Quick video

I was running about an hour early for departure on the camping trip, so I took a quick video showing how the fit out has progressed into the physical form.

This video is still uploading, so you will likely see the results before I do. Hope you enjoy.

Poor man pays twice

It’s a saying I live by, but it even caught me out today. I went to super crap auto to buy some 6 gauge wire. I needed probably two meters, but was going to buy four. They only had black, which although not a deal breaker, was annoying. Well, at $11/Meter for single core wire, it couldn’t help but feel a bit ripped off, seen as I bought 6 meters of TWIN core 6 gauge for $60 delivered. I thought, stuff that, I know they sell jumper leads are cheaper than that!

So, I found a set of 100 amp, basic cheap ass $14 set of jumper leads, with the full intent of cutting the ends off and using the 5 meters of wire. They sold bigger sets, but they had anti-surge rubbish, I just wanted the copper wire, so i bought these beauties:

I figured, they are rated for 100 amp, I only need 80 (the fuse is 80), so this would work out nicely.

Well, here is the rubbish. This wouldn’t be good for 20 amps continuous load. gawd dammit! How they can call that 100amp jumper leads I don’t know. It seriously couldn’t jump start a fly.

So, I returned to a different SCA and bought some 400 amp ones (figuring that if we divide by 5, I’ll get my 80 amps). Well, finally after cutting the ends off, and removing the anti-surge thing, I now have 6 meters of 6 gauge wire for $24. Well, $38 if you count the loss from the other wasted purchase.

Here is the Anderson connector, mounted to allow a nice secure connection at the back of the car. It would look nicer low to the floor, but you can’t reach it to unplug it down there.

As with the Anderson connector above, I also needed a way of plugging/unplugging the 4 individual wires without having to unscrew them off the fuse block every time  I wanted to remove the kitchen unit.
The white/brown wires are +12v from the car battery which was conveniently taken from the door light circuit. The purpose of having the 12v from the car battery is so I can measure it’s voltage – that’s all. Everything else in the back runs off the auxiliary battery.
The red/green wires are for the big LED light on the roof.

Annoyingly, when I did a bit of a test wire up, i seem to no longer be getting voltage on the +12v, no idea why but it’s far to dark now to figure it out. As I’m leaving at 10AM tomorrow, I'm going to be pressed for time to figure out what’s wrong in addition to the list of other things I need to get done.

As expected, there is a lot of lateral movement now that the fridge is bolted onto the unit. Because I doubt I have time to secure it properly, I’ll secure it with tie-down straps for this trip.
Tomorrows post will just be done from the Spot, but I should have more to report on when I return Sunday.

Roof racks

So, found a pretty good deal on a local auction site. It's a rhino rack, super light weight and flat packs down. It had one other large advantage... that we can install the roof bars, then slide the rack on top. We had big worries how we would get the roof rack installed at the other end, so thankfully this allows us to take our time without risking damage to the car. The other reason these ones are cool, is they have a heap of accessories which will come in handy. Particularly the jack and tyre mounts pictured below.

But here comes the sad part. It was listed for $650 including the three bars. Considering to buy new would be $1300, I offered her $500, but we compromised on $550. Sounds great, we paid and she went inside, only to find that although every other measurment was great, the feet hight were too low to fit the high roof of the troopie. Damn you might say.
Well, a set of 3 new bars and feet cost $552. I'll call a local supplier tomorrow to see if they'll sell just the feet, or trade in my current set somehow, but I don't like my chances. The sad part is, they came of a 70 series land cruiser... so I assumed they would fit my 70 series land cruiser... but no, the SWB roof is lower than the troop carrier roof. DAMMIT. Even though I did some research, I still got it wrong.
I have found another local seller selling the correct legs for $270, but it still stings. I'm doubtful that I'll be able to recover $200 for my useless ones.

I had grand plans of having the car all set-up for the weekend and going camping, but I suspect it will be without the roof rack :-(
Weeks ago, I ordered the panel plugs to secure my new interior panels... they have not yet arrived from the USA. At the same time I ordered a nice 4 pole connector for the kitchen unit from QLD, that still hasn't arrived either! Ugh, something tells me I won't be taking that either!

