West Palm Beach

Tonight is our second night at the West Palm Beach Elks (map). They have three spots with hookups here, but they were full, so we are just parked in the lot. It's a straight 4-mile shot to the airport from here, so I have an easy drive in the morning to drop Louise off.

Yesterday we left Sebring on US98, which brought us along the eastern shore of Lake Okeechobee, after passing through the eponymous city just to the north. We peeled away from the lake along the St. Lucie canal, the Intracoastal Waterway shortcut across Florida. FL710 brought us the rest of the way.

As we drove through the town of Okeechobee, we spotted a self-converted bus, recognizable to us as an Eagle model that had been operated by New Jersey Transit, popular starting points for home converters. It was parked in the lot of an abandoned K-Mart, and the owner was clearly in the midst of a major project, involving most of the bays being open with tools strewn about. Our guts told us this was a breakdown, not just spring cleaning, so we pulled in to the lot to have a look and a chat.

It turned out to be fellow bus enthusiast Ed Way, who goes by the handle Tailfeathers in bus conversion circles. He did, indeed, have a problem, which was that his charging system was inoperative, and most of the electrics on the coach were not working.

We stuck around for two hours or so, during which time I was able to help him rule out the alternator and regulator as problems, and to trace the problem to some defective circuit, probably a short, emanating from the front J-box. I was also able to show him how to jury-rig the regulator so his batteries would charge anyway. Unfortunately, not being conversant with Eagles myself, and having no schematic, finding the problem circuit was going to run into multiple hours, time we did not have given our schedule. I think I got him half way to where he needed to be, though. I also posted about his plight on the bus conversion forums on the 'net last night, so more help may be forthcoming. Good luck to you, Ed, and glad to have met you.

Tomorrow morning I will drop Louise off at PBIA and head down to John Prince Park in Lake Worth. I booked the only site they had available, and the satellite photo shows that it is in the trees, so there is a chance I will not be able to get on-line there. In which case, this will be my last post for a while. Stay tuned...