Cold! and mural finished

Arrived at the van at about 10pm on Friday, the much touted cold weekend!

I had been thinking for a while how to use the redundant heat of the car engine, making a makeshift storage heater, with stones/ a hot water bottle. Anyway, in the meantime I thought it would do to heat up my curry leftovers. Wrapped it up in foil and placedon top of the engine. It got warm after 20 minutes.
The temperature really dropped that night, I made a couple of videos to document.

When I arrived the inside temperature was about 7-8 C, this dropped steadily through the night. It did disturb my sleep, at about 3.30am to boil the kettle for my hot water bottle. The temperature reading then was 2.8 C inside. When I woke in the morning it was as below,

Saturday evening, I worked inside the van. A bit of body heat will help right?
I get the mural wallpaper finished and the right hand windowsill.

It's worked out pretty well. Saturday night was not so cold and I think my tactic of working to keep warm helped (it was after 11pm I downed tools). I kept the windows less open, and the CO2 reading was offscale in the morning (>6500 ppm), but the air felt OK, and airing in the morning brought it back to normal.

I have one tiny tear in the paper, and I notice in the morning that a hand sized section on the curve is not in contact with the wood, nothing I can do about either. I will add an angle moulding across the top next time, and varnish the paper for protection.

Now the winter projects need doing- upping the door insulation and adding a heat exchanging vent. In the meantime I will be more cautious planning to stay over!

Desert mural

Now, I am working on adding a wallpaper mural of a Route 66 view to the front curved wall. This was an early idea to go alongside reducing the front windows. I bought the mural in about March, so really want to see this finished...

The front wall is faced with standard 3.6mm plywood on the lower section, this is nailed in place. A couple of joints are not quite perfect. The top section is faced with flexible plywood and is NOT square, this will be an issue with the paper.

I buy thick lining paper and this goes on OK, I have to make several darts across the top to deal with the curve. Some joints and nails are still visible, so I add another layer of lining paper.

I hope I have learnt how to do this shaping with the cheap paper, now for the real stuff.
The mural is in 4 parts that you paste clockwise from the bottom right. The size is about 3 m wide and 2 m high, so I choose which view to go for (van about 2 m wide). I measure it so that the vertical join is down the right hand side of the window.

All through I am pasting the wall, although I am not supposed too; no choice. It just means each piece is a bit slow to put up as I wait for the paper to get damp and deal with the bubbles etc. I got a bit confused with the measurements, obviously it matters with this stuff, but nothing I haven't been able to cope with as I go.

First piece up successfully.

Pretty happy so far. There is a small tear in the paper halfway up the window, it doesn't show in this picture. I hope it will be unnoticeable when I fix the windowsill.

That's all I managed, back this weekend to finish it.

Chassis repairs

The repairs to the chassis are important, as this is fundamental to being roadworthy.
But I have not enjoyed this part, and because I delayed it, it caused extra problems. I also needed to use in total 3 mechanics and ordered various bits and bobs - this is now complete more or less!

The van is old - estimate 1985-1988. Not only does this mean some parts are shot due to age but some are no longer available.

So the instructions to the mechanics went like this:

1. (On purchase) "Yes, I know its a wreck, just do what you have to so I can tow it without killing anyone."
2. (Before driving Lancashire to Surrey) "Yes, I know its a wreck, but the first mechanic told me the chassis was basically sound?... just help me work out how to get all the workings around the A frame at the front fixed. Oh, and do that work please."
3. (After 2 months use, mostly on the same site in Surrey. After the site owner refused to move it having 'done his back in' trying to get the jockey wheel to behave, and after a few conversations where they said, 'it just won't move,' to which I said, 'well I did it'. My welcome is worn out... ) "Yes, I know it's a wreck, but I've hot most of the parts. My last mechanic just didn't have time to get the missing bits so I had to delay the work. I know it was unsafe, still I got here and I didn't kill anyone..."

This has been a slow piece of investigation work. The good news was that the basic chassis rectangle is fine, as is the axle. The wheels are adequate, new tyres were installed at the start.

The hitch worked on the first move, but after 6 months in the Darwen elements, it was seized. The hitch is attached to a large piece of steel which bolts onto the A frame. It also includes the damper, handbrake and emergency cable.