I don't really know how to fix the kitchen unit to the car. It's designed to sit about 90mm out from the side to allow us to stash our window coverings down there. I can probably fix it at the back OK, and perhaps at the front, but it will be unsupported in the middle - I hope it works. I do have plans of installing a bike lock or similar around the fridge handle, and looping the other end around on of the pillars. The idea is threefold:
A) In the event of an accident, the most deadly, weighty bit, right at my head hight will be the fridge. The fridge handle is part of the enclosure and is plenty strong enough for this job. It will also be fixed at it's base, but these will shred out in an accident.
B) Provide some attempt at security. If people can't exactly walk off with the dearest bit of kit, this might just be enough to stop them. I can see this easily happening at docks where you need to leave the vehicle in the trust of someone who can easily go through it.
C) If it's an adjustable bike lock, I'll be able to make it pretty tight, which should reduce the side to side wobble momentum that could build up and cause the unit to break free of it's mounts. This may also serve to be the centre locating point that I wouldn't have as discussed above.

Another quick build update

As it’s getting late, I thought I’d post some pics to show what we are up to.

I’m sure experts are going to rubbish my job here, but I don’t care. I’ve used the switch at the top (Red & Black wires) to switch the inverter on and off. It seemed logical to control the inverter from where the power comes out. If you don’t get it yet, see a few pictures down, this is the centre switch on the power point panel. Because the wire is so thin for the 240V, it’s nearly useless screwing it into the blocks as it would nearly fall back out. So I decided to put a crimp pole connector on the end, then screw in the connector. It seems really good, but I won’t be entering it for building compliance of the year award! You might ask, why not use thicker wire? Well – the inverter can only put out 300W max, so considering these cables are usually rated for 2400W (10AMP), I figured there was no point.

Here is the backing block to the power point. I’ve knotted the mains cable to prevent it being pulled out accidentally. The whole point of the block is to provide protection between us and the potential 240v. The sink’s position was determined by the need to have this block, so you’ll slowly see that most things (odd as they may seem at the time) are actually designed this way for a reason.

Two things to be taken from this pic, the inverter is fixed with double sided tape. Yes – I was sceptical, but this stuff is amazing! It’s red, about an inch wide and holds 30KG. Even positioning it was difficult as as soon as a centimetre of it touched, it was near impossible to move. The second thing is the fuse panel, with all of the wires. I had great plans of having the neatest wiring job, but in reality it just wasn’t possible. It’ll look neat with the cover on, but space was a huge opponent to tidiness.

Here is the three switch power panel mentioned earlier. The middle switch turns the inverter on and off. As they are a fairly power hungry device, it will be off all the time unless used – and having the switch where it’s plugged in makes that decision easy.
Also visible is the dual battery monitor. Oh yeah – this thing is sweet. It’s got alarms in case the batteries get below 25%, and because it’s where we sleep, there should be no excuse for waking up to flat batteries. The fit was so tight, there is seemingly no need to screw this down. I must say, the design of the cable on this is terrible. It comes out in line with the face, which makes it impossible to actually install flush. I’ve had to cut out more than the face plate to compensate for this design. It’s a simple hangover from their other model which isn’t flush mounted, they just didn’t think it through. It’s going to need some silicone to make it look presentable.

Because the white panel is only 90mm (not 100mm as planned) the switch panel has had to move up a bit. It’s funny how things happen, because if this hadn’t have happened, there would have been no way to fix the panel on it’s right edge. It does make it stick out like an ugly duckling against the line of other fixtures.

You can see the switch for the cabin light, and fresh water pump. The cigarette lighter is wired on all the time and will only have very occasional, deliberate loads plugged in (ie. phone charger). The other switch is spare for now.
You might ask, why have a switch for the cabin light (as it has a switch on the light itself) and why have one for the fresh water pump as it has an automatic pressure cut off.

Well, the cabin light will be able to be turned on from the back of the vehicle (if outside) or when laying down, without having to get up, switch it off, then fall back to the bed in the dark.

And for the water pump,  although it hasn’t happened yet, I can imagine if it looses just enough pressure, it will jump into action in the middle of the night and no doubt scare the hell out of us. The second thinking, is that if one of the hoses was to leak, or come off while driving, it would diligently pump our fresh water all through the back of the car until it ran dry, ruining everything and wasting a lot of fresh drinking water.

So there is some logic behind the madness after all.

Hardware store rage

oh my. I print out a cut diagram to take to the hardware store. Thought this may reduce the chance of error.
Our first clue should have been that as we're waiting in line, the saw operator botches a cut by 100mm of the person in front - requiring it to be re done.
When it comes to cutting ours, he just got it wrong... maybe in 4 different cuts. I told him not to worry to save his pride in the hope that I could somehow salvage it.

I can use a jigsaw to get roughly the cut I'm after, but it won't look as good, or be as straight as using a table saw. The whole reason for having it done there - is to get a better result. but now I have:
-a door that has a 10mm gap at the side , and a 15mm gap at the top.
-a switch panel that doesn't fit the switches.
-a shelf that is 20mm shorter than the rest of the cabinet.

