Club 80-90 Forums

Great looking van the hard work has really paid off

Yes your van is looking great, well done!

Cheers folks for the feedback.

So weekend before last I got the urge to have a night away in the van. No point in driving miles for a single night away on my own so I booked into a camp site I have used earlier on in the year at Donington Park Race Track. I was the only one on the site so It was a new experience. Some may say I am slightly sad, but it was great to get away, pop the heater on, listen to the radio and read a book with no distractions

Anyways, It was exceptionally windy so the roof stayed down and the awning in. Still very enjoyable though and although I was tempted to stay for a second night I decided that I could do with getting a few things sorted on the van.

As seen previously I have bought and sprayed a front table leg holder that I wanted to get fitted. I decided to play it safe and take the battery out just to make sure I didn't damage it in the process. I was informed that I would need to take the drivers seat out to do this, but was surprised at just how easy it was to remove it. Anyways, an hour or so later the leg holder was fitted and another job ticked of the check list.

We still don't have a front table and I'm a little reluctant at this stage to fork out for a new one. They are very expensive . My brother wanted a carpet as a Christmas present from IKEA so last weekend we braved the crowds and drove over to our local store. I found a reduced price cupboard door at £2. Bargain . This will be my table top and will either tide me over until something original comes by at an affordable price, or I will modify this by covering it in aluminum or stainless steel

We are going away New Years day for a few nights in Bristol at the Baltic Wharf campsite so really looking forward to that. Having the extra table should help out as we always seem to struggle to find a place for the used pots and the TV. I guess we will find out wether its a worth while addition in a few weeks.

I have just collected the van from storage. Reason being is that in the next couple of weeks I should be in a position where I have purchased my second 100w solar panel and a second leisure battery. I'm taking my van over to the local auto electricians tomorrow so he can have a look at my van and advise me on a few things in relation to getting my solar setup working. I want piece of mind that the final fix is good and not dangerous in any way, so I am happy to pay for somebody that knows what they are doing. I hope to get most of the low amp wiring fed through cupboards etc so that the electrician can focus on connecting the wiring and running in the battery cables. There are a couple of other small jobs that I would like them to do as well so it should be worth their while and probably best part of a days work for them when I finally get all the parts for the job

For Christmas my wife has been so kind as to buy me a set of Terrapodz . It was meant to be a surprise but she had to tell me she had some on order as I was being impatient and was going to treat myself. Anyways, I won't be alowed to have them till Christmas now so I guess it's something to look forward to.

I made my own table, just use F0rd Polar Grey paint to paint the rim and it looks close to original.

If you shape that shelf though you'll need filler or something of course to fill the course woodchip texture, but would look good with a little effort.

A cheap small tv bracket with the right size bolt to screw the table to the leg finishes it off nicely (also spray grey).

Actually just noticed you mentioned spraying the table leg holder - what paint did you use, as that actually looks a slightly better match than the F0rd Polar Grey (unless it is that).

greasemonkey wrote: Actually just noticed you mentioned spraying the table leg holder - what paint did you use, as that actually looks a slightly better match than the F0rd Polar Grey (unless it is that).

Hi there. I have actually bought the swivel base for the table top. That cost £30. As far as the holes are concerned, I am going to get a sheet of aluminium approx 2mm thick cut to the same size as the board. This will be fixed to the top with countersunk self tapers. I'm doing this because I don't think the surface will be durable enough and want to protect it from hot pans etc.

The paint I used was brought from Halfords and is called industrial grey. It's not in the selection of paints for cars. There is a section with luminous paints etc

Terapodz fitted

But it ain't Christmas yet!?

Smosh wrote:But it ain't Christmas yet!?

I know....I was surprised when my wife let me have them early . I guess the fact of the matter is we go away in the new year (in the van). My wife and I are both working in between Christmas and the new year so having time before Christmas to fit them is probably the only time I will get before we go away. Yeah, I have convinced myself that is the reason why

Haha! At least you're convinced. van's looking good. Where you heading in the van?

Smosh wrote:Haha! At least you're convinced. van's looking good. Where you heading in the van?

