corrugated clear hose is where the condensation produced by the evaporator drains out and down through the floor onto the road below. 
To protect and hide all these lines and cords I built a small vertical connector between the countertop and the overhead cabinet you can just see at the very top of this photo. The sides will soon be fitted with Cherry panels same as all the fronts of the doors and drawers that will be the topic of several other future posts. 
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Most importantly, Razz and Zoe use this new little upper step for their water bowl and so they give this new addition two paws up!
A few days before the 10th I had taken Lance into Vegas to put new front steering tires on him. All six tires (duals on the rear axle) still had a pretty good amount of tread on them but for a bit of added confidence and safety putting on a new set of steering tires was a good idea and this also gave me the chance to take Lance out on the highway for the approximately 160 mile round trip up to Vegas and back after he had been sitting here on RoadRunner Ranch for almost six months. 
Then after the wedding we could take advantage of New Hampshire not having any sales tax to buy the four new tires for the rear axle and give Lance new shoes all the way around for the rest of our marathon test drive up the East coast into the Maritime provinces and across Canada back to the Best Coast and our place on Saturna Island. 
That all worked out well as you can see as I jump the timeline a bit to June 19th when we put on the four new rear tires. 
Of course our co-pilots, Razz and Zoe were even more eXcited and always ready to hit the road. 
Not a stock part and too late to get one shipped in so MacGyver time it was.
It was very windy that night but we awoke to a beautiful sunny Saturday and Ben & Julia had perfect weather for their outdoor afternoon wedding. 
Julia is my sisters daughter and so I may be a wee bit biased but THAT is a Beautiful Bride! 
And they had the perfect backdrop of the inner harbour that included some gorgeous schooners and tall ships for that extra touch. 
To max out volume of storage areas I framed in the space above the Joolca “Gotta Go” separating toilet to create an overhead cabinet. 
As you may have noticed I am working my way counterclockwise around the interior spaces and the last part of the main framing for the primary cabinetry is the currently empty area on the far Left you see here, which will be the Drivers Side Galley. 
The model gives me the precise length of each piece I need to cut on the cut off saw and how each joint goes together. Each of those four vertical spaces will be filled with drawers of different heights and the vertical XAL front and rear provide very strong attachment points for all the undermount drawer slide hardware that I’m about to order. 
Speaking of windows, we have our always alert security guards keeping a close eye on the comings and goings of the various others we share this fabulous area. No need for any worry about our safety with these two vicious watch dogs on the job! 
While we don’t see too many people, which is just the way we like it, there is lots of life to see out our windows including the real life versions of Wile E. Coyote & Roadrunner, rabbits large and small, lots of mice and squirrels on the ground and ravens overhead.
Here is a skeleton view of the XAL bed frame in Blue which will then have a plywood panel spanning across the support bars with the mattress tucked firmly inside the outer XAL bed frame. 
All four actuators plug into this FLTCON-4 central control box which provides the 24 volts for each motor. 
Last piece of this automated lifting bed system is this small set of buttons that is also plugged into the control box. Once the interior panels are all installed this will be the only part you will see and will likely be mounted somewhere out of the way but easily reached when we want to move the bed Down to Sleep or Up to eat. 
The Up/Down buttons allow you to move the bed Up/Down to any position you want and then you can save this position into memory of button 1, 2, 3 or 4. 
I work hard to maintain my well deserved reputation as a pack rat and so I had kept ALL the wires, materials, nuts, bolts and hardware when I fully gutted the original Horton ambulance box and took it down to the bare AL frame. One of the pieces of aluminium I kept was this C-channel and it turned out to be my just right Goldilocks solution for building the saddle blocks I would bolt to the cars on the actuators. 
I cut the C-channel into four short pieces that were the same length as the Black Cars on the actuators. 
The width of these Black Nylon Cars was just a wee bit larger than the inside width of the AL C-channel so I carefully guided each actuator through my table saw and trimmed off about 2mm from each side. 
Which allowed them to be a slight press fit onto the Car. 
The inside corners of the C-channel have a radius to them but it was easy to file the corners of the Nylon Cars to match and Voila! A perfect fit. 
Progressive Automation manufactures the thick Black Nylon Cars with three threaded mounting holes on each side which go all the way through the body of these Black Cars; a large M10 in the middle with two M6 on either side, so I drilled out matching holes in the sides of the AL C-channel saddles so I could very securely attach each saddle its Black Car mate. 
…….. to make these matching L-bar mounting brackets ……….. 
………. which I then bolted to the C-Channel saddles with the Heim Joint sandwiched between the two “ears” of the brackets and through bolted. 
Worked very well and I could then bolt each Heim Joint Saddle to its matching Nylon Car. I then bolted each linear actuator to the vertical XAL support posts using some AL bar stock that I cut to be thick enough to keep the inner surface of the AL saddles spaced clear of the inside of the XAL posts and they moved up and down.
The sides of the bed frame are made from lengths I cut from 3” x 1” XAL and carefully clamped each one in place so I could precisely mark the center of each SS insert and then I drilled undersize holes through the XAL. As you can see in the photos above these SS inserts are tapered so I used my handy dandy Dremel tool with a rotary carbide cutter to enlarge these holes and carefully hand fit the SS inserts to be a slight press fit into the XAL. 
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I allowed about 5mm / .2” clearance between the moving bed frame sides and the XAL posts so it is a very close fit that was relatively straight forward to adjust by turning the threaded SS inserts with a wrench on the flats I ground on each one (see photos above). 