I'm not asking much. I would expect this result if I asked a bank teller to fix my car, or a lumberjack to sew on a button. But I ask a saw operator to operate a saw... what's so hard about that?! Is this behaviour typical of a perfectionist? or do I just want people to do their job!?  According to Wikipedia:
 Normal perfectionists "derive a very real sense of pleasure from the labours of a painstaking effort" while neurotic perfectionists are "unable to feel satisfaction because in their own eyes they never seem to do things [well] enough to warrant that feeling of satisfaction".


I don't have to get perfect results, but I do feel the results should match my expectations. When I get poor results through lack of personal skill, tools or the inconsiderate input of others, it annoys me to no end.

He was apologetic and didn't charge us for the cuts, but fundamentally, I'll need to get them done again to get it right.

Quick build update

Here is a quick update of the installation of the fridge, fresh and grey water system.

It was proving difficult to locate the position of the bolt holes for the fridge.

The holes drilled in the photo above are ones taken off a previous template… they were somewhat wrong.

So we put charcoal on the feet, made an impression and determined the centre. The holes are not yet drilled, but at least they are in the correct position now.

You can see from left to right. Mesh pre-filter – removes sand and other contaminants which could damage the pump and clog the system.
Step down adaptors – Converting 1/2 pipe into 5mm pipe compatible with the big filter and tap.
Then the big filter, and out of the top side of it goes to the tap on the right.

You can see the hose for the grey water is kinked. Well, it’s unfortunate, but it has to be, there isn’t enough room to have it bend smoothly, but it still works great.

Not pictured is the connection from the fresh water tank to the inlet of the pre-filter. It’s all coming together nicely, and feels great to finally get to do some nice finishing touches and install some of the gear that the whole system is built around.
It’s going to be a tight fit this cupboard, still yet to come in is the 6 gauge wire, fuse block, inverter, power point, battery monitor and switch panel.

Voyage of discovery

I thought I would share the voyage of discovery which is more like a roller-coaster of ups and downs:

Today, I expected to spend half an hour mounting the air compressor under the bonnet. Like three hours later, it's finally done. Here is the time line:

11:00 - 11:05: Drive car into driveway, choosing a position to minimise inconvenience to other dwellers in our complex. Already depressed at the forgone conclusion that I'm going to be in someone's way... it's just a matter of time and chance.
11:05 - 11:20: Spent 15 minutes finding ideal locating position - not a flat spot anywhere. I ended up settling on the only free space left, with a 5-10 degree slope. Doesn't present a problem, it's just not how I had in mind.
11:20 - 11:30: Mounted, cables routed, earth point chosen. The captive nut's in the body took M5 bolts I had - sweet. Didn't have to go to hardware store AGAIN and didn't have to drill any holes or use tek screws. Done in half an hour! Internal celebratory dance.
11:35 - 11:45: Tested, big spark, some kind of thud and left licking my wounds after conclusion that I have probably blown something up. Oddly the negative terminal on the batter sparked in addition to the positive wire I had in my hand. Licking wounds at the prospect that I could have just blown my face off with sparks and gas from battery.
11:45 - 12:00: Un-bolted air compressor, taken apart for diagnosis. Made leads for my stupid cheap multimeter that the leads broke on. Tested resistance in circuit as I assumed there must be a short somewhere. Unable to find short.
12:00 - 12:15: Wired in large fuse to confirm fault existance... fuse wouldn't blow, but neither would anything work. Sick of idiots driving past leaving me one foot of room, and 6 feet of room on the other side. Resigned to fact that I'm going to smash the next person that drives so close to me with the nearest metallic object.
12:15 - 12:30: Look like an idiot with home-made 14gauge wire multimeter test probes testing for voltage... I have voltage all the way to the relay for the compressor... Hmm, maybe the compressor relay is dirty.
12:30 - 12:45: Compressor relay seems fine, but contacts appear dark, scrub with sandpaper anyway. Made no difference, found another relay, still doesn't work. No lights on indicator switch. Relay won't tick.
12:45- 13:00: Convinced my earth must be bad, relocate from body bolt to negative pole of starter batter - success, as the indicator light illuminates, but odd clicking sound from relay, and no compressor action. Convinced relay still could be failed, swapped over, no difference.
13:00 - 13:15: Removed wires from inside guard and tested on starter batter, success, lights and compressor... but oh damn, that means my auxiliary battery is stuffed. The thud I heard could have been some internal failure. Tested and still had voltage but assume still it's stuffed. Resign to fact that this is an opportunity to replace with deep cycle battery.
13:15 - 13:30: Unbolted auxiliary battery bracket, removed connectors and taped up positive connector so it doesn't earth out.
13:30 - 13:45: Retested with compressor on just poles of auxiliary batter - success! what... how?! Inspected inside of earth connector of auxiliary batter, dirty and cruddy. 10 minutes spent cleaning connector. All fixed!
13:45 - 14:15: Re-installed battery, re-assembled and re-installed air compressor. Routed wires, crimped connector. Still sore over fault discovery process.
14:15 - 14:30: Clean up, numerous tools everywhere, oh how I hate this bit.

