According to the evening news we hit 100 here in the Tilden area today. It was warm to say the least. I was lucky to see rabbits running across the road and early this morning I was treated to a serenade by the local coyote population. The "lake" out front is finally drying up and its less than a third the size it was when we got here. All in all a wonderful day.
We also had a few hiccups. Our generator shut itself down just as it was getting dark, luckily I had fired up the light plant so I didn't have to work in the dark to get the genset running again. I had Toie call our support guy and let him know what was going on as I was trying to figure out why it shut down. The positive battery terminal melted in half, there is even a little drop of lead on top of the battery. The positive cable was extremely hot, almost to hot to touch. The generator had shut itself off I thought because the battery had become disconnected. Boy was I wrong, when I touched the cable to the battery I got a nice arc out of it, which would have been great if I wanted to weld, but shouldn't have happened with the genset off (I had turned the switch to off). I grabbed a light and went to take a better look at things and discovered that the insulation on the cable had been worn through by the vibration of the generator while it ran. I got the positive cable removed/disconnected from where it had shorted. This looks to be a potential common problem with these generators seeing how they place the battery box and run the cables. I think my daughter had gotten into my toolbox before we left and acquired my electrical tape, so I had to improvise a bit. I took a piece of blue pex (crosslinked poly ethylene 1/2 inch water hose)a few inches long and sleeved the damaged part of the cable, using duck tape to secure it in place and then using a pair of vise-grips to hold the cable to the battery post. It worked and the besides a little belt squeal when first started, everything seemed to be running good.
We also discovered that our light tower seems to interfere with our internet. The lights must be giving off a little RFI.
Oh well, you can't sweat the small stuff. I only have a few hours before Toie gets up and I want everything to be as trouble free as possible.
Almost forgot. The catering guys here are awesome. Last night it was barbecue pork chops, I wonder whats in store for us tonight?
(Btw. It was chicken and sausage with green beans and mashed taters).