Detective work on the chassis reveals this label retrieved from the axle centre in the rain by Keith (father-in-law, thanks).

The correct coupling for this chassis is ALKO 90S, which I duly ordered. However, it is not that simple.

The handbrake on this is a 'gas lift' one, this is fundamentally different from the ratchet type on my van. ALKO don't sell that anymore. This part could not therefore be fitted, the brake cable under the van was also seized. What mechanic 2 did was remove the hitch bit on the left and fitted that only. So I did the long drive with no handbrake, the van is probably about 6-700 kg, I was assured this is OK as long as driven cautiously.

Mechanic 3 was very perplexed when confronted with this. After much head scratching and googling, I got hold of the following parts, which he came back and fitted in an afternoon.

In the intervening months, the handbrake cable had freed up, so that's something! Above is the required type of handbrake. Another issue was that the jockey wheel was an integral part of the removed coupling, meaning I needed a new jockey wheel and a clamp to bolt to the side of the coupling (this was also wrecked, hence the back problem described above... ). The other part in the picture is an energy store to assist the brake mechanism, its predecessor was likewise wrecked. The parts pictured cost £55 and the coupling was £180 but I hope to sell the handbrake from that - it's no use to me. No picture of van, I haven't even seen the work yet.

The other chassis related problem I had is using the corner steadies/ legs. These were really difficult to move with the standard 19mm socket often sold for this purpose. With much added grease and scrubbed of dirt, these now turn much better, but I have found the bolt heads were getting rounded. This problem was getting worse, but using an 18mm socket instead more or less resolves the problem - I have one spindle quite bent but can live with that. It would be a major hassle to replace the spindles or leg assemblies. 

October update

Been very slack updating the blog. Lots of progress but also it doesn't seem like much, as I am only working on the van alternate weekends while spending time with mum.

Any way here goes:

So I started working a fold away table. I took ideas from a few online sources, especially this excellent video - https://youtu.be/owluWNKs7dU
I had some 25mm tube lying about, it was from a disused breakfast bar, and I tried to use this. Following advice I bought some bits for galvinised pipe (scaffold really), this is slightly bigger than the tube I had. This caused an issue as did the weakness of the tube. See below

At this stage I was optimistic, I had spent some time crafting some 18mm marine plywood to be the table top. This is a bit heavy, so the next stage caused a problem...

Oh dear, so I shortened the 'horizontal' section to stabilise it, this is only partially successful.

A bit more tweaking and its usable.

I did improve on this by replacing the 2 top pieces of metal tube with stronger steel, that was attached to the original ugly table. You can seethe final version in thevideo below. I am pretty happy with it now, it is easy to assemble and disassemble and sturdy.

I got some coloured elastic to make nice ties for the glasses and mugs.

I started on the widowsills with flexi-ply but there is lots more labour required on this.

A few weeks later, I just recorded a video to show progress, but iPad battery died half way. Anyway  now I've accidentally deleted it...

In few words, I have finished the upholstery on the difficult folding part of the mattress. I bought large curtains to cut down for the top faces, and some quite cheap plain material for the rest. I bought a Singer sewing machine from Argos and have been learning to use while bizarrely choosing the most difficult section first. It's surprisingly OK and sturdy, even the zip went in quite easily. For the whole project I have bought a 5m continuous zip. I used this tutorial to help - https://jennyswizzle.wordpress.com/2012/08/04/campervan-mattress-cover-tutorial/

Composting toilet 🚽

Looking forward to a proper 'eco' part of the project. I have bought a urine seperator and detailed instructions from Free Range Designs.
This will fit easily in the existing 'bathroom'. The toilet will deal with the 3 'p's. The urine in a bottle can be used on the garden. The poo will compost, I think I will use the sprinkle sawdust approach to speed it up and reduce odour.
I am using left over wood for this. The seat base will be 18mm marine plywood but chipboard at the edges because my wood is not quite wide enough. Used a jigsaw to cut the centre hole.

I follow the instructions to build the box, but as the toilet will be boxed in by the shape of the room, I don't need to face the back or sides. A small shelf is added to prop up the urine collector. I looked in lots of shops and online for a suitable bottle, but was not impressed. I decided to use an empty fabric softener bottle - this is ideal and nicely fits the spout from the seperator. Together these parts are shown below.

