The California Beach

The California Beach

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Saturday, 30 January 2010

Reimo Roof Ordered

Just back from CMC in Kent. Really impressive outfit there. Loads of vans on demo and the chance to wander their workshops where they are fitting stuff. I was very impressed with the quality of the roof and of the beds so have placed an order. Getting mine fitted end of March.

I decided to get them to carpet the whole van whilst they were there. They carpet the area immediately around the roof anyway, and I figured if they continued on to the rest of the van it would look better than if I later tried to bring carpet up to their carpet line and match them up.

I am also going to get some lights added into the roof frame to replace the existing lighting. Might as well get CMC to supply and fit them when they do the roof to save time and effort, and get them to wire them into the leisure battery before the carpeting is done.

We should get the van back just before Easter so we're planning on a trip away for a long weekend then! Can't wait!

So, that gives me two months to build my battery box, wire in the leisure battery with the split relay charge, and I think, also complete phase three of the leisure battery plan, and fit a mains hook up. If I can get all that done before the van goes in for the roof then they can carpet over the top of all the stuff we have built and all the wiring nice and neatly.

Wednesday, 27 January 2010

Battery Box

This month I started to write down some words about my plans for a cabinet in the back of the van. This was supposed to hold the leisure battery and charger, plus have the ability to slot my many biking/surfing/camping boxes into it. Unfortunately having spent time measuring up and feeling the weight of my camping boxes I see this cabinet design isn't going to work too well. So it is back to the drawing board.

Now that I am very nearly ready to attempt Phase Two of the Leisure Battery plan and wire the battery up to the alternator via a neat split relay charge system I've just ordered, I need to finalise a place to keep all this electrical wizardry.

I posted a thread on the Brick Yard about boxing in the rear wheel arches and looking at the replies on that thread, especially from Fozzy, plus looking at what Digs had done with his battery and coolbox-seat idea, I came up with a newer, simpler design. This design is only going to hold the electrical stuff. It is not going to try and hold any storage boxes. For now they can stay on the floor held tight by my storage frame.

All I am going to do is to box in the rear wheel arches. This could prove to be annoying as the seat belts in the back of my Kombi actually sit very close to the wheel arches:


I'm going to box both sides in which will also make the van look a little neater and hopefully make it easier to carpet these bits later on too!

The plan is (stealing Fozzy's idea) to make the top of the passenger side box a lid so I can use the extra space for storage. There is a wheel jack and also I have a box of bungees I think would store nicely in there.

On top of the drivers side box I'm going to build another box, the same width as the wheel arch box. This box can be partitioned if needed and will be used to house the Ring Mains Charger, the Leisure Battery and the SRC consumer unit. These three units will all be connected up together inside the box out of sight. The wire which connects the SRC to the starter battery can come out of the back of this box out of sight. This box will have the same style lid on it as the passenger side one. As you can see from the picture I will have to move the speaker that is currently mounted in the plywood panel. I think I'll probably stick that on the front of the box.

Initially I'll connect my double 12v socket up to the consumer unit in here, so I'm going to cut out a little slot on the side for this double socket to peek out giving easy access without opening the box. I also plan to allow a mains cable sized hole at the top of the box by the lid, so I can open the lid, pull the mains charger cable out and slot it into that hole, then close the lid back down. This allows me to plug the mains charger in with the lid shut.

I need to speak to my carpenter mate about what sort of wood to use for this task. The plan will be to carpet over the top of it so it doesn't need to be all that nicely finished. It would be a bonus if the boxes were strong enough to support the weight of someone sitting on them as well, which should be quite possible - adding some extra spare seating to the van!

As an added extra, if at all possible I'd like to be able to fit my cool box into the same drivers side box set up. This cool box is quite big, but if I could have a compartment in there for this to live alongside all the electrical stuff that would be really handy. This optional extra will have to be considered when we make the final plans for the boxes.

All these boxes are designed to be attached to the plywood panels at the rear of the van, and not attached to the floor at all, but clearly resting on the floor. This way, when you need to remove the panels you still can and the boxes will come off with the panels. In the case of the battery box I will need to make sure I can remove all the kit in the boxes first of course! Should be simple.

I like this design as it is a lot simpler than the caninet idea I had. It removes the unseemly wheel arches. It adds some storage to the back of the van. It allows me to store my leisure battery and wire it into the mains easily. All in all it's a nice set up and I don't think it should be too hard to build. It isn't trying to be too clever by holding and supporting the camping boxes I have which I think is asking too much.

Split Relay Charge System

After many months of deliberating on how I was going to get Phase Two of my Leisure Battery plan to work out, and after many helpful suggestions from EnergySolutions and Digs on the BrickYard forum, I finally decided to buy a Split Relay Charge (SRC) system. This neat system from Tidy Transporters is a real all-in-one, DIY system and the fact that I, Mr Impractical, have been convinced to buy it and fit it myself is a sure sign its idiot proof. Although I have still to actually fit it so that may be proved wrong yet!

