Today we reached a milestone in the creation of the new shop van. Patrick, our grandson, and I have pretty well finished the physical furniture of the shop. Today we completed the wiring of the shore power connections. We now have lights and power for all the tools.
Our first task this morning was to choose a spot on the rocker panel low on the side of the van to drill a huge two and three quarters inch hole for the shore power connection. I had created drawings of the area.

I opened an inspection port in the back side under the van. I taped a fat collar of cardboard over the area just in case the hole saw snagged and skittered out of the hole.

With all in readiness I drilled a teensy little hole dead center. That went very well so I finally screwed up my courage and started the hole saw.

To make a long dramatic story short, the hole was created without muss, fuss or catastrophe. The new fitting fit perfectly and with an appropriate amount of drama we finally were able to engage the nuts Epoxied to the backing ring and seat the power entry socket.

The real drama came when we exchanged one extension cord for one that would fit the new inlet. Two superimposed failures confounded our attempt to check out the circuits in the van. First, when we exchanged the extension cords the GFIC tripped and we didn’t realize that the power source was dead. Second, the probe on my multi-tester finally parted the last strand of its lead, so nothing made sense when we tried to trouble shoot the circuits. We finally resurrected an older multi-meter by stealing a 9 volt battery from the smoke detector. (Yes, we bought a new battery for the smoke detector later the same day.) We finally were able to get a hot circuit to plug into and the check-out went smoothly. We reversed one connection on a three way light switch and everything worked perfectly.
Check out the photos on this web page.

Shore Power:

Bye:
Gary, Judy and Patrick.