Dookie

[rockbender]

You guys are all aggro on the overuse of fasteners! Perhaps I should just run a bunch of sheetmetal screws in there and then cover it up so people won't see it?

I also like the idea of putting in some assist springs, but my wife insisted that I should keep it simple and move on to more important things like the interior. Plus, she said SHE could probably bench the 120 pounds of batteries into place so if I couldn't do it...

Anyway, here is a little bit closer to finished photo. You'll see that the sides are reinforced and there is also now a tab on the bottom of the frame that will put a 5/16" bolt in tension to the bottom of the frame rail as well as locate the frame and keep it from rocking back and forth on the upper mounts at all. Tensile strength for one Grade 8 5/16" bolt is somewhere around 7500 pounds, so I think it would be overkill to start swiss cheesing the frame to add more bolts.

And another picture of the piece in the 'down' position.

[rockbender]

The next step will be to make sure I've got most of my wires run to the spots I would like them to go before permanently installing any cabinets.

So, my next task is to take this mess of wires


put them all neat and tidy into this box


so that all you see is this


In the electrical mess photo you can see one extra run of wire that goes to the left of the window. I might put a 12V outlet there in the future, but for now I plan to keep everything right behind the drivers seat. We are setting up the van to go CAMPING not to have a multimedia experience or power all sorts of electrical devices so I didn't see the merit in running outlets and fixtures where I would never use them. A couple power ports will take care of any laptop, phone, or camera chargers and that should do it (for now anyway).

The space under the electrical panel will hold a small trash can.

[TroySmith80]

haha, i was joking about the hydraulic assist. I'm with your wife, no need for any complication, just throw a floor jack under it for the once a year fluid level check.

The new cabinets look great. You're doing good stuff, this is gonna be a sweet van!

[blupaddler]

This is great!
I am just a ways behind you... I found the battery boxes on Ebay ($35 ea) and they are on their way!


Couple, dumb, questions...
What is the big white box? Are you going to run shore power?

[4x4tour]

Looking good, brother....

[rockbender]

It's been over a week, so it must be time for an update!

After securing the rear cabinet section, the laminate floor went down. I forgot how quickly you get instant gratification with the laminate floor!


Next, I took the leap of faith and mounted my upper cabinet. I say leap of faith because barring minor destruction it is pretty much a permanent fixture as it is mounted to a fir strip with screws AND subfloor adhesive. Time will tell if this is the right decision, but I wanted to spread the load out as much as possible and nobody wants a cabinet to come crashing down while getting to their campsite now do they?


I prewired the under cabinet lights and switches with a quick connect style plug that I had previously wired in, so once the cabinet was installed I just had to make a simple plug in. There are three 30 lumen LEDs (warm white) wired to a common switch and then a single 80 lumen LED (cool white) on another switch adjacent to the rear bench seat. You can see the respective toggle switches on each side of the upper identified by their blue LEDs. I figured I'd try both bulb colors and see what I like best.


Laying the mass of the laminate flooring is always fast and easy. However, the job isn't finished until you actually figure out how you're going to finish out the edges. For the slider door opening we decided to add some floor space taken up by the step well which will make a nice little cubby - a great place for us to tuck a first aid kit.


On a side note, I'm really excited about the little LED fixtures output for their minimal power draw but the 80 lumen fixture fizzled out after no more than 20 minutes run time. I need to contact superbrightleds.com and see if there is some sort of warranty because that was quite dissappointing.

[rockbender]

Espar D2!

and with its cover


I'm totally impressed with how much heat these little guys put out for as little space as they take up. I still have the permanent wiring to hook up with the rest of my wiring duties as well as figuring out the best exhaust routing. Like others have mentioned, these things are pretty noisy without a muffler so that will need added in as well. I'm also thinking about trying a little silencer on the intake as well. Coming from a tent camping background we are soooo excited to have the luxury of heat!

