Inverter Fix

Saturday has been fix the inverter day. Our brand new Victron Multiplus Inverter converts battery power at 12 volts into 110 volts for our household appliances. Since new every time we charged our Victron batteries it flashed a red light saying low voltage. The rest of the system works fine and the inverter itself does its job but that light has been a bother.

It’s a bright sunny morning in Paraguay, a cool breeze and warm sunshine makes an ideal combination. In the distance roosters are crowing, inside the workshop Chris’ assistant is attaching our skid plate now the water coolant leak appears to be fixed. The skid plate protects the underside of the engine sbd transmission from objects in the road. 

Layne got out our laptop which we mostly use to do taxes and we plugged it in to get online with a Victron specialist in Germany. Chris our Bavarian mechanic found him online and while they talked on the phone the Victron guy was going over our system  - from his home in Germany! He checked all the parameters and found one was missing. 

He checked out our installation and  discovered  that no one had programmed our battery size into the inverter so it didn’t know what it was monitoring. So quickly and easily he found the issue  and it was not yet lunchtime. I have high hopes this problem may be solved today and Monday we may get on the road. I keep hoping the solution is found. I never learned his name but he likes to volunteer his time helping Victron customers around the world. An interesting hobby. He saved us. 

Astrid brought by a cake Friday for our anniversary and as she had heard me praising the joys of bienenstich cake (Bee Sting) she made one. It’s a famous cake in Germany and I first had it at a German campground in Ecuador in 2024. It has cream and almonds and I recommend it, not too sweet but the crunchy nuts and the soft smooth patisserie cream is luscious. Hans the owner of Sommerwind campground in Ecuador giving us route advice before we left. Nice helpful guy, married to an Ecuadoran and between them run a restaurant at the campground with a huge selection of German cakes. Highly recommended.

Astrid’s version was thicker and lusher and made an excellent mark on our anniversary.

We are sharing washing lines with our Swiss neighbors whose English is better than my German which isn’t saying much but the atmosphere is much better.

Their house is bolted firmly back on the truck frame and we have our issues solved so a barbecue planned for tonight should be a merry affair. At last.

Wedding Anniversary.

Layne kept reminding me with hints yesterday so I had no choice but to remember that 32 years ago today we got married in a friend’s expansive back yard in Santa Cruz California. As they say we have passed much water, and a good deal foreign since then. 

More importantly the dongle has arrived though at the moment Chris is fixing the clutch on his Mazda pickup which died two days ago when he and Astrid took a day off to celebrate their anniversary. They came home on a tow truck. Ha ha. 

The coolant leak seems to be fixed. For now. The rain has gone for now and we have sunshine. A departure early next week may be on the cards. We plan to celebrate today’s occasion in the metropolis of Buenos Aires. With friends. How civilized. 

Now I’d better go back to paying attention to my wife and my dog of course. 

Test Drive

 

We went for a test drive yesterday and the coolant level did not change. Chris checked underneath and saw no drops. At long last our leak may be fixed so about that I shall say nothing more in order not to jinx it.

The problem with test drives is they remind you how much you enjoy driving about. But we have one more thing to fix before we can leave to drive south to Buenos Aires. Peru now is too far away so we are meeting our friends in Argentina and not Arequipa.

Might as well take advantage of going for a drive to get a haircut.

Ten bucks and an hour of relaxing in a chair with reggae on the sound system and regional soccer on the tube. Gregorio was quite interested in our retirement journey.

Rusty was ready for a walk. 

He was quite tired when we got home as a 13 year old dog should be after a day on the town. He also got steak for lunch.

As did we. 

At a Swiss restaurant ten minutes from the campground, a bit in the boonies.  

Our place in the workshop has been taken by a Swiss converted fire truck freshly arrived from Europe. The occupants have a reputation here for being withdrawn. Chris told us their brand new fiberglass cabin has broken its anchor bolts and shifted two inches, a situation he can repair apparently. That might explain the owners’ reticence. Meanwhile we wait for a tool to change the settings in our reluctant inverter. It should be here by Friday. 

By then we expect the rain and mist and cold will have moved on and sunshine will return to Pequeña Baviera campground.

Water Pump Effort #3

 

Our test drive Sunday revealed the new coolant pump was still leaking, so it was back to the shop. Chris took out the new pump and there it was, leaking, dripping fluid even though it is a brand new Mopar original part:

Luckily the coolant is pink so it shows up easily: 

So after some thought Chris decided to reinstall the original pump which shows no sign of wear with one of the new seals we bought for just this kind of nightmare scenario. 

We have one more if we should need it…made in somewhere foreign it turns out. Lots of Stellantis parts and vehicles are made in Turkey. 

Anyway the old pump is back in with a new seal. The aluminum bolts are getting tired according to Chris’ torque wrench but all we can do is hope for the best  because this coolant leak is well past being amusing.

As for the inverter showing low voltage there is some news that may be good. Chris has ordered a box to be delivered Friday that should give us access to the settings in the inverter and he has found a German in Germany, a retired Victron technician who can check and adjust the settings online from his workshop in Germany. It this space age idea works we may avoid having to return to Uruguay where we bought the thing. Maybe by Saturday our Victron Multiplus piece of shit 3,000 watt inverter may be working properly. Or not.

