7'*18' V-Nose Cargo Trailer Toy Hauler Conversion

[flboy]

Food and clothes on board. Just need to roll in the Kingpin and it is off to Daytona. Very excited to leave tomorrow.



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[McDave]

Have a safe trip and enjoy yourselves. The scoot looks great and the trailer is as fine a machine as I've seen. You have really put in a ton of time and effort and it shows.
The weather looks pretty good for the next week, lows around 60's high's around 80 and no real threat of snow but some frost warnings for this a.m.
Don't forget the sunblock and some Jameson for the first aid kit. Some times a set of headphones or ear plugs can be handy if you need some quiet time. If you get a chance to post some pictures of the rally just remember to keep it family friendly..... just kidding, down and dirty works for me.
Have Fun Y'all!

McDave

[flboy]

Thanks McDave. I appreciate that. I know you look forward to your rallies in the Spring. It is coming!

Got the scoot loaded and ready to go. Very blessed indeed.









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[hankaye]

flboy, Howdy;

Be havin' fun now

Don't really expect an answer till a week or 2 from now,
a body needs some decompression time ya know ...

hank

[kirkupnorth]

Hey, Flboy-

I've never seen a bike like that. It looks like something a cool superhero would ride around on!

(Admit it -- by day, you're a mild-mannered accountant. By night, you ride the streets seeking out injustice, and making bad guys pay. You are FLBOY!!)


Have a fun trip.

[flboy]

Hey, Flboy-

I've never seen a bike like that. It looks like something a cool superhero would ride around on!

(Admit it -- by day, you're a mild-mannered accountant. By night, you ride the streets seeking out injustice, and making bad guys pay. You are FLBOY!!)


Have a fun trip.

Thanks Kirk. The bike is a Victory Kingpin. Victory Motorcycles was owned by Polaris who also bought the Indian Motorcycle brand. They learned quickly they were competing with themselves more so than with HD and discontinued the Victory Brand. It was my -E-Bay Motors find. I bid very low and actually won sight unseen. Was fortunate on this one.

I demo rode an Indian Chieftain 117 Cubic Inch Bagger at the speedway Saturday. I think I found my next street ride! Interestingly, the Indians are taking some great lines I think they got from Victory.

Pics of the setup at Bike Week., Had a great weekend!






Parked outside the Daytona Speedway. Installed the bags and passenger seat for the precious cargo that went with me.



My bride making some smoothies in the kitchen before we head out for a cruise. Everything worked great... except she is feeling a little constrained in the bed (proximity to ceiling) and also has a harder time getting into the bed, so I need to be able to raise and lower it easier. I mentioned on another thread that I will need to rethink it and rebuild as necessary. It works great just for me.. but it has to work well for both of us.

[kirkupnorth]

Your setup there looks great, and it looks like a really fun getaway. We're still under five feet of snow here with more on the way, so your photos look like a bit of heaven on Earth!

[rebar]

Wow, nice work..

I'll have to spend more time reading this thread when I finally start my build.

So many things to research, and right now reading about how to use D50 outers on my beater D60.

[McDave]

Where ya at Don? Been a while since we've heard from ya. Give us the thumbs up if all is well. If you need anything, you know how to reach me.

McDave

[flboy]

Where ya at Don? Been a while since we've heard from ya. Give us the thumbs up if all is well. If you need anything, you know how to reach me.

McDave

Hi McDave. All is well. Thanks for checking. I have just been too busy to pay attention lately. My company sent me out of state for a 3 month temporary assignment in mid March, so I'm living out of an extended stay hotel, flying home occasionally, and working longer hours than I'd like. Keeping my head down and looking forward to late June. I have a ~1,100 mile (4 states) dual sport ride along the Appalachian Trail with my brother planned. My sister in law and wife will be driving the chase truck and we will meet up at night wherever we are staying. I'd rather camp, but neither of them will tow the CTC.

How's it going up in Big Sky country? Seeing any sunshine and warmth yet?

[McDave]

Hey Don,
Glad to hear all is well. Life can throw you some curves so I got a little worried about your absence. It's a strange way companies have of acknowledging their most valued employees. They always seem to go to their "go to guy". Sometimes it is hard to remember that it is really a compliment, not a punishment. A badge of honor, wear it proudly.
So we are doing pretty darn good up here. We survived another winter and this green stuff started to come out of the ground! But luckily it is going to snow today and tomorrow, so we got that going for us.
Got the Harley rebuilt and fired up and just about ready for the season but developed a fuel leak at the quick connect to the tank. Trying to rebuild that but Harley only wants to sell the entire connector and fuel line to injectors for 150.00. A couple of O-rings should do it, but the exact size is a secret....
Other than that all is well here, My lovely bride is doing great so... I'll take it.
Have a bunch of fun and take copious amounts of photos on the Appalachian Trail. As always, shiny side up.
Don't be a stranger,

McDave

[flboy]

Hi all. Quick electrical upgrade to share. I installed a 3000W/6000W surge pure sine inverter to replace the 1500W/3000W one I had. I could run the AC with it, but not the AC and Fridge if they came on same time (not enough surge capacity since the 60W fridge seems to have a ~400W surge). Also the 1400W hot water heater would stress the 1500W too much. The old HW heater I replaced over a year ago had a 400W element that took about an hour to heat up. I just felt like I was pushing the edge all the time.