I am continually amazed at how long things take! Cassie has done the first coat of paint on the kitchen unit - looking good. I would like to start doing the fun stuff, like installing water pump, inverter, fuse panel etc... but I must wait till the painting is all done. No pictures today, but hey, it'll give you all a break.

Afternoon drive and build update

Yesterday evening, I went for a drive in the interest of getting to know the vehicle a bit more. It’s taking me a while to trust it’s capability and find it’s limitations.  I still wouldn’t be confident enough to take it half the places I took my old car, but that comes with practice.

You would be forgiven for thinking this and the next picture were taken in far eastern Russia.

It seems unrealistic to compare the characteristics of my old car vs. my new car, but it is through surprise that the observations come about.
Sometimes I have a grin from ear to ear when it crawls effortlessly over obstacles that my previous car would have been caught up on without even a hint of contact.
Other times, I find it much more rigid and long to step up short steps where I could have hopped up with ease previously. The rear wheels are further back, and even though it’s only 20cm, it leaves you thinking, um, shouldn’t my wheel be stepping over that log now?… no?… wait… there it is!
Oh, and did I mention long?! it’s quite an effort to turn around on some narrow tracks. 7 point turns are not uncommon – but even so, I’m loving it.

This picture is to clarify the tiny space I’m working in. Underneath the pile of junk to the left of the picture is our set of old lounges - we need to wait a few weeks for garbage day.

So, as you can see, the sink is installed, the backing board is installed which is now as rigid as I had hoped. The fridge is just resting to make sure the dimensions were OK to open the latch – seems good. The water bottles are slowly filling up with sawdust… doh!
I suspect I might do a trial fit tomorrow to figure out how I’m going to secure it, and also to take measurements for the bed side.

Oh, and an update on the starting issue. The last three cold starts I have 'glowed' it three times, and it's started without hesitation. Just tonight it started fine with just two. It may be too early to tell, but I suspect this was the problem. I do wonder how the length of glow is determined, even when super cold it's probably only 5 seconds. I'd like to see if it can be adjusted.

Productive afternoon

It felt like a false start when I came home at lunch time, and struggled to make any positive contribution. Everything felt rubbish, and my lack of skill was getting me down. I find great frustration in trying to create things I imagine, especially when nothing you planned seems to work, or if the quality of what you produce isn’t what you had in mind. When I returned at around 4:45 and worked for about an hour, and seemed to get much better results.

Rather than fill this blog with pictures, here is the link to the album with all the pictures: https://picasaweb.google.com/twomagadan/20110809?authkey=Gv1sRgCNeX9_rD0cOdKA# I am now quite happy with the result, but I was certainly in a foul mood earlier.

It was surprisingly difficult to construct as it was difficult to start as nothing was stable until screwed. One other design… development is that I may need to mount the water filter on it’s side, there doesn’t seem enough height to fit it. It says that it ‘should’ be mounted vertically, which makes me think that it doesn’t say ‘must’ so, surely it’ll be sweet. Routing all of these very stiff hoses in the small area will be difficult. With the location of the electrical equipment now much closer to the water systems, the room for error is higher. I get the sneaking suspicion that I’m going to end up locating the inverter and fuse block into the newly made cavity near the wheel well.

I also picked up a tidy alloy bar… quite literally, it was easy to lift and carry with one hand. $200 lighter. Even with some fabrication required to mount the winch, it should work out a lot cheaper than $1000-$1500 for a new one, plus I’ll still need fabrication to fit the winch. There is a hidden opportunity here – the way the winch is currently mounted EASILY allows the cable to catch on top of the bar. By fabricating this myself, I’ll be able to position it properly. I don’t have a picture just yet, but it looks good. Still tossing up wether to paint it black as I’m not a real chrome kinda guy.

100th post

It seems only yesterday I started writing this blog! Today my dad cut out a heap of rear panels as the existing ones were mostly damaged. Here they are but not yet attached. I’ve just ordered some new ‘trim plugs’ to install them properly.

