Eric came back shortly later, a fresh bucket of soapy water and some other cleaning tools and began to help Adam clean. He proved to be quite fast at cleaning, that isn't to say Adam was cleaning wrong, after all that would be a feat in itself, but Eric, despite never cleaning a car, or APC for that matter, seemed adept at cleaning enough that he quickly outpaced Adam's work.
Regardless, with two people the APC was cleaned in short order, at least from the outside there seemed to be very few issues. The only major one he noted was the outer layer of the front right tire had a hole in it. Of course it would work perfectly fine, it was designed for this exact purpose, in case one layer was breached by a bullet, the inner hull would likely remain perfectly fine. Of course these tires were at least partly resistant to small arms fire, so it was not an expected outcome. But when you pull a feral ghoul's rib out of the hull of a tire that punched through it is pretty clear what happened.
Regardless other than that the exterior of the APC showed no issue So Adam headed inside to check the engine and battery. The Battery needed a charge, after all he had been dragging this thing all over Chicago right after he installed it, it was a wonder it held up as long as it did. But that was an easy enough fix, he could just run a wire from the Vault which had more than enough power to spare.
So this was their first task, Adam went back into the Vault, got a long power cord from storage and then strung it along the ground from the Vault back to the surface where he could do some electrical work and allow it to directly charge the battery. The work was a bit slipshod, especially since none of this stuff was meant to work together, but Adam made sure it was the correct voltage before he started to recharge the battery.
Originally he had intended to directly hook it up to somewhere inside the Vault and then bring the cord outside, however that proved to be a wasted effort. The Vault door itself would cut any cord that was laid down on its path. After all it was meant to keep a tight seal to keep radiation out, there was no way a power cord laying in the doorframe was going to survive the crushing force of the vault door. However Adam lucked out, on the exterior of the sides of the Vault door there were two large lights that would power on when activated. Therefore they too were connected to the vault's generator. So, with a bit of tinkering, he pulled one of them off and then wired into the Vault through there. Slipshod, no doubt, but it worked.
Of course through all of this he was telling Eric what he was doing and why. He was still quite unsure how to teach but he figured if he at least explained his thought process Eric would start learning. He also answered any questions Eric had, which was a lot. Due to Eric's presence this process alone took much longer than it would have if he was alone, but the promise of an extra hand in the future with repairs made this an investment worthy of his time.
Once the battery was charging he then set out to do something he had wanted to do for the longest time. Make the APC much harder to steal.
Military vehicles don't especially have keys, you just push a button and it turned on. However Adam had installed a key to prevent theft. The problem was his work was rather jury rigged, not only was it clear it was not meant to be there, it could be easily bypassed with a very simple hotwiring due to the exposed wires. This was not an ideal solution. So instead he decided he was going to take the time to truly give the APC a much needed security system for its engine.
Adam tore out part of the dashboard, which was not easy, and then got to work putting a new ignition switch right into the dashboard. He didn't necessarily need to make it look like it was naturally supposed to be there, but he did want to make it look good.
Cutting through a metal dashboard was not easy in the slightest, however he did have some tools in the Vault to make his life easier. Once done he slipped the same ignition switch into the spot and then closed it all back up. Now, unless someone had heavy duty tools to pull off the dashboard as well as the knowledge how to hotwire no one would be driving this thing without his key.
While he was doing all this other stuff the battery was still charging however it was not close to being done anytime soon so, with a bit of extra time to adapt the power cord further, he added an automatic switchoff when the battery was full and then left it alone to charge without his constant vigilance.
By now, all his work had taken most of the day, and he still had a laundry list of things left to do. Eric looked beat too, despite having mostly just observed, but he did seem to learn some things so it was a start.
However, since the APC was open to allow the battery to charge he did not feel comfortable leaving it alone overnight so, after returning to the Vault, he ordered Rae to become the APC's babysitter for the night leaving them to watch guard it just in case. Rae was more than happy to do this.
After a meal Adam then got to work on his next project inside the Vault, the sentry turrets.
Adam had thought long and hard about whether to put the sentry turrets outside the Vault or inside the Vault. Outside they might be more helpful to establish a defensive zone, but inside, if the worst were to happen, they would stop invaders at the gate.Ultimately Adam decided that keeping them at the entrance of the tunnel outside was the smartest choice for the moment. They would do practically nothing inside the Vault anyway. Once he has built that wall around the entrance he envisioned he could put them in better positions for more coverage, but for the moment, simply having them out might help a bunch.
The installation process was simple, it was the programming, as per usual, that was the lengthy chore. Still, he could more or less reuse his programming from the fight with the ferals with only a few tweaks. This was why he even bothered to bring the computer Mira found along. It saved him a lot of work. As they were right now, they were in passive mode, effectively attack if attacked. They would only attack first if someone it recognized as friendly nearby was attacked first. Regardless, this was a one man job, there was not much for Eric to do here so instead Adam gave him homework.
Yesterday, when he was spending his night leisurely, he had stopped into the library to see what books they had that he might find useful. One of those books was a how-to on coding, another was a how-to for robot repair and a third was a mechanic's magazine all about cars. Reading all this would be Eric's homework. It would take him a while to get through it all, but it meant that Adam didn't need to do everything with him.
The rest of that day was spent working hard, Adam still had a huge checklist of things to do, but he had mostly fixed up his APC and set up the laser turrets outside. It may not seem like much, but every bit helped. However it was dawning on him how many days of work he was setting himself up for if this was all he could get done today.
But, with that thought in his head, he decided it was time for sleep so he headed back to his room to get some shuteye.