Java's F450 'Rough Road' RV

This just happened. Going in this weekend.

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As the saying goes, 10lbs of **it in a 5lb bucket...
Old vs new
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Out with the old
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New in place
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High and negative low volt done ish
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Too much shit to connect to the negative stud of the shunt....
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And I shorted myself on wire..... So I started on the batteries on Sunday.

Old ones coming out

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New insulation, I had a piece under the old ones, but it was thin and crushed over time. 1" of XPS used this time.

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The old cases showed a little rub wear between them, nothing really to worry about, but I added a little protection anyway. Old inner tubes, should give just a hint of space/cushion

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And all in place!
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And wired up. Need a bit more wire, and one USB to VE Direct for the victron stuff. I didn't realize you have to leave the head of the BMV in place, I was going to pull it and use the color control only.

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That's some serious amperage!!
Yeah, like wrap the wedding ring in electrical tape when working on it scary amperage....

Got all the power wiring done. Just need to run control wires (which takes being a contortionist.... ). Plugged it in, no smoke, flipped the breakers on, no smoke. Charger fired up and went to work!

One odd thing, the inverter charger wont pass thru the incoming AC unless its in invert mode?

Added a Big negative post.
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And all the power done! Just need to run control wires....
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I am so freaking sore. What idiot designed this f***king truck?!?!?!

48" deep, 9" wide.... My wires have to run at the VERY back edge.... Put both arms over your head, shimmy in, brace feet against other wall, breathe out and push.... Ouch. I am not a small person...

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After drilling two holes (because the first one was too small.....) Feed long stiff wire through and try to hit the hole in the upper shelf. Curse repeatedly. But I got it, take one VE direct cable, one power cable, and one ethernet, and hope like hell you can get it back thru the little hole.

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Removed the BMV, cut the hole for the Color control, and mounted it.

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Remounted the BMV (you need it for the battery calculations, the color control wont talk to the shunt directly....)

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And powered it up. No programming. I was exhausted at this point...

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Now the annoying part. The color control will not work with the bluetooth dongles.... WTF. I guess I will see if I can return the VE to USB I bought.... Stupid. It will work on wifi.... But you have to use their wifi dongle they like. And that's a sh$$it load more setup. I guess I will try to learn some networking..... If I can get on the house wifi from where the truck is parked that might be cool though.... Remote data logging is possible I guess. More to learn.
 
Alright smart people...... Help me out here.

Installed batteries, charger etc. Set the charge profile to what the battery mfg speed. 14.7 bulk, and I don't remember float... According to the meter it was full, taking in no more Power(plugged in for a couple days).

We took it out this weekend, and by this morning batteries were dipping to 12.0 under load.... Shunt showed 95ah drawn out, and ~87% left (set at 500ah). Jumped back to 12.2ish no load.

Battery temp was 39.8F (on the closet ones, the outer wall may be a little colder, but there is an air gap there)

WTF is going on??


And otherwise the weekend was pretty damn decent.

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Truck is now connected to the interwebs.

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How every good evening starts?

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Quiet little breakfast spot.
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And a couple little upgrades. Noticed my fire extinguisher was in the red last week. Been eyeballing these for awhile.
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And did one of these. I like it so far. My only complaint is its plastic. I got a different model originally, but it didn't cover the hole in the door.... But it was all metal.
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Rolled in late Friday night, nuking snow! Ending up with 7-8" and it kept snowing all day.

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Snow was amazing. We skied. A lot.

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Fun little cornice to drop off of.
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Saturday was gorgeous weather, so we skied then too.
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And I learned more new things..... With the truck now charging at higher voltages for the cold temps, the maxfans now turn off. They have a high voltage cutout..... I will need a resistor or some sort of DC-DC voltage regulator.
 
Well it seems that the Corona virus has killed the rest of the ski season.



But we did get two more days in in Idaho.

Spent Friday night social distancing ourselves..... this is one of our normal climbing spots, weird to see it in snow.

