I discovered that I had made a serious mistake building my electric boat, and while it never actually came back to haunt me, it could have been a very unhappy day on the water because of my stupidity.
And this is not a matter of ignorance, because I knew about this problem and have experienced it before.
This is where I did things in a rush so that I could get out on the water. This is one of the last things that I did, and I wasn’t thinking real clearly based on the evidence.
To explain the situation is very simple: I placed a non-conductor in my electrical connection. I put a bolt through a board and put a flat washer on it and two battery cables and a nut and tightened it down. This works fine as long as the wood never ever compresses and allows your connection to become slightly loose.
But of course wood on a boat swells and shrinks with time. After four years, this was enough to cause the connection to become slightly loose. You could tell how hot it got because there was char on the board.
Anyhow, it was a simple enough fix to re-order the connections so that there was nothing but metal between the two nuts.
So why am I kicking myself in the ass so hard about this? Because I have owned three General Motors cars where the ground connection from the heater blower was a rivet from the brush wire to the steel case. In each case, a fiber insulator (which is the base of the brush holder assembly) was placed between the steel motor housing and the brass ring terminal. A rivet holds it all together, for a while.
After about 60,000 miles (more or less depending on how rough the roads are where you live) the fiber insulator will compress and degrade and your ground connection will come slightly loose. Now that damn piece of fiber has absolutely no reason to be in the connection, except it was convenient at manufacturing and assembly. It is a total design error.
One day your blower motor is OK, and maybe the next day it is growling because of low voltage. You’ll hit a bump and then it will work fine again and you’ll think what the heck? Eventually it will probably burn the motor up, or it will just quit from lack of electricity. As soon as mine started growling I tore them apart and repaired them.
But not before I bought a brand new aftermarket replacement blower motor, put it on my car, and had it fail in less than a year from the same flaw!
Anyhow I have seen this happen on my Cadillac, my Bel Air, and a Silverado as well. I do not know what other vehicles & devices this mistake could affect, but it’s something to keep an eye on if you work on such things.
And this is not a matter of ignorance, because I knew about this problem and have experienced it before.
This is where I did things in a rush so that I could get out on the water. This is one of the last things that I did, and I wasn’t thinking real clearly based on the evidence.
To explain the situation is very simple: I placed a non-conductor in my electrical connection. I put a bolt through a board and put a flat washer on it and two battery cables and a nut and tightened it down. This works fine as long as the wood never ever compresses and allows your connection to become slightly loose.
But of course wood on a boat swells and shrinks with time. After four years, this was enough to cause the connection to become slightly loose. You could tell how hot it got because there was char on the board.
Anyhow, it was a simple enough fix to re-order the connections so that there was nothing but metal between the two nuts.
So why am I kicking myself in the ass so hard about this? Because I have owned three General Motors cars where the ground connection from the heater blower was a rivet from the brush wire to the steel case. In each case, a fiber insulator (which is the base of the brush holder assembly) was placed between the steel motor housing and the brass ring terminal. A rivet holds it all together, for a while.
After about 60,000 miles (more or less depending on how rough the roads are where you live) the fiber insulator will compress and degrade and your ground connection will come slightly loose. Now that damn piece of fiber has absolutely no reason to be in the connection, except it was convenient at manufacturing and assembly. It is a total design error.
One day your blower motor is OK, and maybe the next day it is growling because of low voltage. You’ll hit a bump and then it will work fine again and you’ll think what the heck? Eventually it will probably burn the motor up, or it will just quit from lack of electricity. As soon as mine started growling I tore them apart and repaired them.
But not before I bought a brand new aftermarket replacement blower motor, put it on my car, and had it fail in less than a year from the same flaw!
Anyhow I have seen this happen on my Cadillac, my Bel Air, and a Silverado as well. I do not know what other vehicles & devices this mistake could affect, but it’s something to keep an eye on if you work on such things.