I need to secure the bottle in place, later.

I tried and failed to get an old second hand wooden toilet seat, and ended up paying £30 at Argos. The tricky part is making this airtight. The rubber spacers are easy to remove from the bottom of the seat and lid. I also remove the hinge, and saw the back to get a straight edge. This makes a mess of the varnish which I didn't like anyway so I sand this off.

The bit that sticks out at the back will act as a stop when the lid hinges.

Next idea is paint the seat and lid with the blue coach paint. I use the undercoat and 2 coats of coach paint (Tekaloid 318) as on the exterior.

The attaching into the van is straightforward, I add a handle to the lod because there is no gap to get a grip of it otherwise.

Bed completed✅

Been using the van for about a week now. Not had wifi good enough to update blog until now.

All of the below done on 6th August, spent 2 nights on the bed prior to this. I decided to drive the van with the mattress intact, mostly because I ran out of time. Not super comfortable the first night, because I forgot to bring a pillow, and 1 makeshift curtain fell repeatedly in the night... was fine the second night when I rectified these errors.
After the first drive (about 150 miles), the mattress slipped forward about 6 inches.

Above is how it looks as a bed before 'surgery'. I watched a few videos on YouTube cutting mattresses, and realised my bed base will be the perfect support to do these cuts, and I used a regular wood saw.

The mattress is foam with a latex topper(18cm height from BedzRUs), it arrived rolled and is very lightweight.

First cut was easy.

This didn't go quite so well, I think because I was leaning awquardly.

And the finished product in action.

The following day I added a piece of wood trim to stop the mattress slipping forward in transit, the ends aren't quite finished yet, and I haven't added  latches to the hinged doors yet either.

Extra hands -painting

Sunday 23rd July

Only a week and a half until planned departure, so getting a bit worried now...

Alan has volunteered to help with painting, so the plan is to clean and paint all the white sections of the exterior wall, finish the bed, and finish as much as possible with the electrics. I will restrict this post to the painting, can't get it all done this weekend.

Cleaning
First job, clean. This goes quite easily. I bought some stuff called 'Caravan Cleaner' from Aldi, it smells nice and does the job. Needs thorough rinsing though as it does leave a residue.

Windows
Second job, get the windows out. This is why I had not properly installed the frames, this was quite straightforward I tried my best not to damage the rubber seals. These all came home with me for cleaning.

Rails
Third job, remove rails. This is a bit messy, as involves removing mastic. I am an expert now (chisel, white sprit, meths) but this is not fun.

Primer and first coat
Now ready for primer. I bought Tekaloid paint, the primer is a greeny grey colour. It goes on well with a roller, but is really sticky and hard to get off hands. The instructions say leave for 4 hours, in the end Alan starts the top coat probably about 2-3 hours later with no trouble.
Topcoat is Tekloid T318 coach enamel. It is obvious 1 coat is not enough, and Alan manages 2 by end of play. We left the front panel.

Hometime
The weather forecast had been dodgy all day but we got away with it, dark clouds start gathering at about 7pm though. We try to protect as best as possible, but the windows have to stay out overnight! I cut up and use masking tape to attach plastic sheeting, don't have enough so use a waterproof blanket on the back. At least its not windy.
Go home and at about 10pm it starts hammering down with rain. Nothing can be done, just fingers crossed.
In the morning I find the blanket fell down, but the rest is OK, and no evidence of water ingress 😅

Topcoat
Quite straightforward to finish off the paint now with a second coat.

Windows
I cleaned up all the rubber seals in the morning, and reattaching them goes well with the staple gun. The top rails need to go back on before hanging the windows, and the weather has turned against us. Cleaning up the rails is just the pits. Anyway, I put them up without mastic and minimal screws, this will need redoing when the weather is more cooperative!
The cleaned up windows and fittings all then go back in fairly easily, only problem was me chipping a corner off the bathroom window - I manage to get a good seal with Gorrilla glue.

I have left the lower rails off, this joins the section that will be blue, so no point doing this yet.