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Heading East on Saturday, it was windy, windy enough to be spinning the tractor trailers around and shoving them in the ditch. We passed 8 that were aiming the wrong way and jacknifed. I am SO happy with our trucks performance, I could tell it was windy, but it wasn't shoving us around at all. I think the articulation just killed the semis. It was super icy too. Long stretch of 35 in a 70 zone....

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But we made it over to Sandpoint ID just fine.

It was certainly beautiful, but 9 degrees, and REALLY windy.

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Ski in ski out lodging!

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And overall it was a really good year. We got a ton of great snow days. Ignore the speed since I forgot to turn the tracker off one day..... But thats a good year! The speed from last year is my personal best though :D

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Went to do brakes. Found this.....

Still holding 80 psi. Never aired down....

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I let all the air out. Crack stayed the same size (or really close). It must be something with the bead shape and or clamping???

I will pull the wheels apart when I get a chance, I want to see the inside.


From someone else who bought the same wheel/tires, here is the insert. Could the height/thickness of the insert be causing the tire to flex further into the sidewall instead of down towards the bead more?

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my thinking is saying the insert is causing the sidewall to flex more, rather than being able to rotate at the bead. Apparently its common for alu semi wheels to wear the beads out from this. I can see cracking if the tires are designed with that in mind.

Hopefully someone from Toyo will get back to me.
 
Well I am very surprised. Toyo tech/customer support would not even talk to me about it. They said take them to your place of purchase for diagnosis... Helpful. Wouldn't even listen to what I had to say. They have a 5.5 year warranty FWIW :rolleyes:
 
K its broken down. That was a chore. Insert isn't gonna come out.... I don't think... Plenty of run flat lube (grease....)


So this is as much as its pinching the beads, that is bolt on half popped up after bolts broken loose.
Not much
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Odd bolts? Locking of some sort?

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Beads were really stuck onto the wheel. Took a 3lb sledge to break the ring loose.

Lifted right off once unstuck from the tire.

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Insert and bead. Insert is exactly 1"

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Crack in the bead is about 1.5" up. Not really looking like its right at the interface between the ring and tire.

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Big runflat insert. Its HEAVY. And so much grease....

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Part number
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Definitely wont fit out easy!

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This is a bit of wear kinda inside the bead area. Both side. Road grime? You can see the bead profile also, looks normal ish?

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Look like a normal 19.5 bead??

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there is is.... Thoughts?
 
Well I have officially put 40k on this truck! Nice weekend away. Spent two nights at two of our go to spots.

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Back to tires. I saw this and thought it was interesting and maybe gives another clue?

Rear tire at 100psi after ~5 miles. City driving with stop and go.
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Front tires (70ish psi)
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More sidewall heat in the front? Could just be more spray on the rear tires also.

And had a little run in.... Was cruising up a FS road at about 30mph, car coming the opposite direction so I slowed down to probably 20-25 ish. Moved over, and bam the ditch grabbed both pass side tires! It was muddy, and maybe the edge gave way? Flopped the truck at a pretty good angle.... split second decision was to keep the foot planted and try to steer back onto the road. Took a good 100' probably to get it to grab and pull out of the ditch. Thank god there weren't any trees hanging over!

You can see all the soupy mud all over the side. Its on the bottom of the cabover even....
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Well I have officially put 40k on this truck! Nice weekend away. Spent two nights at two of our go to spots.

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Back to tires. I saw this and thought it was interesting and maybe gives another clue?

Rear tire at 100psi after ~5 miles. City driving with stop and go.
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Front tires (70ish psi)
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More sidewall heat in the front? Could just be more spray on the rear tires also.

And had a little run in.... Was cruising up a FS road at about 30mph, car coming the opposite direction so I slowed down to probably 20-25 ish. Moved over, and bam the ditch grabbed both pass side tires! It was muddy, and maybe the edge gave way? Flopped the truck at a pretty good angle.... split second decision was to keep the foot planted and try to steer back onto the road. Took a good 100' probably to get it to grab and pull out of the ditch. Thank god there weren't any trees hanging over!

You can see all the soupy mud all over the side. Its on the bottom of the cabover even....
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Glad you rode that out! Would have been more challenging than the avalanche!
 
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