We are traveling down to Bristol on the 2nd Jan. We're staying at the Baltic Wharf campsite in Bristol city centre for four days. Just chilling and browsing the shops and cafes.

I'm kinda hoping the temperature drops a bit. Not right being this warm this time of year

As has been mentioned previously our first major trip of 2016 came in the form of a 4 night stop in Bristol at the Baltic Wharf Campsite. We wanted to stop over on new years day but it was fully booked so had to settle for 2nd. I must admit I was really pleased with the location as it proved a cracking base for the City, SS Great Britain, Clifton village & the Suspension bridge. So once the van was parked up it was just a case of a short walk or ferry trip to any number of cracking locations


Van parked up at Baltic Wharf

Ferry into the City

Weather wasn't bad either which was a nice surprise


Anyways, while we were away I was keeping an eye on some Sherpas Combi Translift roofbars the same as the ones I have on my van which were up for sale on Ebay for £300. They had all of the extras mine were lacking like the locks for the rails and the Kayak cradles. I wasn't willing to pay the asking price and managed to come to an agreement with the seller which was in London. So we took a slight diversion on the way home to collect


We got home on Wednesday and having the rest of the week off my wife and I decided to head over to Newstead Abbey for a wander round with my mum.








So all in all not a bad start to 2016. Hoping to keep up the pace with many more trips away this year. Although I think last years tally will take some beating

Solar array and kayak holders fitted

Lots of work done on my van recently. Unfortunately it's not all documented on here in my Atlantic thread so lets rectify that .


As your aware i managed to fit the solar panels to my roof rack. From there i've managed to get the install completed along with an extra leisure battery.

I sourced these from eBay along with a pair of adapters that would allow both panels to hook into a single feed.

The next stage required drilling a hole in the pop top roof and mounting the cable entry gland with Sikaflex. I don’t make a habit of drilling holes in my van, but the way I looked at it was a hole drilled in the fiberglass pop top was far less intrusive than drilling a hole in the metal bodywork (which was an option I had seen done before). Each one achieves the same objective, and there is nothing to say that one way is right and the other wrong, but this is the route I decided to go down.

So I positioned and marked the gland on the roof for reference. Then drilled the hole.



The entry gland was positioned after feeding the cables into the aperture. And Sikaflex was used to bond it to the roof. This was held in position for a couple of hours with tape to allow time for the bonding agent to go off enough that I felt i could remove it.



So the solar cables lay coiled up on the bed in the top bunk for a month or so before i started pushing forward with the internal cabling. First job was to try and establish the best route into the wardrobe. Then drill a hole (eeek!).



The cable drops into the top of the wardrobe area initially on the outside in between the rear window curtain. The com’s /data cable was just eased up along the rubber where the wardrobe front and the roof meet and follows the same path the solar cables take into the wardrobe.


I made a small nick in the seal where it will rest and feed into the LCD display unit.

The unit itself came in black as pictured previously, so that’s been plastic primed and sprayed ‘industrial grey’ to more closely match the Westy interior.





Once the cables were fed into the wardrobe i needed to create a pathway to the location the solar controller would be sited. Since I decided solar would be a feature on my van I was looking constantly for information on how and where others had sited the components. The solar controller I had seen mounted in a multitude of places. These included

Inside the wardrobe – This would reduce space in an already narrow aperture and get in the way mounted higher up. Lower down this was not an option because this is used for the storage of shoes etc)
Outside the wardrobe underneath the LCD meter – This would look unsightly with all of the wires feeding into the controller and would be an unnecessary eyesore (IMO)
One particular location seemed better than any other. This was in one of the storage compartments next to the fridge underneath the rear table. It was deep enough that the controller would have enough room below it to accept the cables. So confident in my conviction that this was the place of all places, I set to drilling the two holes necessary to feed the cables and reach the unit. One hole was from the wardrobe to the first storage compartment above the water tank.

Feed from inside the wardrobe

Inside the first compartment

Feed into the second compartment next to fridge.

So once the cables were fed into the compartment the next thing was to mount the controller. I first placed the solar controller where i wanted it, marked the holes with a black pen and used a braddle to get the stainless self tappers to bite into the hardboard.