[rockbender]

We're hoping to take a trip the first weekend of June, so we keep plugging along making a bit more progress every day. After getting my battery cables made I've finally got the batteries mounted up and all the 12V wiring done (at least for now). It will take me another evening with fresh patience to stuff the rest of my 110V wiring into the (too) small box that I designated for electrical.

For now this is where everything electrical will happen, with the exception of individually switched lights. The solo toggle switches are for the battery separator - one for a (-) wire disconnect to manually disconnect and another for auxiliary starting. I'm using a SP1315, but in hindsight I would have rather had the SP1314 so it didn't try to connect under solar power. At least with the manual disconnect I can make sure the separator isn't connecting and drawing 1A out of my 5 or 6 coming in from the solar panel when charging if I'm staying in one spot for multiple days.

I also got some big gratification by installing the fridge today. It's amazing the visual impact it makes having it in and really gives me motivation that there is light at the end of the tunnel for this project.

Based upon others recommending additional insulation around their fridges to boost efficiency, I designed my cabinets to allow an additional 1/2" of rigid insulation to go on the sides with an extra 2" in the back. The cutout area is for air flow.


And the fridge in place!


In unexciting news, I also resealed my power steering pump last week. I *hopefully* got it licked - if nothing else it is down to small drips from a super dribble. Small victory!

Still to finish in the next couple weeks:
110V wiring
Penthouse bed
curtains (wife is on it!)
Countertop (formica?)
simple sink
miscellaneous trim

and to do sometime later:
clean up disaster in garage after a winter's worth of pile up
install solar panel on top of PH
install glowplug timer to manual glowplug system
install lockout switch on Gearvendor OD to make sure it is off when in 4x4

[TroySmith80]

Lookin good! I went camping this weekend in the big van. It was very much a crude, trial run, but we learned some important things. #1, we want a smaller van, lol. #2 (applicable here) drawers are fantastic! (as opposed to cabinets). I say this because i notice you have several drawers around your fridge. You'll really like those! Especially if they are full-extension sliders.

The westy was all cabinets with the exception of one small 'junk drawer'. This weekend i had 8 drawers and one large cabinet, and it worked great. The cabinet is from the recycled building materials store (Re-Store) and was somebody's bathroom sink cabinet once upon a time.

Anyway, your rig is looking way too professional! The elec panel is great. It's very clear that a lot of thinking has gone into this, rather than just slapping in some shelving.

[rockbender]

The Dookie is on the move!
We've been out on two trips now, the first being about 400 miles round trip to the Oregon coast. At that time the van still needed door and window seals so it was hard to tell if most of the noise was coming from door whistle, the engine, or big tire hum. Even though it was a noisy ride, the best news is that my wife LOVED everything about the van. Other than a few times that she had ridden shotgun in a semi truck, this was her first experience of sitting up high. It is amazing how much more you can see at that level vs. a typical passenger car. Once at camp it was so nice having everything organized and in its place (more or less) and our 1.5 year old daughter did great napping and sleeping in the van too. It was pretty cool to plug the baby monitor into the inverter and then go hang by the campfire.

For the second trip we stayed a bit closer to home but got enough highway time to realize that new door and window seals (up front anyway) certainly help, but there is no mistaking that the diesel engine and big tires will always make for a noisy ride. Put re-insulating the doghouse on the list!

The ride isn't too bad, but I'm hoping that doing a shock replacement will help some of the rolly-polly feeling going down the road. Looky at what brown santa brought:

The current shocks were in ok shape (Pro Comp ES3000's), but I don't think they were quite up to the task. I'm hoping I get what I paid for and feel the same difference that everyone else here has by making the switch to Bilsteins.

Other good news? On the tank that I checked the combination of summer fuel, relatively flat terrain, and keeping the speed under 60 yielded 16 MPG! I've yet to find out what I was getting on the tank I used going over the mountain pass but if I can keep my average in the 14-15 range I'll be pretty pleased.