So we’ve been working quietly away at the van making updates and new features, and fixing old ones.
Included in the pictures is the new wine rack, a new shelf in the front for the passengers (made from perspex), new storage pockets, various storage attachments and some other things.
We’re almost ready for the Alps – just a few more things that could be done, but they may wait until afterwards.
Quite a few things have happened since the last conversion-related post, both to the van and otherwise. To sum up: we finished the carpeting, put the lights in (mostly), had windows and a seat/bed professionally fitted, started planning and buying the furniture, went sailing (see previous two posts), and spent six weeks in Arctic Norway (see next post…coming soon). Jo also passed her viva, did her corrections and got a job, and the van passed its MOT.
The silver carpet went on with barely a hitch – Dave did some of it while Jo was away in the Lake District assessing silver D of E groups for Cottenham Village College, and both of us finished it off the following week. We’d been using less than the suggested amount of adhesive for the walls, but made sure we used the full quantity for the ceiling! Dave also fitted eight spotlights with individual switches into the ceiling carpet, though the battery is yet to be connected. Some trimming, tidying and white spirit later, the inside was looking very smart, and the van was ready to be taken to Bletchley near Milton Keynes for the summer.
We left it in the care of Young Conversions, who had kindly agreed to look after it while we were in Norway, even though the work we’d asked them to do on it would only take a few days. Having had to move it out of and back into their workshop every day for six weeks, they were quite glad to see the back of it when Jo picked it up at the end of August! Thanks to their efforts, the van is now equipped with two large privacy-glass windows, one on each of the middle panels, and a crash-tested seat (meaning we can legally transport two passengers in the back) that folds down into two thirds of a bed – Dave will explain this one in a future post about furniture!
Our priority now is to get the van into a state that our insurers will accept as meeting its conditions for a camper van, which include a fixed stove and gas supply, running water and an attached table. We’ve pledged most of our weekends in the coming month or so to the project in the hope that this will be done by the end of October – we want to spend our first night in the van on the first weekend in November…
Here are some pictures of the new developments:
So, we’ve been so busy that every spare minute has been spent working on the van rather than blogging about it – hence some catch up blogs.
I laid the floor with 3 layers of Tesco’s campermat, alongside 2mm ply batons in a suitable pattern for bolting the seat down, topped with 8 mm ply for the floor. We aim to put some lino down once the seats are in.
Some electrical faults were also found around this time – so I invited some friends around to fix them. Phil turned up to fix the rear fog light – we took apart the fuse box and played around, changed absolutely nothing and suddenly it worked again. All the playing around had drained the battery. After wondering about how to push start the van down a hill in Cambridge, I was about to call a friendly car owner to help me out when I realised I had bought a battery charger (for the secondary battery, which is why it took me a while to remember). I hooked up some temporary ‘shore power’ and left it overnight – all looks good now. Constantly being in the van and moving around the driveway without driving anywhere must have taken it’s toll on the battery.
We also filled some gaps in the walls so the carpet fits nicely. After stressing about how to cover these for a day, ice cream tubs worked really well!
Yellow Van Mountaineering 