Meanwhile we have abandoned any idea of driving to Peru to meet our Florida friends. Luckily they are travelers and adaptable and we are rerouting to meet in Buenos Aires about three or four days south of here. Peru will have to wait until next year unfortunately, I was looking forward to returning Arequipa. This change of plan relieves us of having deadlines stress on top of everything else. 

Starlink has made some drastic changes to terms of service that affect international travelers which is dire for people who earn money online. As of August 17th international service across borders costs $650 for 500 GB of service or you are shut off.  For us the shutdown of service is merely inconvenient as we use internet connections for pleasure. The young couple above from Belgium helped us organize a work around for this latest problem.

Mattia is a 27 year old French speaking Belgian who shut down his electrician’s business and took to the road with Lola a 26 year old teacher from the Dutch speaking half of Belgium. They drove across Europe and Central Asia in their Mitsubishi Pajero SUV passing through Russia, the various ‘Stan’s of Central Asia, Mongolia and China to end up in Malaysia and Indonesia before shipping to Chile to explore the Americas. Their route roughly looked like this over 30 months:

They very kindly helped us set up a new Starlink account which may or may not work past the next thirty days but if we do get shut down, they told us of another possible way we may be able to maintain traveling service for less than $200 a month.

We sat and chatted about traveling well into the night lubricate by a couple of bottles of wine. They are pretty enterprising as Mattia is taking correspondence courses in industrial design to get remote work while Lola tutors Dutch for students online.  Apparently there is a large market of immigrants yovthe Netherlands who want to integrate by learning the language. She said you can easily live and work in Holland even if you only speak English but without Dutch you don’t get a social life outside work or promotions at work. So she has a reliable income.

They spent six weeks in an Airbnb in Asunción while they had a pop top built onto the roof of their SUV. it only cost $2500 ($15,000 in the US) and if the work is a little rough the price was right as they see it.

Rusty is not fond of the time spent in the workshop as he can’t join us freely. The shop is behind the fence that separates Chris’ three dogs from the rest of the campground so he takes refuge under a big truck parked near us and watches as we hang around in the workshop. We go out from time to time to keep him company but he doesn’t enjoy being separated from us. 

It’s raining this Wednesday morning so maybe he’ll come into the shop with us and stay in the van while Chris attaches the first of two Bluetooth dongles to our irritating Victron Multiplus inverter. Patience and adaptability is the watchword.

And imperviousness to rain. Whatever next?

The Path To Madness

We left the campground Sunday afternoon to test the state of the coolant and water pump.  We took a 55 mile drive round trip to San Bernardino, a lakeside resort town about half an hour away and I should say we were fully aware this weekend was a national holiday celebrating the day of the assumption, after which the national capital, Asunción, is named.

Our Lady of the Assumption is an important Catholic holiday, the focal point of summer vacation time in Italy, so I was not unaware of the implications for traffic, and I was not disappointed. 

The side streets leading to the lake were clogged with double parked cars and access for a 21 foot van was not advisable even for someone who doesn’t mind squeezing the tank through narrow spaces. They were having a successful holiday on the shores of the lake obviously. 

It turns out this lake is a national embarrassment as it is so polluted humans aren’t allowed to swim in it. Decades ago the Spanish heartthrob Julio Iglesias wrote a song about, of all things, meeting a woman on the shores of the lake and its romantic blue waters, but today it is reported to be a brown muddy mess filled with algae fed by agricultural run off and industrial and household pollution. They cut the forests and fertilized the farms that replaced the trees and the lake is a mess.

So we drove out and back to see if the cooling system still leaks. I have had to add some fluid to the radiator expansion tank but I don’t know if that is part of refilling the system after it got completely drained. That was me hoping for the best (the leak is still there. Hah!).

Team Lost was on form yesterday as we missed three turns on our 55 mile drive, chatting, glad to be in the road, enjoying the views, distractions abound and we lost the little blue line on the map a few times. But we did find some chipas, the local tapioca baked delicacy. 

The vendors sit roadside and charge 75 cents for the bagel sized baked rings. Ours were seasoned with dill seeds and were rather good, spongy inside crisp shells.

The funny little treat was the reward for the drive I suppose and for the fact that we still have a coolant leak.  Grrr.

We took Astrid and Chris out for pizza to the place we were at last time and that was new to them. 

I had a crazy pizza to keep pace with my wife who ordered a pear and blue cheese pie. I got hot dog and fries I kid you not. It wasn’t bad if you like a side of starch with your  pizza.

I grant you our mechanical delays are inducing a touch of madness in our heads but we had the cure. Well not really but it helped wash the extraordinary pizza down.

Mark the Englishman who lives at the campground had a sensible calzone…

And Max, Astrid and Chris’s 11 year old boy made the sound choice and got the margarita, a normal pie with basil and tomato sauce. But madness is creeping into our static lives.

And so we ended Paraguay’s national holiday on a slightly down note but sooner or later this goddamned leak has to be resolved. Then the damned expensive inverter. Then we shall be free. Or mad. Fries on your pizza?