Adding a Bigger Inverter to Umarang

Over the last few days, I worked on installing a Renogy 2000 Watt Pure Sign Wave Inverter in my motorhome: Umarang or Uma the VRRV.

What is a inverter you ask? Well, it basically takes 12 volt DC electric power from the house battery and converts it to 110 Volt AC electric power.  I stayed with a pure sine wave system in order to continue to provide clean electric power to Starlink and my electronic devices from my house battery while boondocking.

Previously, I had used a 500 watt inverter since I basically just used it to power the chargers for all our electronic devices, and lately, Starlink.  It worked fine.

Theoretically, if I had the battery capacity, this larger inverter could be used to power just about all the appliances in the RV.  For the foreseeable future though, I installed it to have a quieter working inverter since these smaller inverter's cooling fan ran all the time when the inverter was on.  A bit annoying.

I almost ended up not installing this inverter since it was so much larger than my existing 500 watt inverter. Finally figured out a location for it with Martha's help. I got the inverter from Chris and Lori of BlazeourWay.

I ended up using the lower pantry cabinet to the left of the stove where basically I have been storing consumables, bags, junk in a unorganized manner. 

Here's what the cabinet interior looked like after I removed the panel in the rear to expose the wiring runs and heating duct run by the manufacturer of the RV. The inverter would end up extending slightly past the panel.

Here is the new inverter extending slightly past the rear panel, clean air will be sucked in from the blue panel in the front and blown out into the wiring run compartment behind the panel.   The white short extension cord connects to a four foot extension cord that connects to the existing extension cord that goes to the power outlet in the front half of the RV.

Top down view of the inverter showing the battery cables, both of which go off through an access hole to the right and connect to the rear of the existing 500W inverter.

I placed a thin fiber board panel on top of the inverter leaving perhaps a half an inch of clearance or so. This way I can stack stuff on top as well for storage. 

Finally a shelf in the middle for better organization of items within the entire cabinet. 

I mentioned that the battery cables from the new inverter go to the power terminals on the 500 watt inverter.  From that location, the previously in use battery cables go directly to the house battery underneath the floor.

This shows the 500 watt inverter, the wall it's mounted on is the wall to the right of the new inverter.  The new inverter's cables aren't installed yet.  The red and black 4 gauge cables coming from the rear of the inverter and into the floor go to the house battery. 

The extension cord plugged into the front of the 500 watt inverter goes outside via the same hole as the battery cables, runs along the right side frame of the chassis and underneath and into the rear dinette seat bench where there's another dedicated for 110 via the inverter.   It now plugs into the four foot extension cord from from the new inverter.

I chose to do it this way to easily switch to the 500 Watt inverter should the new inverter fail for whatever reason.  Not to mention, I didn't have to cut any cables, or use the butt connectors I had purchased previously and so was able to return them for a refund.

Testing confirmed everything appeared to be hooked up right.  Starlink went online with no issues.  I'm a big fan of redundancy so two inverters give me peace of mind.

A couple of Gatherings

 April 6-10

We had a visit from Blazeourway's Lori and Chris Z.  They were having some stuff done to the Bowen truck bed of their new camping rig.

April 11

There was a meeting of Uralisti up at the 300 Suns Brewery and Pub.  I got there an hour too early due to a "senior moment" on my part.  Once I realized this, I drove Scarlett West a bit for this view of still distant Long's Peak:

I returned to the brewery and got these pics of before the others showed up:

Randy, the former Ural Dealer and who had helped keep all our sidecar rigs running, was there as I arrived.  john S. (spat) Showed up as I was parking Scarlett:

Randy and John

John's BMW with Watsonian sidecar

The rest of the guys showed up soon after and we went and got a table.  Tasty food, craft beers and tall tales were enjoyed as we caught up with each other.

Now that's a bunch of friendly looking riders huh?  From left to right:  Dan, Dezo, Jay, Tim, John and Randy.

The ride home proved longer than the ride up.  Google Maps took me almost 20 miles out of the way and I was too trusting of it.  Oh well, at least it only sprinkled on me a couple of times as the skies darkened overhead with storm clouds.

Yagi Maintenance

Since I'm home for a bit, it was time to do some maintenance on Yagi, my Yamaha TW200 DualSport.

I replaced both the front and rear sprockets, managing to break both mounting bolts on the front sprocket while torquing to spec!  I'm guessing it was time to replace them too huh, luckily the local hardware store had same and they didn't break during torquing actions.

The rear tire was exhibiting a small cracks caused by age and weather so it got replaced along with a new inner tube that has that slime sealant already inside, put in by the tire mounting guy at the local motorcycle shop.

The chain was also replaced.  I don't do this often so the operation was a bit time consuming since there's a specific order in which one installs a chain and the rear wheel but in the end I got it.  Some YouTube research led to the technique of using a nut and a c-clamp to help press in the new master link plates together so the clip can be mounted:

The oil and oil filter was changed as it was due since Yagi has reached 24,000 miles.

I checked Yagi's valve clearances and they were spot on!  The intake was at .003" which is midpoint of the range spec.  The exhaust valve was at .005" which also is in the middle of the spec.

Bought a stubby 1/4" drive 5mm Allen socket for the torque wrench tightening spec of 10 newton meters.  Regular sockets are too long you see, given the closeness of the valve covers too the motorcycle's frame at different points.  Now, no problems!

A neighborhood friend noticed the bolt that covers the access port to the automatic cam tensioner was missing, no idea for how long, and it was replaced.  It kind of functions as a dust cover.

Same friend noticed slight seepage on the right side of engine cylinder's base and I tried to tighten the relevant boltss, but they're on tight.  Probably requires new gasket for base of cylinder head ... Don't think I'll be doing that anytime soon.  Yagi is 20 years old, I'll live with the seepage.

The last maintenance is replacing the right fork's seals as they've been seeping for a few months now.  

Home for a bit.

 It was going to be a windy day that while mostly sunny, would only reach 68° according to the weather guessers. 

Sunrise:

So instead of hanging out for one more day, I drove home, arriving at around 1:00 p.m. to an enthusiastic hug from Martha. 

According to the trip spreadsheet, I camped for 71 days this time at a cost of $31.90 a day.

The largest cost, not surprisingly, was fuel for the RV at 46%, next was groceries at 25%, 17% for RV related tasks/propane/Starlink, 10% for camping fees and final 2% was gas for Yagi and meals bought while visiting friends.

About 3000 miles covered by the RV.  Average MPG: 8 .