We bought a few things for the van to make it more homely, including enough tea to make it through many long winter nights.
Exciting kit for the van
Dave is also frantically adding the final touches to the van so we don’t have things sliding off shelves, water getting everywhere or have a power outage.
Tea collection
The last few weeks we’ve been too busy to post, and the few weeks before that were frantically finishing the van.
We spent a few weeks varnishing at every available moment – sometimes squeezing a quick coat in before work, while dinner was cooking or just before bed.
We then spent a weekend putting all the furniture in van – which was surprisingly difficult to ensure things were vaguely straight and upright. We also had to incorporate fixing the water pump, pipes and gas regulator at appropriate points to ensure we had room to fix things down.
During the next week Dave spent most of his spare time working out how the sliding table rail and leg (that were meant to work together) would ever fit nicely in the van. After a few days, the table leg was cut in half. Drastic, but it works very well, although we do have the lower half of the leg floating around the van ready to be used when the table is put up.
This all meant that we had everything needed to change the DVLA status of the van to a motor caravan. It also allows us to change the insurance to that of a motor caravan rather than a motor caravan in conversion.
It doesn’t mean the van is finished though. We still need to connect some of the electrics (mains charger and usb chargers for our electronics) and fit removable things such storage boxes, pots, pans, plates etc etc. The window insulation also needs some thought.
Further plans include some major renovations to the cab interior and maybe the addition of a sound system for the rear.
We have spent a few nights in it though – a quick trip to Scotland for a wedding, and a CUHWC trip to the Lakes. We found the van a bit cold on some nights, but lovely and warm on others. Living in it has shown us what we need to add to the van – but doing those things may take a while in the cold Cambridge evenings.
All is built, it just needs varnishing and the final glueing together.
We spent today building the bed and shelves out of ply. Still needs varnishing and sticking together, but well on the way.
It was highly entertaining trying to make things vaguely horizontal and vertical when the van has no straight edges and nothing truly vertical.
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!
So we’ve been working most evenings on the van, thankfully the sun is finally out and it’s really nice outside.
Thanks again to Joe, who came over to lend a hand and straighten out some things.
Next is the floor insulation and ply, and then carpet (the floor is the one place carpet isn’t going)
I’ll let the photos and captions do the rest.
So on Monday, Joe came over and we finished cutting the hole in the roof. We then cut up some scraps of wood to make floor batons and a few other pieces to make the floor. This took us most of the afternoon, but as the floor insulation hasn’t arrived yet, and the paint hasn’t dried, we’ve got nothing to show for our efforts. We started on the celotex insulation on sides and roof, but it took longer than anticipated to cut flat board to very curvy van sides. We gave up with just enough time to get a second coat of paint on before dark. We ended up eating at around 10 pm – well worth it for what we got done (despite the photos making it look exactly like the night before)
It’s now raining, so I’m hiding inside tonight (although I did manage to get out to cut the hole in the floor for the gas locker). Hope it dries off soon so I can get the roof vent in and sealed – until then the van is stuck on the drive.
PS Although Joe worked for nothing, he did get dinner and a lot of fun out of it (I hope) – thanks for the invaluable help (and tools)
After getting out on the bike for a quick (very quick actually) spin yesterday, I’ve been working on the van today. Cleaning takes a long time, and on Thursday we got as far as taking off the plywood that lined the back. Since then I’ve manage to clean most of the muck off and expose all the bare metal – non of it rusting yet luckily, but put on some anti rust (red oxide) paint just in case. Also started cutting the hole for the roof vent, but the jigsaw blade broke and I ran out of time; it had taken me longer than expected to measure and re-measure before I was confident enough to start cutting.
Also bought some insulation, and picked up 5 online orders today – lots of toys to play with, but I really need to start putting things in the van to stop the built up of parts filling the house.
Jo is off wandering in the hills of Scotland this week so I’m is on my own with the van – which basically means the house is an organised tip as van parts spread out until the cleaning is over and I start putting insulation and wiring in.
Anyway – pictures:
Dave
This is our van. It’s an ex-AA yellow one. Or a ‘corn yellow’ Vauxhall Vivaro SWB 1995cc 1.9 TD 2700 cdti 5 year old that’s done 118000 miles (if you want all the details).
We’re currently in the process of planning the conversion and cleaning the van (it was quite muddy inside).
Yellow Van Mountaineering 