That Was Quick . . .

I got an email this afternoon from Lowe’s saying that my new batteries had come in. Surprising because they weren’t scheduled to arrive until the end of next week.




To recap: Our house batteries are 4 years old and on the way downhill. I had looked at getting another set of 4 6 volt Interstate’s to replace the ones I have. Wired in series-parallel, this would give me about 450 amp hours for about $625. But then we don’t really boondock any more, and probably won’t in the foreseeable future.

So I ordered these two heavy duty 12 volt tractor batteries from Lowe’s.

Deka 12 v battery 2

Wired in parallel, this will give me 12 volts @ 2280 amp hours, and saving me about 140 # in weight.

And the cost is only about $250.

Bigger, better, and cheaper. Nice!

And again, I know these aren’t deep-cycle batteries, but we won’t be using them that way.

One thing I’ll have to do is make up some new cables to get the new batteries hooked up. And a while back I found the best place to do this is at a West Marine location.

They have the big 00 (2/0) gauge wire, the heavy-duty copper connectors, and the bench-mounted swaging tool

Swaging Tool

to crimp the connectors on with.

And even better, and cheaper, it’s do-it-yourself.

But just be sure they still do this, I’ll make a stop by there tomorrow to check it out after we pick up the new batteries, though I’ll have to do some measuring before I’m ready to make up the cables.

Under the heading, “How high’s the water, Momma?”, I still haven’t been able to get back to my Onan generator problem. Because it’s rained heavily each day for the last two weeks without letup. But things are looking up for next week, so we’ll see.

I did think it was really funny this morning as Jan and I were watching some North Carolina weather girl (woman/person?) gushing about all the rain they’d had in her area, saying that they’d had over 4 inches in the last 24 hours, and that another 2 or 3 inches were expected in the next day or so.

Laughing, I looked over at our LaCrosse Weather Station display which said that we’d had 5.1 inches just since midnight here at the rig with more expected during the day.

It’s all relative, I guess.

The rain is also delaying our plans to take our rig out on a test drive this weekend. Since we’ve been parked after we returned from our Illinois/Alabama trip in July, I want to take the rig out for a drive, and probably top off the diesel before we leave for Florida on Oct. 3rd. But I’d rather not do it when it’s pouring down rain, so with rain scheduled all weekend, but clearing next week, Tuesday looks like our next best bet.





Thought for the Day:
 

Women will never be equal to men until they can walk down the street with a bald head and a beer gut, and still think they are sexy.

ghdg