I am keeping the 1500W Inverter for a field replacement if primary ever fails. Gotta have one for the Fridge at a minimum.

Tested it all out and the Fridge and AC cycle on and off with no issues now. Also, with Fridge on (AC off), I was able to heat my 6 gal tank in 15 minutes . Nice to have those options. Cannot run everything at once, but can run Fridge and any other larger drain item (AC/Microwave/Coffee maker/HW Heater.. etc.) Of course I have propane also for HW heater and stove... but I tend to be redundant.

Ran the AC and Fridge for an hour and it cooled down well as expected. It was about 92deg outside. None of the Feed wires got warm or etc. and only had a total of 0.5V DC drop on entire run of wire to the inverter that included the Fuse connections and large DC bus. Very happy with the results and performance now.


I need to hook up the 12ga romex to the front terminals and run into transfer switch. One outlet cannot handle full power @25A. I just plugged in for quick system checkout. Probably will never run even close to max. in any case, but want to do it right. This Inverter will have some margin as I manage the loads properly. Never want to run more than 80% for any extended period of time anyhow. Looking back, I should have just got the 3000W to start with.

With no sun.. it appears the AC has about 3-4 hours of run time with the fridge on the battery bank I have. In full sun with the 500W solar.. of course that extends it and even more when it starts to cycle on and off. If I ever go west to the desert, I will pick up a few hundred more watts of panels so I can run AC all day off solar. I like that idea. I'll continue to supplement with my Honda 2000 as needed in the meantime.




This is just running the Hot Water heater and Fridge. The fridge is just 60W when running. Prior to turning the HW heater on, I had the AC running for an hour. It takes about 600W running.



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[flboy]

Always learning something new. I found out this evening that the 3000W inverter I just installed has what is called a Floating Neutral which is also hot @ 1/2 the output (60VAC). It is essentially 2Phase 60VAC similar to how 2 phase 120VAC is used for 240VAC is in your home (which you will note useds 2 pole breakers). It is not advertised this way and I discovered this when checking outlet with a plug in analyser and it showed an open ground. It was strange enough that I pulled out my DVM and notice 120VAC across the output, but both the Hot leg and Neutral showed 60VAC to ground.

From what I know, the electronic devices and appliances could care less and as long as they see 120VAC potential across the input terminals. The GFCI outlets should still work fine too... but I see one problem in that 120VAC distribution panels use single pole breakers. Do not work on the circuit with the inverter on and think popping the breaker is isolating the circuit. Just turn it off first. Still will have 60VAC on Neutral if you don't. I checked that and it is the case. Not an issue with Shore Power or Gen and Bonded Neutrals.

My other concern is if there is a short specifically on the neutral to ground? Will it pop the breaker from the Hot side? Is this a potential problem? I never thought about it too much before, but I do not think it will and do not want to chance damaging the inverter to try it out. Inverter is supposedly protected internally for shorted outputs so it should shut down and protect my wires regardless of the breakers I have in place (maybe they become irrelevant in this case). Again...not an issue for breaker protection designed for using a single pole breaker and bonded neutral with shore power or generator.

Anyone here familiar with this that can chime in? Am I thinking about this correctly? I bought this inverter on Amazon and have 30 days to decide to keep it or not. Aside from that it works very nicely with my loads... just worried about electrical safety in the event of a short specifically on the neutral side to ground. So, the Inverter should protect itself and the load wires and I will remember to shut inverter off if I am working on wiring just as I would breakers if on shore power.

In the future.. if I ever build another CTC and plan on using an inverter and etc. as I am now. .. suppose I could use a 240AC panel and make the second bus bar a floating neutral and then find 15A 2 pole breakers? (assuming they make them somewhere?)... seems it would take the mystery and chance out of it and solve that problem.

[Iconfabul8]

Could the solution be as simple as running the output from the inverter through a transformer or an ac to ac converter?

[McDave]

That's a new one for me. I suppose if the mfr. intended for the inverter to have dedicated outlets that were not wired in conjunction with the other (shore/gen) outlets it wouldn't matter. And if the inverter breaker kills all power shouldn't be a problem as long as you cant feed inverter AND shore/gen simultaneously to outlets. Not too sure if I like that system.... is it working as designed? Do you have schematic or literature that explains?

McDave