Monday, August 11, 2014

"Half-open" position for exit window with hinged rod

The emergency exit window on the left side of our trailer has just two positions:  fully open or fully closed.  That’s because the window swings outward when pushed by a rod -- there is no “halfway” position.  But sometimes, it would be nice to have the window open just a little, rather than completely closed or open all the way.

The solution is a rod that hinges in the middle.  I happened to have a hinged brass lid support, which is used to hold open a cedar chest.  It has a friction locking mechanism.  (These are sold in many hardware stores -- just Google "locking brass lid support.")   Here is a picture of the original rigid window opening rod and the hinged brass lid support, prior to modifications:



Using the hinged rod and some aluminum stock, I fashioned an exact replica of the original rod.  Here it is in its fully extended position, so that the window can open all the way:


The underside at the end of the rod (near my thumb in the preceding photo) has a channel, which sits on the window sill to hold the rod in position.  The channel is made up of two pieces of thin aluminum stock, riveted to the handle.  The rivets are also aluminum and were pounded flat so that the handle can still pass all the way through the opening in the window -- when the window is used as an emergency exit, the screen pops off, the handle pushes through and out, and the occupants gracefully vault through the swinging window.  (I hope I never have to pass that test of agility.)

Here is the rod when partly folded:


And here it is when secured in the half-open position.  The cable tie slips over the hinged section of the rod to hold the rod in that position:


And here is the rod when the window is fully closed -- the end of the rod is held by the original black plastic clip, attached to the window frame:






Saturday, July 26, 2014

Tripod supports for stabilizer jacks

Since I flipped my axles for extra ground clearance, my stabilizers don’t reach the ground; I usually bring a stack of big wooden blocks to make up the difference.  But the blocks are a little bit unsteady.  So I made some collapsible tripods, and they really get the job done.

They are 16 inches high, with legs made of 1 3/8” closet pole dowels.  Both ends of each dowel are rounded.  The base is made up of four pieces of 8x8 3/4” plywood squares, screwed together to make a block three inches thick.  Using a 1 3/8” Forstner bit and a drill press, I drilled three holes in the block, angled at 30 degrees.  The legs slip into the holes, and the whole thing is easily disassembled for storage and transport.

Here is what it looks like in action:


Here is the bottom of the base block, showing the slanted holes:


Here is a side view of the block:


We used it in soft soil, rocky soil, and on pavement, and it worked perfectly.  Since the tripod is higher than the blocks but does not wobble at all, the stabilizer jack is not overextended and seems to provide much better support and stability.


Tuesday, June 3, 2014

Extremely simple modifications: "very LMIC"

The LMIC has taught us to do more with less -- it has affected our house (perhaps in a good way, perhaps not) and even our speech -- any very simple solution to any sort of a problem is said to be "very LMIC."

Here are two almost-silly examples.  The door of the LMIC has a translucent panel (not really a window) that lets in a lot of light.  A long time ago (for the first LMIC!), I rigged up a "blackout curtain" that goes over the translucent window -- it's just a double-thickness hefty bag, reinforced with duct tape on the edges, with zip tie rings in the top two corners. The rings then go over cup hooks above the door frame. It sounds like a joke, but it works very well and is easy to store, and it has lasted for about 500 nights of camping. 

This is a shot of the “curtain” when deployed:


And here is a close-up of the cuphooks, screwed right into the paneling:


Note that there is a little tension on the zip ties, so that the "curtain" does not sag.

My second example is my patented freezer-door-holder-opener.  On our fridge, there are two strong springs that close the freezer door.  That’s great, but there are times when Felice needs that door open for a moment, as when she is putting an ice tray full of water into the freezer -- a chore best done with two hands!

So she suggested a wooden chopstick as a prop -- it worked!  I added short pieces of clear plastic tubing on each end, to avoid scratching the plastic liner of the fridge (and for better friction than the wooden chopstick provided).  Here is the magic chopstick when deployed:


And here it is in my hand, so that you can appreciate the subtle complexity of this device:


It's kind of a Zen ethos -- the sound of one chopstick propping.

