Some days just turn to garbage and it’s lucky we’re retired with no bosses and lots of time. We sure needed time and patience yesterday as we ended up back where we started at Adrián’s workshop. What a day.
GANNET2 is so well insulated we can stop for the night in a rest area and not be bothered by the noise of traffic, but additionally night traffic especially in Uruguay but across Latin America tends to get pretty light. Truckers here like to sleep.
We faced a four hour drive across the middle of the country to the vet close to the border with Argentina where we would start the process to get Rusty’s exit papers. We got in the groove and settled in for a boring day. If only…
The coolant level looked good which was a nice start but I want to make sure it stays at the proper level over a few days before I pronounce it fixed for sure.
I had noticed the clock on the microwave had reset itself to zero so I asked Layne if she had turned off the 110 volt inverter, the box that converts our battery voltage to household electricity for our appliances. She insisted she hadn’t so I knew diverting was up. We stopped and pulled out the microwave and checked the plug to make sure it hadn’t worked loose. It was fine.
Bummer. So what was wrong? I wracked my brains as I drove.
Then we turned on the Starlink and we found suddenly both 110 volt appliances switched off briefly in unison. Huh?
Then the low battery voltage light came on. That was the last straw. We were 90 minutes from Adrián’s workshop so we diverted as shown below roughly with my fat finger.
We showed up around noon and Adrián started poking around the fuse box. Then he looked into the Victron app and studied the entrails and eventually reached a conclusion.
Basically we didn’t have the muffin fan on to cool the battery box and electronics and the heat this week went up, we’ve seen highs near 80 degrees in fact. At some point the batteries overheated and shut down the DC to DC engine charging system to protect the batteries.
The problem is that it takes human intervention to turn the engine charging back on. And I didn’t know what to look for among all the apps and numbers.
Now I know do it was a learning curve. The solar panels couldn’t keep up under these cloudy days so our plan to drive around and test everything worked out perfectly. I hope. This just a partial list of the electronic boxes powering our house, lots to learn.
Plus there’s the DC to DC charger and the solar controller. When power ran too low the inverter shut down. When the solar panels charged up a bit they turned back on and the engine was adding nothing. So now I feel even better about our ability to be energy independent once I get my homework sorted out. We plugged in for a couple of hours and put some energy into the batteries, then we said another goodbye to Adrián and Maria-José. We went to get dog food milk and some other stuff at the old familiar grocery store in Colonia Valdense, like the good old days.
It’s like there’s a giant elastic band holding us to this place but Saturday we are determined to break free. We’ve tested our systems, learned some stuff and are ready to make tracks. Dammit.
We decided to fiend the night in a city park where we discover first night when we first came to this area to buy the cheeses they are famous for producing. We can’t buy more cheese as Argentine customs will confiscate them so we are eating what we have. We are focused on border crossing now which is excellent. New Switzerland:
Scenes from the road yesterday.
We’ve had a slight heatwave lately with highs over 80 degrees. Weird for winter but I like it. No idea what’s going on but being warm is enjoyable.
Much money being spent to widen an underused rural highway where city streets everywhere in Uruguay could use some urgent repaving.
I love the tree lined highways.
