"Fairly recent" means within the past year or so; recent is a bit of a relative term.
First up: I put in a little clock and USB charger thingy on the dashboard. The Ford chassis had no clock other than the one on the radio, and the quite inexpensive aftermarket radio I has doesn't show the time unless it's on and you press a very hard to find teeny button, assuming it's been set. I think it might technically display it with the radio off, but without a backlight for the LCD screen it's invisible for all practical purposes. Anyhow, this little clock is a bit hard to read sometimes but a great improvement, and the charger most handy. The location is partly dictated by where there was a hole in back of the plastic dashboard panel.
(Not the best picture by a long shot!)
Here's an Amazon link to the clock/charger I put in. There are several other very, very similar models available. Setting the time is a bit of a pain on this; the clock part is basically the guts of a wristwatch, held in place by the world's smallest Philips setscrew. It's necessary to undo this teeny screw some, pop out the clock part, manipulate the stem it has to change the time, and put it back in. Undoing the screw too far and losing it in the carpet is a good thing to avoid.
Second: also in the cab, I installed a map/reading light on either side, which is also quite handy. This proved to be a bit more work than I anticipated as I had to build a little support platform out of wood underneath and attach it to the metal structure of the cab to provide sufficient clearance for the swiveling eyeball construction of the light. The platform thingy is held in place with epoxy mainly.
I guess my headliner material is showing its age a little....
An Amazon link to these specific lights.
Third: on the subject of lights, I picked up on clearance at Ikea a set of LED strip lights (which were 12V versions) and put them in the trim strip under the entry door. It helps light the entry step very nicely. I did put a dropping resistor of a few ohms inline with them to keep the voltage somewhat near to 12V when the converter is in boost mode, but that's probably an unnecessary nicety.
The LED strips are not rated for outdoor usage, but they were cheap enough that I'm not too concerned.
This actually all started because the usual plastic insert for the channel had gotten cracked and broken with age, and the LED lights fit in and were less expensive than a replacement plastic part.
Fourth: I replaced the somewhat unreliable Duo-therm slide rule style thermostat with a simple digital one. The Duo-therm one had several annoyances: it was wildly inaccurate in temperature setting (off by 10 degrees or more); the temperature calibration was quite inconsistent between heat and cool modes; the temperature slider was getting worn and operated inconsistently; and, perhaps the worst, it was quite prone to short cycling particularly on the air conditioner setting, switching the AC on and off within several seconds. The last issue I partly solved by covering it with a boat of aluminum foil when using it to slow down the airflow through it and force it to respond a little bit more slowly.
Here's the new thermostat installed (yes, it's rather chilly in Vermont this time of year):
...and the requisite Amazon link to this particular unit.
This thermostat does have a few nice features: it can be set for either Fahrenheit or Celsius operation, has a temperature swing adjustment, and has adjustable temperature calibration. The instruction sheet also struck me as being above average in explaining how to install and set it up. The "SAVE" button just bumps the setting by five degrees to save energy; I guess the idea is you press it when you leave for the day and then press it again when you return to go back to the proper temperature. I don't anticipate using that very much.
Installation was pretty straightforward, once one figures out the odd naming scheme used for thermostat connections. On a thermostat, Rh and Rc (usually connected together) are connected to W to operate the furnace, to Y to operate the air conditioner, and to G to run the fans. The C connection,l which this particular thermostat doesn't have, is a return for the Rh/Rc connections to power the thermostat; in a house, things generally operate on 24VAC. The Duo-Therm thermostat labeled the connections not with these standard letters but with actual helpful (but nonstandard) words.
For my RV, the Rh and Rc connections are made to ground (i.e. ground activates the furnace and air conditioner). The air conditioner has two fan speeds, with two fan wires; for low speed, the fan control is used, while for high speed, both are used. Since the new thermostat has no provision for this, I wired it to always use high speed. An external switch could also be put in to select a speed by connecting or disconnecting the two wires.
The colors used on my motorhome were as follows:
Orange -- +7.5V for the thermostat power (not used with the new one, which is only battery powered, and so taped off in the wall)
Yellow -- cool, to the Y terminal
White -- heat, to the W terminal
Brown -- fan, to the G terminal
Blue -- fan high speed select, also to the G terminal
Green -- ground, to the Rh and Rc terminals.
I wrote on the wall (where the thermostat covers it up) the wire colors and their connections for future reference, if it's ever needed. I mention these details of wiring here in hopes that it may be helpful to someone else doing a similar replacement.
