The Van

Tuesday 27 March 2012

Light in the fridge!

Lighter evenings! Brilliant  I can work on the van after work. Tonight I managed to finish insulating the roof, around the bathroom rooflight , that I fitted at the weekend. There's no picture as I'm sick of the site of celotex .
Also the fridge is now wired up ! The interior light is very bright. We'll be trying it out at the weekend, when we are camping out in the van to test out the bed.

Sunday 25 March 2012

Fitted one of the Seitz windows in the rear door.Be able to look out while laying in bed now.Only one more window to fit now, in the other door.

More Windows !

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Sunday 18 March 2012

Wardrobe Planing.

Thought I'd fit the turbo vent in the roof and a Seitz window in the back door,this weekend.It was raining Saturday morning! So there was a change of plan.
The fridge arrived this week, it's a 90 litre compressor type.It arrived in a massive box, on it's own pallet . Easily my biggest parcel yet! I'll be hardwiring it to the LB using 6mm cable and it's own 15amp fuse.I have already run the live/earth cables in the trunking under the floor, ready for connection later.
I have made a plinth out of 12mm ply for the fridge to sit on.It's about 62mm off the floor.Above the fridge will be the wardrobe.I have started to build the stud-work out of 18x44 softwood.It will be clad will 3mm decorative ply.

Monday 12 March 2012

Looking Like a camper

It's been very sunny this weekend so I washed the van and took some pictures.I fitted the fresh water tank filler cap, situated behind the sliding door.The fresh water tank will be fitted under the galley units, along with the water pump.
Also managed to wire in the monitor and two reversing cameras. A large one on the roof, above the doors and a smaller one, below the rear bumper.

Bought another 3 sheets of 6mm ply to finish panelling the Walls.I now need to frame the windows.

Saturday 3 March 2012

Fixed Bed.

Built up the rear bed today, decided that the mock up in an earlier post was too over engineered. So I settled on using 2 lengths of 75x50mm for the horizontal bearers.These two timbers were fixed to the steel ribs of the van with some M8x60mm bay pole screws. These are self tapping and wound in very easily with an impact driver ( my newest tool ).
I then built a frame out of 18x44 soft wood to form the garage area underneath.Then sat the Ikea bed base on top.I just need to cut and fit a sheet of 3mm ply underneath the bed base.
Also managed to box in and ply the wheel arches.the EHU consumer unit will be fitted to the o/s wheel box, next to the hook up plug which I have already fitted.
My order of cable arrived this week, so I can start wiring in some of the lights and the rear cameras.

Split charging.

As requested by Tim, some more details on the split charge system in use in my van.

A simple drawing of the system can be seen in the picture below.As the starter battery and leisure batteries are quite close I have used 16 mm2 welder cable and the thinner ones used between the relays etc are 1mm2 thick cables.A ring smartcom and a 100 amp relay and two 60amp midi fuses plus a blade fuse holder.Along with assorted ring terminals and blade terminals make up the system.

The system seems to be working ok , but only the reversing camera/ monitor are using power at the moment.

Friday 2 March 2012

Toilet door fitting.

I have now cut out another hole and fitted the thetford access door.This job was a bit tricky as I didn't have a template or any instructions! Managed to find a pdf file for thetford toilets, this gave some measurements and instructions.I then made up a cardboard template for the cut out size and a bigger template for the overall size of the door and frame.
I wanted to get the door as low as possible without cutting into the black plastic trim strip on the side of the van.After a lot of measuring I marked up inside and out and drilled a hole.Moved the whole thing 10mm towards the rear wheel arch and cut it out.Then I made up a wooden frame to go inside the van to put a bit of strength back as a strut had to be removed, where the door was.
Then I cut the piece the piece of metal that came off the van, to fit inside the door.Top tip when trimming the piece of metal is to cover the side which will be facing out with masking tape. This is because when you cut it with a jigsaw the metal shavings scratch the paint.