Solar controller mounted.

Here you can see the full run through to solar controller.

From wardrobe to cupboard

To neaten things up a little i have wrapped the cables in some cable tidy. I brought this from Maplin (UK) and was pretty pleased with the fact the colour is light grey. Far less obtrusive than black or white (although in the picture below it looks a little more obvious than it does in the flesh). The length was just right and i managed to feed all of the cables into the tidy and push it through the holes so it is one unbroken piece. It feeds all the way into the wardrobe and as far up as the outside of the wardrobe so a real neat job if i don’t say so myself.

Cables wrapped

Next I ran a two core cable from the controller to to leisure battery at the front. This was simply fed up through a gap in the unit and cable tied to the vent grid behind the cooker / draining board and sink. It then drops down into the cupboard.

Cable feed to leisure battery.

Below you can see the LCD display unit matched up in the location it will eventually sit. Not a perfect colour match but much better than the original black colour.



So the next thing to do was to wire everything together. I noticed that in the installation manual for the solar controller it states.

‘although the solar controller has built-in electronic protection, for safety and added protection please install inline fuses into the circuits between each battery and the controller, on the negative wire, as close to the batteries as possible. Current rating of fuses should be chosen according to the maximum power current / short circuit current of your solar panel’

I was a little confused because the printed installation / information manual that came with the controller also states that there should be a fuse fitted in the live from the solar panels also. So off I went to Maplin to get a couple of in line blade style fuse holders. I established that the rating of fuse i would use for both sides of the feeds would be 15amp. The short of each panel is just shy of 6amps so x 2 = 12 plus a little extra. I’m not an expert but my step dad (ex tv / radio engineer) confirmed this would be the rating i would need.

After a bit of wire stripping, soldering and heat shrink application I was all ready to connect everything. I had not gotten round to running the second battery cable to the diesel starter battery in the engine bay, but the dual battery controller will function quite happily with a single battery and does not have to have the second battery connected. Ultimately I want to get the starter battery connected. The charge from the controller can be split between the two batteries by percentage. I am thinking a 20% charge to the starter and the rest going to the leisure battery (house for those in the US) should work quite well for prolonged periods being static. This should maintain a few amps to keep enough charge in the starter battery to make sure we don’t get stuck, but the majority of the power will be diverted to the living area for TV, radio, phone / tablet charging and interior lights.

So here is the final install with the controller / LCD meter connected.

Controller Wired up

The only setting I had to change on the solar controller was to the battery type which should be set to Type 3 for ‘Flooded’ (Lead acid) battery. The other options are AMG and sealed (I think?).


Here you can see the LCD controller connected. I fixed it to the wardrobe unit using double sided foam pads. Having fed the data cable over the wardrobe top the flat cable was very tight and forced the face front out and away from the units. The low profile of double sided tape would have made everything tight and probably wouldn’t have given the extra couple of mm required to mount. However, the double sided foam allowed that extra distance to mount. It does tend to rock a fraction when the buttons are pressed as the foam gives a little, but this is livable and far better than drilling and self tapping the display into the wardrobe unit. I’ts pretty secure and certainly isn’t going anywhere in a hurry. Also, it’s a novelty now so I am having a play and seeing what does what, but I am sure I will settle on a particular screen that will give me the information I feel most appropriate and leave it set to that….in time

You can see two lights on the display. One is green showing that the panels are charging , the second is red showing a warning . The annoying thing is that the warning is just to show that the second battery isn’t attached. As said previously the controller functions perfectly well without a second battery, but there is no way of acknowledging you are happy with one battery to remove the warning. Anyways, all in all I have a working system so win, win

UPDATE

It seemed a shame to have all of this available power, yet only a single leisure battery to save it to. So my next job was to source a suitable battery that would fit in the compartment behind the right hand (passenger) seat. This would be linked directly to the first battery giving a larger source of power to draw from. The one I chose was advertised as a T25 battery on ebay and is branded Xplorer. The seller is alpha_man_batteries. This battery combined with my existing would give me a total of 180ah