Saturday 29th July
A few days to go...
The white looks good, this time we want to get the roof and the front panel done.
Same routine, apart from using the ladder this is easier than last time, as there aren't many rails involved.
The primer goes on easy, prioritise the front panel as this requires the window to come out. Bought some cheap rollers, unfortunately a bit of fluff comes away - another 'feature'. Late in the day, on to the topcoat. Today this is really attracting flying insects! Quite a few fail to get away.
Nice to open the blue paint at last.

Sunday 30th July
Weather forecast is showery. By the end of the day, the roof and all the light blue are done.

Nearing the end

A burst of good weather inspires me to paint the front box, and lower panel 9except on the damaged left side.



Finishing the electrics

I have a few better crimp terminals, so I tidy up the connections made last time, and wire in the energy meter. A bit worried to turn on after what happened last time, but all goes well. I fit a 20A socket in the kitchen, and a 10A double socket near the battery box. I also wire in a new pushon light for the bathroom.
I complete the wiring of the energy meter, ths involves a shunt. It works but needs calibrating (voltage seems right, but it says about 7A current draw when nothing is connected) but I leave it for now.

Bed building

So I take my work from Sheffield to the van, and the install goes OK. Slow and steady as I have to bond plywood to timber framing and leave each one for hours to dry.

Here you see the general appoach, pile heavy stuff on to get a good seal.
I made a video at the end.

But my phone battery died before I finished.

Bed - 2nd side

I toyed with various ideas for this part of the bed. First I thought of a fixed bench with storage underneath, but the measurement did not work. The other part of the bed is 80cm wide, and with the pullout reaches about 137cm. The width of the van is 197cm, and a standard double bed is 190cm.

Then I thought to repeat the design on the facing side, but with a height of 35cm and depth about the same this did not seem practical.

Then I happened upon this image on pinterest, but I could not find any accompanying information and it did not seem finished. In any case I used this as a template.

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/46/4a/51/464a51ed4ac5f839ea1fb1e7b80d8926.jpg

The top is made of 3.6mm plywood and has a hinge to a slightly smaller piece of plywood. I used a piano hinge, problem is evident that the screws I used protrude from the plywood, I needed to attach an extra strip of plywood and to chisel a hollow to allow this to lie flat. 

This will fold and rest on 3 doors, the remaining problem is supporting the length of plywood at the far edge. For this I constructed 2 rectangles of wood to be braced between the 3 doors. The doors need catches to hold them closed, and wooden stops to hold the wooden rectangles. I find the door on 1 end can move slightly past the normal but this has not yet caused a problem.

I have been storing the wooden rectangles (not shown) inside this bench, but this is not a good use of the space as they are at an angle wasting space. Next step is to face them with plywood and have them form a 'back' to the bench, this can have the double purpose of filling the gap at the edge of the mattress and the space available (190 vs. 197cm).

If doing this again I would have the foldout plywood rest on the edge of the pullout on the facing side, then the supports would not be needed.

Electricity is an honest teacher!

A few mishaps setting up the electrics, but nearly there now. Pleased to have this sorted with no help, sharing this to help others, I quite realise my first error was potentially pretty serious...

Problem 1- connecting the battery
So having realised my plan to put all the switches and breakers on the negative line failed (last electrics post), I set about undoing that setup. First I disconnected the wires from the battery and solar controller so there was no input.

Original setup
I moved all the negative outputs from the circuit breakers to the common negative connection bank. I swapped these out with the positive outputs now attached to the circuit breaker outputs.
I then disconnected the wire from the positive battery terminal from the negative input and connected to the earth block. I added a short brown wire from here to the main positive input of the main circuit breaker (bottom left of big block).
I also changed the colour of the wire looping between the individual circuit breakers positive after the main one (accross the top).
Can you spot what I missed?
Well I didn't and it was low down so out of sight. I should have moved the negative battery input to the common negative block.
So I connected the battery and the wires from the battery fried! As they were not designed for high current (27 A thankfully) the red wire quickly melted breaking the circuit and saving my bacon! Below is the evidence:

 Frazzled red wire😟

Here you can't really see but the red input wire goes to the earth block and a short brown wire is just seen correctly attached as the main input (bottom left of big block), but unnoticed is the black wire behind. This should have been connected to the negative block. 😓😖

So the red and black wires cooled down and were removed, I opened all the windows to get rid of smoke, and had a coffee break... So that was alarming but easily fixed.

