Camper Van Conversion

The van is back

Mon, 07 Jun 2010 12:55:11 +0100

Well I finally got the van back after much waiting, and general uselessness of the garage who was repairing it. Unfortunately work has started to pick-up, so not sure when I'll have time to work on the van.

And the wait continues

Thu, 20 May 2010 14:21:47 +0100

By now I thought I'd be posting about how I'd been finishing off a few bits of my van, however I'm not. The reason for this, is that the insurance company is still fixing my van. After 2 months and every form of incompetents known to man, including claiming my van did not have a skin or cooker thus was not a campervan. They claimed this despite their own engineer having photographed them. The van is still with the garage, it is now waiting on a small pipe so I am told, despite telling me last week it was only waiting to be painted.

At some point I hope to get it back, I would like to go camping in it.

Bad insurance company

Mon, 03 May 2010 20:55:58 +0100

At some point I hope to get it back, I would like to go camping in it.

Build Day 25

Sat, 20 Feb 2010 17:08:04 +0000

Well things when a little wrong with build day 25, on the way to my parents leaving the M62 an elderly gent pulled across in-front of me and slammed his breaks on. Sadly the breaking distance of my van and his hatch back are not the same. So the van took a bit of damage largely the radiator was the problem, so it had to be towed to my parents, while I waited for the insurance company to get back.

The van has spent the last 3 weeks with the insurance company, finally I got the call from the engineer and the van is heading off to be repaired. So day 25 was some what unproductive, but it will all be ok in the end.

Build Day 24

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 17:33:15 +0000

Well the bathroom is now looking quite done (there a still a few things left todo but it looks very much like a bathroom). The toilet is now fitted and connected to the water supply (but it still needs it's own pump so you don't have to turn the main one on to flush), the shower basin is now sealed and water proof. All the shower curtains are fitted, and so is the towel rail and toilet roll holder. I am now a man who knows where his towel is.

We also cut all the lino to shape, and refitted and cut the kitchen carpet that was removed a few weeks ago. As I had a little time remaining before heading home I also fitted a bit more of the lining carpet on the walls.

Build Day 23

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 17:27:51 +0100

Time to work on the bathroom again, well build it. Lots of progress was made, all the walls are up and joined together. The drain hole for the shower is in, as is the water supply pipe for the toilet, the shower basin is now fitted but not sealed as yet. Still lot work came to came together to make what looks like a bathroom.

Build Day 22

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 17:27:47 +0100

I spent most of the morning trying to find some where to sell me the plastic sheeting that I needed to finish the bathroom. After quite a lot of phoning etc, I found a supplier and managed to pick up the sheets. By the time all this was sorted most the morning had gone, which was a shame but we ploughed on.

We cut an fitted the plastic sheeting on the the van wall, then glued down the lino, and started to fix all the plastic tracking in place. This final fit of the track that the walls will sit in, requires the final triming and shaping of the wood which takes a while. By the end of the day all the tracking was done, and I'd fitted the all walls in to check every thing worked, however we then removed the walls as there would not be time to fix them in-place correctly before I had to drive the van back home.

Build Day 21

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 00:40:44 +0100

After a bit of a break on doing any work on the van I finally got back to it. The first order of business was working on building the bathroom. First task was to take up the carpet in the area where the bathroom is going to be and put down the lino. Next we shaped the wood we are using for the front and rear walls to the bathroom. With the van having no right angles or straight lines this is but hard than you would think. Also one of the walls must go over a wheel arch which does not help. One of the side wall to the bathroom is the side of the van which is curved, to make that wall water proof I using plastic sheeting, it is not too bad to fit, however I don't have enough to finish the job which is a bit of a problem. So a shoping trip is needed tomorrow.

To fit all the walls together in a water tight manor, I'm planing on using some plastic track, so far it looks like this might work quite well and hide some of the rougher edges to the wooden walls. By the end of the day most the walls where bit a we roughly fitted it together to check the fit, so far so good. It's not fitted permanently together yet as I still need more plastic sheeting to finish one wall and the ceiling.

Build Day 20

Sat, 25 Jul 2009 23:55:19 +0100

Having been planing to install the solar panel for a while now the day has finally come, all the bits arrived so I loaded up the van and headed to my parents to make use of the drive and garage once again. As the weather was expected to be changeable this weekend I started off by doing the bits that would make the van no longer water proof while it was still sunny. I started by making the cable entry point where the supply from the panel would come into the van, this meant drilling a hole in the roof (I'm really glad it did not rain at this point) feeding the cable through the cable entry box then through the roof. The cable entry box was then sealed to the roof using silicone sealant, once that had dried the van would be waether proof again. Then came the job of fitting the mounting brackets to the panel, dragging the panel up on the the roof and gluing it in place. Some of you may be thinking glue, that does not sound like a good plan, well honestly its the best idea, it will hold the panel more than securely (it's going nowhere) and with no bolts and thus no holes in the roof there is no chance of a leak. Any old glue wont do the job, I'm not encouraging people to try this with an pritstitk or anything, the glue I used is a glue/sealant called sikaflex which starts to cure when it's exposed to UV very strong stuff, don't got get it on any thing you don't wish to be permanently stuck to something else. One that was fitted in place I then fitted a spoiler in front of the panel to reduce it drag factor whilst driving, then set about wiring it all up. Fortunate the sun stayed out whilst I did my wring thus letting me test if the whole thing worked, and it did.

There where a few other wiring jobs on the slate for the day, mainly getting some power to the passenger side of the van, currently all the power was on the drivers side but as the bathroom will be on the passenger side so I need to get some power over there under the floor and behind the ply lining before I can start work on the bathroom, so I got all that done and tested.

Here comes the sun

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 00:24:25 +0100

I been planing to add a solar panel of some description to the van to charge the batteries since I first started planning to do the van. Today after much reading planing etc, I finally selected and bought a panel and charger. I ended up going for a 130w panel, as that would provide the kind of power I need without costing to much. I also got a MPPT solar regulator to charge the batteries from the panel. The regulator basically stops the panel from over charging the batteries, and acts a dc-dc transformer to take the voltage from the solar panel and adjusted it to be most efficacy voltage for charging the batteries. Now all I need to do it fit it, and get it working, I will let you all know how well that all works out.