BusBuilding

Building a bus conversion is a journey into the unknown. There are - literally - thousands of issues, questions and conventions to address, and in almost everything involved, there is no one right way to do anything. There are a few books and lots of folklore. Without a doubt, there is no better resource than the online conversion communities.

continued »

Gary’s

Greg’s

John’s

and

Dr. Dave’s

Thanks to Dave S’s Cruiser Magazine for the recent additions!

Don’t Follow Trucks (or busses!)

There are many reasons why you shouldn’t follow trucks.

They are bigger than you.

They have to fit inside a lane that was made for cars. They might have 2 feet to spare if you add up the space on either side.

You can’t see in front of us - so when we inch over into the other lane to avoid that chunk of tire in the road it might end up causing you some problems if you end up hitting it. Or if we inch over because there is a guy is changing his tire on the side of the road, you might not notice and that too might cause some problems if you hit him. There is also the occasional deer carcass, the christmas tree, a boat, insulation, baggage that fell off someone’s car, plastic in many forms, a bicycle, mystery bag with something in it, large rocks, and the suicide rabbits that love that joke that goes…

“Why did the rabbit cross the road?” “Rabbits and deer have no concept of speed vs. size vs. distance.”

more at: Truck Driver Journal

A substantial portion of older Americans now in the work force chose to return after retiring, and how well they’re enjoying their labor now depends a lot on whether they’re self-employed, according to two new reports.

Of those former retirees, about 68% returned to work because they wanted to, while 32% felt they had to because they needed money or health insurance, according to the survey of 1,726 working retirees, with an average age of 61 years.

Not surprisingly, those who returned to work because they wanted to were likelier to report being happier with their decision.

Full article at: WSJ CareerJournal

eMachineShop is a remarkable new way to get the custom parts you need - the first true online machine shop. Download free software, draw the part, and click to order.

The part will be machined and delivered. They say that the cost is reasonable with this approach. I keep looking for an opportunity to use them!

www.emachineshop.com

Kill-A-Watt
I’ve had one of these for more than a year and for what it does, it’s great. Can’t get any simpler to install! Right now I use mine immediately after the inverter before the load center, to get an idea of battery consumption. Until I get my TriMetric or similar it is great for a quick view. I’ve found the most useful measurements to be kWh and Amps. For some reason it can’t deal with the waveform on some NSW inverters so the frequency measurement is generally not useful for me. There’s another caveat, that if you crank up something really brutal, like a circular saw, it totally freaks out and quits measuring completely until power is removed and reset. And thereby, it loses your total kWh. But alas, for $30, who can complain?

Available from Amazon,
Manufactured by P3 International.

[Cool Tools]