The power/comm cables on each actuator need to be extended but I was able to just plug each cable into the control box and hang it in the center which allowed me to test out the whole assembly. 
We continue to work away at getting things setup here on “Road Runner Ranch” and this arial shot from Christine’s drone video that you might have seen in the previous post, shows how we are setup so far. 
The 40’ shipping container above on the left is what I’m setting up for my workshop with Lance parked right beside. 
Looking forward from about mid way inside Lance’s “Happitat” the blank wall on the left is the front wall with the cab on the other side and the main entry door that is on the passenger side PS in the right corner. I’ve put in a scrap of 3/4”/20mm plywood to create a desk for myself on what will eventually become one of the two galley countertops with a larger one yet to be framed on the opposite left or driver side DS. 
Here is a sample of a length of the XAL with several different corner brackets that bolt into the T track grooves in the XAL which turn this into a giant adult version of the Erector sets I used to love playing with as a young boy, long before many of you were born! 
I’m working my way somewhat counter clockwise around the Happitat walls so my next focus was the XAL framing you see now in the front right PS corner. The Blue poles you see ratcheting cargo support bars that have proved indispensable to me for holding things in place as I build. 
This full height cabinet will have our fridge/freezer mounted inside the large opening you see here with lots of storage in the spaces above and below. 
This front DS front corner is a bit more complex as the large vertical exterior access cabinet is also in this corner and it is where I’ll be installing Lance’s whole electrical system with three large lithium batteries on the very bottom and then all the other components such as 12VDC to 120/240VAC inverters, battery chargers, and much more mounted this exterior locker. 
This will give you a sense of the size and shape of the server rack style lithium LiFePO4 batteries that will provide all the 12VDC and 120/240VAC electrical power in Lance. 
For those interested in the details, this shot the label on one of the three batteries will give you all the numbers.
I knew that the batteries were going to be a very close fit and I had built the framing for them back when we were in Klamath falls but now was the moment of truth to see if they actually fit?!! 
With the shower area in the center area the whole bathroom space becomes feels very large and open both when using it as a shower and when seated on the throne. I had my Beautiful Bride check it all out in person this morning and got the two thumbs up so the framing progress can now continue. 
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We continue to get sunsets like this almost every evening and sunrises are pretty spectacular as well so we continue to enjoy our new location a bit more each day. 
Christine has been getting her drone flying skills dusted off and this shot she grabbed a few days ago from up above the spot we’re setting up to live on for the next few months will give you an idea of the layout. Those two big white rectangles are 40 foot “High Cube” (9’6” high) shipping containers that came with the property along with a lot of great items inside that you’ll soon see. The other white rectangle is the 2012 25 foot travel trailer that will be home for us for now.
As Skyler and I unloaded the crates of our belongings and coolers of food, Christine got to work storing it all away and organizing our new home. As sharp eyes might notice, she even baked a loaf of banana bread! 
Looking aft in the trailer you can see that we’ve got everything we need with a nice U shaped settee and an adjacent full bathroom & shower. Then a separate bedroom in the rear with a Queen bed and even an office for Christine to work at just out of sight in the rear left corner here at the foot of the bed. And check out our views out the windows! 
Skyler started unloading all the crates and materials from Lance and I started to figure out where to put them for now in the two containers. The one you see here on the Left will be my workshop area and the other one out of site in this photo over on the far Right closer to the trailer provides storage for everything else AND houses all our fresh water and electrical power equipment that allows us to live 100% off grid. 
Could not have been a better present than all the time we got with Skyler and all the hard work he so cheerfully gifted us with to make this latest transition of the Nauti Nomadic Grandparents so memorable. 
Thanks Sky!
It will take me awhile to build workbenches and storage racks but for now all my tools and equipment are very safely stored away inside the two containers.
Part of what made this property such a Goldilocks just right find for us was that one of the things inside the containers was sixteen 305 Watt solar panels and so Skyler and I got to work setting those up in two different locations to try out for now. Eight of those solar panels we propped up against the wall of the container as you can see here which made it a short run for the power cables to go into the MPPT controller inside. 
The other eight solar panels we propped up against the south facing side of the trailer to try out that orientation as I monitor the daily production to see what generates the most power to keep our big new battery bank fully charged every day.
In that previous post you may recall seeing this pallet full of boxes that had arrived at the Klamath Falls workshop which contained the other two key components of our off grid power system. 
this 15 kWh 54 Volt upright EG4 lithium battery and ………. 
…….. this EG4 6000XP all in one MPPT solar charge controller, inverter charger. 
The battery weighs a svelte 128kg/282 lbs. but Skyler and were able to get it wrestled out of Lance and into the container and get the 6000XP mounted above it and all secured to the steel walls of the container. 
These two smaller vertical boxes I mounted on on the side at the mid point are the isolation switches and circuit breakers for the high voltage power coming in on the Red and Black wires you see here which come from each of the two strings of solar panels (8 panels in each). We soon had everything wired up and in this shot I’m busy configuring all the settings before turning it on for the first time. Just amazing how far these kinds of off grid systems have come and we were able to go from no power at all when we arrived to having a full 240VAC split phase power system in less than one day. 
These four 1250L/330USG IBC Totes as they are called (Interim Bulk Containers) also came with the property along with a fifth empty one that we’ll use in the future to bring more fresh water from the town water system in Searchlight that is just a few miles away. The pumps you see at the bottom here are now all set up to provide pressurized fresh water to a tap on the outside of the container and a hose from there to the trailer provides all the fresh water we need for day to day living.
I will leave you with this shot of what our humble new abode is looking like with yet another super sunset that Christine loves to photograph.
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