The title is a line from the movie Wonder and an inside joke in our family.
I awoke this morning to a strange smell in the campground. A sulfury smell…was it sewer? Propane leak? Joe came over for breakfast and noticed it too. He thought sewer. Who was responsible for this terrible smell?? I thought it smelled industrial, maybe it was coming from a car or tires? After an hour or so, we determined the smell was coming from the front of my camper where the propane is stored. I quickly turned the tanks off by shutting the valve on top.
Propane has an odor added to make leaks detectable. When the tank gets low, sometimes you can smell it even if there is no leak. When the smell didn’t go away after closing the tanks, I took the tanks off the camper and neither was low. When I took them off, there was still negative pressure in the lines so I figured it was probably not a leak in the lines.
The smell persisted even with the tanks off. Joe and I continued investigating between making and cleaning up breakfast and getting kids packed and ready. Melissa was gone at church and when she got back, the plan was for all of the Yatzecks to go to different activities they had planned today.
I finally noticed that the smell seemed to be coming from the battery case. When I took the top off the case, the smell was much stronger. Bingo! But why did it smell like sulfur? Google to the rescue.
The Yatzecks had to get on the road so I kept troubleshooting on my own and then phoned a friend – Nole – to get some extra support. Meanwhile, the maintenance guy for the property stopped by to ask if I needed help. He got a voltmeter from his workroom and we checked the battery to see if overcharging was the problem. Luckily it wasn’t, according to the voltmeter.
Nole suggested I take it to a car parts place to get it tested but I thought it might still be okay.
The top of the battery case has ventilation holes in it. The previous owner of the camper had them covered with duct tape which I replaced before we left home because the edges were loose. I believe this may have contributed to whatever was going on with the battery, maybe in combination with draining the battery so low and then recharging it.
I unplugged the camper and let the battery cool down for a few hours. Besides being stinky, the battery also was making a humming/hissing noise and was very warm to touch.
While I waited, I did our laundry, took a shower, explored the campground, and worked a little bit.
After the battery had cooled down for a couple of hours, I plugged it back in and within a few minutes the odor was back and the battery was heating up.
I followed Nole’s earlier advice and took it to the parts store 10 minutes away, in town. They tested it, charged it and tested it again. It failed and I needed a new battery. They gave me the only one they had similar to mine and off I went to install it.
The battery has posts on top that these ring terminals slide over. Then you tighten down a nut on top of the ring. The red side fit just fine but the black side was too small to go over the post on the new battery. What the heck?
After consulting with Nole again, I went back to the parts store and got new hardware and did the repair myself, cutting the wire and replacing the terminals and nuts. Even though the red side fit as is, I had enough parts to replace that one too so I went ahead and made them match.
Melissa and Katy came back from their adventure just in time to see me install the new terminals and the battery. Melissa brought out her mail from the last few weeks that Mary brought when she rejoined us yesterday. A lot of us was junk mail and she let Nova and Katy open it all. They got really into it and decided to use it for “crafts”. They made credit cards and IDs out of it. Looks like they might have a future in counterfeit goods and document forging.
Also in the junk mail was a copy of the Declaration of Independence. We decided to hang it on our “tavern” (i.e. camper) door like they did during the Revolution.
Melissa and I had shrimp tacos after making sure the three girls each had a nutritious dinner. It was nice cooking for a small group after the last few weeks of cooking for 8-11 people! Yesterday, this group ate 2 rotisserie chickens, 5 boxes of mac and cheese, and a salad for dinner!
Melissa and I went for a walk to get some steps in. Then we played Finspan, a fish version of one of our favorite games, Wingspan. We each won a game and then more Yatzecks arrived from their adventures around 10pm. I guess the tie-breaker will have to wait!
Martins Take Flight 