Monday, April 14, 2014

Multidirectional Winch Mount on Spare Drawbar

We have a small trailer and an even smaller driveway -- in order to get the trailer onto the driveway and off the sidewalk, we have to pull it at a 45 degree angle from the street, all the way up to a wall next to our garage.  There is no room to pull it with the truck -- it has to be winched up.

That is the problem:  because the winch was pulling the trailer up at a 45 degree angle, the cable would inevitably pile up on one side of the winch drum.  One day, the cable hopped out of the drum and got tangled around the axle of the winch drum.  Bad situation.  I eventually rescued the winch by laboriously untangling the cable, but that arrangement was clearly inadequate.

So, after much consultation with my helpful buddies on rv.net, Felice and I developed the following arrangement:  the winch is mounted on the back of the truck, attached to the hitch receiver.  (More on that later.)  The truck is pulled into the garage so that the winch sticks out of the garage a foot or so.  The cable then runs across the front of the garage to a pulley.  The pulley is anchored to the spot on the driveway where we want the trailer to go.  (More on the anchor later.)  The cable then runs down the driveway to the chains bolted to the tongue of the trailer.  We put it all together, and it works!

Here is a crude diagram of the setup:


Pulley -------------------- Winch
\
  \
    \
      \
        \
    Trailer

Here is how the winch is mounted to the back of the truck:  I had a spare 2" drawbar/ball mount sitting around -- it was from our old trailer, which had a smaller rise.  This drawbar also had a sway bar mount welded off to one side of the bar -- which came in very handy for mounting the base plate of my winch mount.  Using my drill press, I drilled a couple of extra holes through the drawbar and then ran several heavy half inch bolts up through the holes and through a thick piece of plywood -- this is a picture of the underside of the base platform:


Here is a view of the top side of the base platform -- notice the 3/8 bolts sticking up through the base platform, which will go up through a separate piece of heavy plywood, to which the winch is attached:


(That horseshoe-shaped thing in the upper right is a very powerful magnet, scrounged from a dead computer hard drive -- I use it to hold the wing nuts during assembly, as shown later.)

And here is the winch on its base, which is mounted onto the projecting studs -- my finger is pointing to one of the studs:



Finally, thick washers and wing nuts go onto the studs to hold the winch in place on the platform:


By placing the studs at exactly symmetrical intervals, I can now dismount the winch base and rotate the winch by 90 degrees or 180 degrees.  So if I ever need to use it out in the boonies to pull the trailer out of trouble, and I can’t align the truck so that the winch is pointing in the right direction, I can just realign the winch.

This shows the alignment of the winch on the back of the truck, the pulley (in front of the trailer), and the trailer:


And this is the pulley, mounted on a bolt sunk into the driveway:


The bolt is not permanently attached to the driveway -- I drilled a deep hole in the concrete with a carbide bit.  The bolt then drops down into the hole.  A big washer covers the hook at the top of the pulley.  We watched to make sure that the bolt did not move when we were pulling the trailer up the driveway -- it did not budge.  The tension on the cable created a tight fit in the hole.  But then when we were done moving the trailer, it was easy to lift the bolt out of the hole -- no hardware left in the driveway to trip on.

I am planning to get a “snatch block” to replace the pulley -- a snatch block is a pulley in which the two halves or “cheeks” rotate apart, so that the cable can be easily placed into the pulley and later removed.  With our current setup, the pulley is on the cable permanently.

Finally, notice (in that prior picture) that I have three clips or clamps on the end of the wire cable.  The minimum is two, but I wanted an extra margin of safety.  After a little Internet browsing, I discovered that the arched end of the cable clamp should be over the “bitter end” of the wire, rather than over the working portion of the wire.  I don’t know why that is the rule, but it is, and I figured I would just follow the herd.