The idea with this system (thanks to EnergySolutions and the nice chap on the phone at Tidy Transporters for explaining this in simple terms) is this: You simply attach one wire to your starter battery in the engine compartment, you then run the wire into the back of the van where your leisure battery is housed. This wire is already attached into the "consumer unit" (a simple silver box where all the electrical magic is housed). Out of the other end of the consumer unit comes another wire which you attach to your leisure battery. Simple. Once this is done your leisure battery will automatically charge when you drive the van and when you stop anything connected to the leisure battery or consumer unit will drain the leisure battery only, not the starter battery. Perfect.

The extra nice thing about this is the consumer unit. This has a built in fuse box and attachments for 10 connections to be made to it. Each of these connections is individually fused and they will all draw power from the leisure battery only. You can plug any 12v equipment into these connections. To start with that would be my double 12v socket so I can plug my cooler in to it. But in future as I buy them this can mean some nice powerful LED lights, and then other kit like WiFi networks, TVs, DVD players, PS3s and so on. Great for future expansion.

The other good thing about this is that the SRC can be permanently hooked up to the leisure battery, as can the mains charger, but these do not need regular access so they can be stored away and will not need fiddling with. The consumer unit can be stored separately but nearby as this is the thing you'll be plugging all the 12v units into.

One thing that this set up does not achieve, which was part of my original Phase Two plan, is being able to run the vans internal lights and the car stereo off the leisure battery. However I plan to replace the internal lights with a better set of LED lights, which will run off the leisure battery system, as the internal lights on a T5 are actually pretty rubbish anyway. And I can always buy a plug in radio for the back of the van - although I might still investigate how difficult it would be to move the car stereo over to the leisure battery anyway.

I also have to actually run a cable from the back of the van through the bulkhead to the engine compartment. Having taken the side panels off to insulate the van I know there is a channel which runs down the side of the van which I can run this cable down. The wires going to the rear lights follow that channel. The man from Tidy Transporters reckons from there it is "easy" to run the wires under the passenger seat and through a grommet to the outside, then under the van to the engine bay. We shall see quite how "easy" this actually pans out to be! Anyway, he reckons the T5 is one of the easiest vans to do this with, so hopefully it won't turn out to be a nightmare.

So, with this SRC system ordered and on the way, the next thing I really need to do with the van is to build something for the battery, charger and SRC system to live in.

Mountain Biking Preparation

Last night I finished screwing together my simple storage frame and installed it in the van. I also went through all the boxes I have in the shed for camping, biking and surfing and rearranged them all so that they all now neatly fit into the boxes the frame is designed to hold. So I now have a dead simple way of transporting my bike box when I go biking. I just go to the shed, grab my bike box and throw it into the back of the van, kept in place by the storage frame, with no need to bungee anything in place.

However there is still the issue of my bike. Having a Kombi I have six load lashing points spread evenly across the floor of the van. Dead handy. However I always struggle with a counter point up high to strap a bungee to in order to hold a mountain bike upright. This lunchtime I solved this issue.

I did nothing more that super glue a bunch of small coat hooks to the metal frame work of the van, above the load lashing points. These are small enough to be unobtrusive but are big enough to hook a bungee cord over. So I will now have an easy way to lash my bike into the van for transporting about.


It's a very little and easy thing but it's a step forward in utilization of my van for the things I bought it for - like simply being able to go mountain biking with the bikes and boxes easily thrown in the back.

Sunday, 24 January 2010

Storage Frame

I've been wondering for a long time how I can easily store my many boxes (camping, surfing, biking etc) inside the van in such a manner as keeps them all tidy, organised and, importantly, secure when travelling. This Cabinet is my current idea for this, but it is still a ways off being ready to build.


So this weekend I had a bit of a brainwave about a little construction I can build to go in the back of the van. I'm building a frame of simple pine planks. The idea of the frame is that it will sit in the back of the van, simply lying on the floor and will be pulled into the wall of the van by bungees attached to the front and rear load lashing points. The frame will be split into sections so that I can simply drop my boxes into a section and they should be fairly tight and secure. The planks are deep enough that the boxes will sit snug and not rattle around.


I sat down with a tape measure, pen and paper, and measured up the back of the van and the boxes I want to secure and made a rough design. I then went to B&Q and picked up 2 x 2.4m planks of pine, deciding on the planed ones just to minimize the chance of splinters.


I then marked up and sawed them to length, taking into consideration that two of the frames would have to go up against the wheel arch and thus would be shorter. I ended up with this:



This is just it cut to size and laid out in the back garden. It's not been fixed yet.



I moved it into the van and put it into the places it will be used, and then put a set of typical boxes into the back of the van and arranged the framework around them. The bits of wood are still just placed into possible final locations. Nothing is permanent yet.

