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.
No comments:
Post a Comment