 

Here is ‘Charlie helping to clean out the dust

Cassie filled the empty space with insulation to help with sound insulation and thermal control. It will compliment our window insulation once we organise it. It made a remarkable difference on the drive home, the back of the car was entirely silent! No tyre noise, none of that thudding suspension kind of noise!

My dad also cut up the pieces that will make up the cabinet. These came from three pieces of melamine ‘shelving’ from Bunnings, they were close to perfect size, and pre-edged which will look nice.

Below is an animation of a few of the minor changes to the design. As I continually discover, whatever you think is perfect, can usually be improved upon. Once this part is built, we will look at the bed side as it will need some ingenious design to provide a level and strong sleeping platform, and ideally a removable table for use outside! I’ll need to have the main section in place to enable me to take more accurate measurements. As anyone who has tried to fit out a car interior will know, nothing is straight which makes designing difficult.

Thanks again to all my helpers.

Let there be light

I thought I would try out our new cabin light. It’s the one pictured in an earlier post that uses a quarter of the power of a single incandescent globe, yet you be the judge of it’s performance. I tried it in the house the other day and was a bit worried in such a small space it might be too bright… but it’s PERFECT!

I’ve exposed these pictures the same, but as you can see, the incandescent brightness is not bright enough to work in. Bright enough to find your way out of the car, but that’s about it.

 

Some more perspective from a bit higher.

As you can see, it’s only temporary, I might make it permanent tomorrow. I can’t decide wether to have the light this way (with the power switch facing the front of the car) or have it the other way. See how it has an ‘un-lit’ section at one end, I wonder if that is more preferable to be above the sleeping side, or on the bench side. I think it might stay like this, more biased to the bench side.

I also bought some festoon sized LED replacement globes for the driver cabin, but they are rubbish, putting out maybe a third of the light of the incandescent. I have pictures, but I think you’ve seen enough useless pictures of lights today.

About how bright it looks outside. Not all of the light on the ground is from the internal light, there is a street light above it as well.

Possibly the most boring post ever

I'm serious, this post is boring - not much has happened this week.

I replaced the hose connector with a different type. The existing manual tap was just too long and because of which, when pushed up against a wall it could potentially damage the fitting and lid.
The one it’s replaced with is an ‘auto stop’ type, which means provided there is some water pressure, it doesn’t dribble when disconnected. In testing, it does a little, but in practice the water drains out of the hose when the tank runs dry anyway.

On Tuesday evening, the night before our first of a series of Russian lessons, we found out it was cancelled. Pretty disappointing.

 

In an awesome mark of irony, here is my ‘question mark’ tracking pattern from the weekend. I felt continually confused, no matter how far I drove, the road didn’t match my memory. I don’t remember this much tar, I don’t remember that phone box… etc. I found myself continually trying to make the image fit “oh, maybe that phone box is new”, “maybe this town has just been built” – both of which were certainly not true, but your mind fights you on it. Not at any stage did I feel lost, as we could always back track. After nearly 4 hours driving, it finally dawned on me that we were on the wrong road all together. The two roads were parallel, maybe 10KM-20KM apart. The thing that threw me, is we changed destination half way – to which I said, that’s fine, we just go right from here…. but on the wrong road! I now finally understand that lack of confidence people feel about going some places. When you go bush with some people, they struggle to find their way to the same place they’ve been 10 times before. Something I never understood until Sunday.

I’m fortunate enough to usually remember pretty accurately how to get places, where we are and which way we are facing etc. I usually have to only go to a place once and I seem to remember. I did joke with Cassie that once we had done our Magadan>London trip, I could do the same trip again without a map. I'm willing to give it a try if someone wants to bankroll it?!

I was able to get directions from Cassie via the telephone, but without maps, we were stuffed. It did make me think how useful it would be to have the navigation system back again as this wouldn’t have happened if I still had one.

Even once we found the turn off, half an hour down the track, we had to turn back as there was the biggest tree ever over the road. It was about as wide as the car bonnet is long!

I started the day with both tanks 3/4 full, and finished the day with both tanks half full. It’s the best feeling to know that you’re not limited by range! I know I keep harping on about it, but I think if I’d have left home in my old car with 3/4, I’d most certainly had to have got fuel on the way back. Oh, but if that servo was shut, or was out of fuel… I would be stuffed!

Nick, who I was ‘showing the way’ did highlight that this hasn’t happened before, and wouldn’t have happened if I’d have had my off road navigation majig. Something I will certainly look into in a few months.