From the side door:


And from the back:


The next step, tomorrow hopefully, is to mark up the wood precisely and then use some wood glue and screws to fix the 'legs' to the main backbone of the frame. Once complete, it will be held in place by a bungee attaching to the rear load lashing point, going all the way around the main frame and attaching to the other point just beind the drivers seat. I'll probably cut a small grove the middle of the corners of the frame to help keep the bungee cord in place.

Single boxes can probably just drop straight in and be secure. But I have designed it such that the middle section exposes the middle load lashing point so that I can run bungees over the top of the boxes if I want to. This should allow more than one box to be stacked on top of each other.

Finally, with boxes organised so that they have enough stuff in them that you can shut the lids, these make makeshift seats as well!

I'll post again when I actually screw and glue the frame together - being Mr. Impractical it's very likely I'll cock it up!!!

Friday, 15 January 2010

Gel Battery Arrives

After learning about how normal acid batteries need venting when being charged, and that gel batteries do not and can also be installed on their sides I asked Alpha Batteries, who I had bought my acid battery from, if I could swap batteries. They agreed and the order was placed. Due to all the snow the new gel battery kept getting delayed but it finally arrived here this week.



I immediately hooked it up to my charger and found it was, not surprisingly, running at 60% charge, so I stuck it on to charge overnight. The charger decided the battery could do with a recondition, which is apparently not uncommon on batteries that have been stored unused for a time, and it ran through a complete recondition in my lounge overnight. No heating issues and no venting needed. Excellent.



This evening, then, I hooked it up to the new 12v cooler/heater that my mum- and dad-in-law got me for Christmas, and it worked a treat. Really pleased with the cooler and am looking forward to sticking some beers in there for a camping trip!



That's Phase One of the Leisure Battery Project complete (for the second, non-acid-battery, time!)

Internal Cabinet Plan

I want to add some storage to the back of the van with a view to having somewhere to put a few bits and bobs, to house my leisure battery and charger, and to provide somewhere to slot in my biking, camping and surfing boxes.

I plan to build this cabinet in the location of the drivers side rear panel, over the rear wheel arch. It will sit ontop of the wheel arch, and be built up from there to the roof level. It will be split into various levels. The plan is to make it wide enough to hold all the things I want it to hold but also as slimline as possible so as to take up as little space as possible in the back of the van.

The bottom level, the wheel arch, will just be a place I can stuff general bits and bobs around the wheel arch out of the way. This means I need to make sure the wheel arch box is able to be opened. The second level up will contain two compartments, one for the leisure battery and the other for the battery charger. Above this I need to see how I can build storage for my powered cooler and for three boxes for biking, camping and surfing gear. More of this later.

The cabinet will be in the van all the time so I'd like it to be made of good looking wood and nicely finished. I also need the cabinet to be secure so that it doesn't shift around when in transit. But the cabinet must be possible to remove in case I need to get to the side panel, although this is not something I'm planning on doing often so there is no need for it to be simple and quick to remove.

The main purpose of the cabinet is to store the leisure battery and charger. I plan on putting these into two compartments side by side at the bottom of the cabinet. I would like simple hinged doors on each compartment, dropping down at the front to give access to the contents. The leisure battery compartment will have two 12v sockets on the side, facing forward into the van, connected to the battery. The charger and battery compartments need to be connected so that the battery can be charged with the cabinet doors shut. Finally there needs to be a way to plug the charger in with the pull-down door shut. When the van gets an external power hook up added I plan to have a couple of 240v sockets added to the cabinet as well, running off the external hook up. I guess this is a later add on although I might stick some 240v sockets into the outside of the cabinet when I build it ready for the hook up.

The next job of the cabinet is to provide general storage. I have a 12v cooler that I'd like, if possible, to have space to hold. It's a fairly big box however and it might simply not be possible to fit this into the size of cabinet I'm aiming for - as I'm trying to keep it as slimline as possible. In addition to this I want the cabinet to hold my camping, biking and surfing boxes.

I have three identical sized plastic boxes in which I keep my biking, camping and surfing gear. I want the cabinet to allow me to somehow slot these boxes into position, and when they are slotted in like this, for them to be totally secure so that I can drive around with them slotted in the back. The compartments to slot these boxes into need to be high up in the cabinet, so as to keep them off the floor and out of the way. The boxes are rectangular, and I plan to build the cabinet wide enough to slot these boxes in sideways so they stick out as little as possible. The boxes are heavy - the camping one holds a gas bottle and other heavy stuff - so the slots need to be very strong. If at all possible I would love the cabinet to be big enough to hold all three boxes at once, as there are times when we go camping, biking and surfing in the same trip. Finally, when the boxes are not in use, day to day, they need to be simple to remove and stick back in the shed.

I plan to build this cabinet after the van is carpetted.