A new blue wire goes to the negative block from the battery negative, and a new brown one to the earth block from the battery positive. Switched on and all is good 😅.

Problem 2- lighting
You may recall my test of the led strip lights had them weirdly dimmng along a 5m run. The cause of this became obvious with the 1.9m run I cut to attach to the wall. I saw the same thing, but this time the whole setup got worryingly hot and a small buzzing came from the dimmer switch. If you look at the earlier video you can maybe spot the error.
I had foolishly connected the red and black wires at the other end of the strip, no idea why I did this, I suppose it seemed strange to leave it unconnected.
So actually I had set up a gradual short circuit again, and the voltage ramped down along the now 3.8m length explaining why the bulbs near the end failed, and why it got hot. The current was not high enough to trip the circuit though.

Hindsight is 2020, so now I clearly see that all the bulbs are in parallel, the circuit is complete and each bulb draws very little current. I have setup 2 identical strips controlled by a single dimmer switch, the extent of the dimming seems useful but not seen dark here yet!

I have mostly installed an energy meter to monitor voltage/ current/  enrgy and power with a shunt, but this is not yet connected.

Bed

I started building a pullout double bed in my room in Sheffield last week. I am taking inspiration from the Deep Red motorhome blog, http://www.deepredmotorhome.com/bed.php  and the Amazing Odyssey youtube channel, https://youtu.be/l_g6XLDA2i8

Basically it will span the width of the van with pullout sections that join in the middle. One side will be bigger and form a sofa, the other side will be just a bench.
The main timber I am using is 44x18mm softwood, I have bought 30m of this from Wickes. I am doing simple butt joints on the pullout sections using wood screws. I will try to do the 'sofa' first. Depth cut to 81cm, and width, standard double 137cm. The width is divided in 2 for the pullouts.

 This is the full closed size, you can see the longer wood in the centre braces the structure.

This is the fully pulled out size.
I repeat this process to make the other half. Now for the base. These slats will be on hinges at the back to access storage and will sit square on a frame which will be 35cm high. I do a different kind of wood joint on the verticals so that they will be less visible and detachable in situ. Wooden dowels, 6mm, but I find this requires a 5.5mm drill.

The back is not closed as it will attach to the van wall, and the wheel arch isin the way. The sides will be braced with ply, I plan to get some nice veneered stuff.

I haven't attached the hinges yet, but it all seems to sit and slide well.

Tbc

Electrics cont...

I have done a lot of work on the electrics, but at the end of the weekend came away late and disappointed... not much worked!

I had been busying myself withe the solar panel, battery consumer unit and various other electrical components away from the van for weeks. Most parts have come now (eBay and amazon thank you), but I am waiting on an energy meter and one circuit breaker.

First the LED lights, I bought a 5m strip with a couple of dimmer switches, I plan to chop it into 3 and expect this to provide enough light (except in bathroom). Below is a trial I did with the entire 5m strip to see what happened. I had this running on a 5A limited supply of 12V, no problems.

This setup in my bedroom was floating (unearthed). The instructions with the solar panel state that it must be positive earth, this has confused me no end, and this is what I planned to do at the weekend.
My consumer unit is original from the van, I have just bought a 20A circuit breaker to take the line for the kitchen (150W kettle).

Below is my sketched circuit diagram, and as I arrive I have the connections to the consumer unit intact seperate from the battery, and the solar controller is ready to be reunited with the solar panel.

The wiring route to the lights is set up so this is easy to connect inside to the 5A line. I have a recycled line of 27A wire running front to back strapped to the underside of the van, this links to the 20A line for the kettle. The third one for a double 12V socket, I don't connect.

It's a bit of a squash to get everything in the wooden box, but it's OK and apart from the energy meter I am still waiting for. Looks good.

I can run the inverter but the noise from the internal fan is quite loud. Now, I got confused with the positive earth instruction and decide it would be safer to put the switches/ circuit breakers on the negative line as this is 'hot'. I connect the earth to the positives, however whatever I try to turn on the breaker trips. I check all my connections and everything seems fine, but no joy... I have to leave it, I realise on discussing it, the current dirction matters through these breakers, so I will have to move them to the positive side.

Road lights

I return to the task of fixing up the road lights, and get the back ones off for a spring clean. They'll be fine, but I need a couple of bulbs.