The bison and the river

"Man, I hope it's supposed to smell like that"- Author

The charger is untested. The only way to make it activate is for it to sense a "load" or pack of batteries. I've decided that I don't want to punch a hole in my basement wall unless I know it works. Now this is a hell of an impasse... I didn't build the damn extender cable long enough to wrap around the stairs and out the front door.

As I stare into the ceiling it hits me. I yank the clothes dryer vent duct out and snake the cable out through the dryer vent. It's only 6" from where I intend to make the hole anyway. Like a kid at Christmas I ran the cable out to the thirsty little pig and made the connections. It took a few trips up and down the stairs, but once I got the contacts seated in the new connectors right the charger powered up.

Boy howdy did it ever... A 25 year old Lester-matic charger is primitive to say the least. It's a giant silver box with giant transformers and rectifiers in it with a lawn-sprinkler timer and a couple of crude circuit boards. It makes a God-awful hum when the batteries are low as they put the biggest load on the charger. The first time it made a stink as it burned off the dust that had settled inside. It's also very "brute force". It will turn off automatically when the amps draw down from 40 to 5, but it can't sense individual battery states and it just does a best guess and turns off. At least it gets a lot quieter when the batteries get halfway full.

And it works. The whole operation is neat and tidy. The cabling all stays nice and cool from the breaker to the vehicle even under the heaviest loads since I didn't skimp and used heavy gauge wiring throughout.

With a little trepidation, I used my air chisel and chipped out a hole in my brick-front townhouse. It was a lot harder than I expected but I made it tidy by mounting a utility box on the wall from Home Despot. Not only did I run the charger output cable through this hole but I also ran an air hose from my air compressor and a normal extension cord for 110 household power. Now I can more easily use my air and electrical tools without snaking hoses and cords out of my windows or front door. When I sell the house, I'll install and ordinary 110 outlet there for whoever buys the place. When I'm not charging up, I coil the cable up next to the garden hose and the box is closed up all neat and tidy.

My neighbor and the condo-nazis haven't said a thing.