I decided I would get this done by an auto electrician as it would involve feeding cables under the van and i preferred it to be done correctly. I did mention to him that if he had time that he try and route a cable from the solar controller to the starter battery in the engine compartment. I had quite recently been made aware that the interior lights run off this battery and i was mindful that this would reduce the chance of finding myself in a position where i could not start my van should too much power be used. It was at this point I also made the decision to change my fluorescent interior light for LED (Guide here LED interior light upgrade)

After two days I collected my van and was really happy with the work he had done fitting the leisure battery. As an added bonus he had managed to route the cable from controller to starter battery. This is the leisure battery. As you can see it’s snug but not not too obvious when the compartment door is closed.

Battery

Door only slightly proud

Door only slightly proud

Here you can see where the black cable for the starter battery enters the wardrobe (right) , and feeds through a hole he drilled in the floor, which in turn is fed into the engine bay and round to the battery. The hole was sikaflexed to stop water ingress.

Routing of cable in wardrobe from solar controller to battery

Below you can see that the LED solar display is now showing two batteries connected and the red error / warning light has gone out



Well that’s pretty much my solar install. All of this can be found on my webpage http://www.daswolfgang.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Andy

After my solar install it seemed silly not to take advantage of all of that extra power / electricity they were producing. Knowing the stock fridge on a Westy is less than brilliant i decided to upgrade to a Waeco CRX50. One of the added bonuses was extra space either, above or below...or both in this case . I saw a post on social media where somebody had put in a pull out chopping board, and although it was not executed very well the idea stayed with me.

So I set to looking for the components to full fill my ambition. My wife and I went to IKEA one weekend and I saw a chopping board that was made of bamboo. I knew it would be too big for the aperture it needed to fit, but I was fully aware that I would be very lucky to find something that would fit perfectly without modification. A few days later we went to the local B & Q store to get the rest of the components.



Over the course of about four days I sawed drilled and screwed these items into something that looked like it would work.



And this is the end result.





I think this will prove very useful. In a van that has very limited space, it’s things like this that will make all the difference.

So moving on to the fridge... I wanted this to sit just below the chopping board as I wanted to maximize the depth of the draw I am going to fit below it. So after some careful measurements i set to positioning a couple of pieces of angle aluminum to sit the shelf on. The shelf was then made by two pieces of marine ply. The first was the full width and depth required to seat the fridge on. The second was a slimmer piece with two holes drilled into them where the two front feet of the fridge will locate. This will stop the fridge from sliding about as there are no real fixings as such everything is having to be bespokely made. The two pieces were glued and screwed together and painted grey.


After this i needed to find something that would provide padding either side of the fridge to wedge it in place. I wanted this to be something that wasn't going to get affected by damp or humidity, but provide a nice gentle compression on either side of the fridge. After some time i decided that kneeling pads would be just the right depth to bridge the gap (the sort of thing you get for gardening). These cost me £1 each from Wilko . These were sprayed black at the front and they were screwed to the inside of the fridge compartment (two screws at the front and 1 at the back. each screw head had a large washer on it to pull the padding in and I tightened the screws up enough so that they sunk in and didn't catch the fridge when being slotted in. The heads were also covered with a piece of insulation tape to be ion the safe side.


Here you can see the fridge in place:


From here on it was just about trimming the surrounding area. I brought angle aluminum from B & Q and cut and drilled to size. I had to make some bespoke brackets to mount the whole lotso it wasn't straight forward. However, i'm pretty happy with the end result


This has then been connected directly to the leisure battery with a 5 amp fuse in line. I really need to get an additional fuse board fitted as there are way too many connectors tacked on to the battery at the moment. I will seek to have this done professionally to get things tidied up
PS. There is a gap either side of the fridge of about 5mm. The finished photo here doesn't show that and is a little miss leading. I feel this is enough of a gap to let air circulate and stop any rattles through vibrations

I think that looks like a good job really well done Andy.

im sure that I will be forced to look at a fridge solution at some time as nothing lasts forever...ideally I would like a fridge similar to yours but also to keep the current westy front door as a fascia ...

have you seen anything like that ?