First up: I put in a little clock and USB charger thingy on the dashboard. The Ford chassis had no clock other than the one on the radio, and the quite inexpensive aftermarket radio I has doesn't show the time unless it's on and you press a very hard to find teeny button, assuming it's been set. I think it might technically display it with the radio off, but without a backlight for the LCD screen it's invisible for all practical purposes. Anyhow, this little clock is a bit hard to read sometimes but a great improvement, and the charger most handy. The location is partly dictated by where there was a hole in back of the plastic dashboard panel.
(Not the best picture by a long shot!)
Here's an Amazon link to the clock/charger I put in. There are several other very, very similar models available. Setting the time is a bit of a pain on this; the clock part is basically the guts of a wristwatch, held in place by the world's smallest Philips setscrew. It's necessary to undo this teeny screw some, pop out the clock part, manipulate the stem it has to change the time, and put it back in. Undoing the screw too far and losing it in the carpet is a good thing to avoid.
Second: also in the cab, I installed a map/reading light on either side, which is also quite handy. This proved to be a bit more work than I anticipated as I had to build a little support platform out of wood underneath and attach it to the metal structure of the cab to provide sufficient clearance for the swiveling eyeball construction of the light. The platform thingy is held in place with epoxy mainly.
I guess my headliner material is showing its age a little....
An Amazon link to these specific lights.
Third: on the subject of lights, I picked up on clearance at Ikea a set of LED strip lights (which were 12V versions) and put them in the trim strip under the entry door. It helps light the entry step very nicely. I did put a dropping resistor of a few ohms inline with them to keep the voltage somewhat near to 12V when the converter is in boost mode, but that's probably an unnecessary nicety.
The LED strips are not rated for outdoor usage, but they were cheap enough that I'm not too concerned.
This actually all started because the usual plastic insert for the channel had gotten cracked and broken with age, and the LED lights fit in and were less expensive than a replacement plastic part.
Fourth: I replaced the somewhat unreliable Duo-therm slide rule style thermostat with a simple digital one. The Duo-therm one had several annoyances: it was wildly inaccurate in temperature setting (off by 10 degrees or more); the temperature calibration was quite inconsistent between heat and cool modes; the temperature slider was getting worn and operated inconsistently; and, perhaps the worst, it was quite prone to short cycling particularly on the air conditioner setting, switching the AC on and off within several seconds. The last issue I partly solved by covering it with a boat of aluminum foil when using it to slow down the airflow through it and force it to respond a little bit more slowly.
Here's the new thermostat installed (yes, it's rather chilly in Vermont this time of year):
...and the requisite Amazon link to this particular unit.
This thermostat does have a few nice features: it can be set for either Fahrenheit or Celsius operation, has a temperature swing adjustment, and has adjustable temperature calibration. The instruction sheet also struck me as being above average in explaining how to install and set it up. The "SAVE" button just bumps the setting by five degrees to save energy; I guess the idea is you press it when you leave for the day and then press it again when you return to go back to the proper temperature. I don't anticipate using that very much.
Installation was pretty straightforward, once one figures out the odd naming scheme used for thermostat connections. On a thermostat, Rh and Rc (usually connected together) are connected to W to operate the furnace, to Y to operate the air conditioner, and to G to run the fans. The C connection,l which this particular thermostat doesn't have, is a return for the Rh/Rc connections to power the thermostat; in a house, things generally operate on 24VAC. The Duo-Therm thermostat labeled the connections not with these standard letters but with actual helpful (but nonstandard) words.
For my RV, the Rh and Rc connections are made to ground (i.e. ground activates the furnace and air conditioner). The air conditioner has two fan speeds, with two fan wires; for low speed, the fan control is used, while for high speed, both are used. Since the new thermostat has no provision for this, I wired it to always use high speed. An external switch could also be put in to select a speed by connecting or disconnecting the two wires.
The colors used on my motorhome were as follows:
Orange -- +7.5V for the thermostat power (not used with the new one, which is only battery powered, and so taped off in the wall)
Yellow -- cool, to the Y terminal
White -- heat, to the W terminal
Brown -- fan, to the G terminal
Blue -- fan high speed select, also to the G terminal
Green -- ground, to the Rh and Rc terminals.
I wrote on the wall (where the thermostat covers it up) the wire colors and their connections for future reference, if it's ever needed. I mention these details of wiring here in hopes that it may be helpful to someone else doing a similar replacement.
