Nina's Christmas Update 2012

Many apologies for lack of updates, it's been a while, mainly because since the rear side windows were fitted, not much else has been happening ! Lack of funds coming up to Christmas were partly to blame, along with weather and time.

So I thought I would write a quick post to fill you in on the 'little' things. Well, the little things and an amazing thing !

A couple weeks before Christmas, I used the roll of tint I bought from a tinting garage, and tinted the new windows in the back. Wow, what a difference ! When I did the back windows, it took ages with a heat gun trying to get them to adhere around the edges where the raised pattern was, the type you get on bonded windows. So I was dreading doing the new bonded windows. For the back ones I bought a small roll of tint from ebay, it came retail packed and from China, and as far as I knew, no different to any other tint. If you go back through the posts, you will find a timelapse video ofme fitting it.

Anyway, this new pro stuff, was £28 for a 10 meter roll of Limo Privacy tint, and was VERY different to use, it went straight on, stuck over the pattern without any problem, didnt have to use a heat gun at all !

Took me less than 15 minutes a window. They aren't perfect, I still haven't mastered the art of getting the windows REALLY clean beforehand, but they are good enough.



As you can see, not full of bubbles, and looking quite smart ! Did both sides, and am now a lot more confident when it comes to doing the remaining 4 windows, I should have enough tint left for them all too !.

Since then, I have replaced the speakers too. There are 2 in the roof in the back, and 2 in the dash in the cab, the rear ones are 4" speakers, and when I took the old ones down, the speaker cones were in bits, I'm surprised they made any noise at all ! The same with the ones in the dash, which are 5" ones.

I didn't go mad with the speakers, they are only to listen to the radio, so got them from Maplins. The 4" ones were £12.99 per pair, and the 5" ones were £14.99 a pair, can't remember what power, something like 80watts, good enough for the radio.

The dash ones were a little bit of a pain, as not much room under the dash, but managed ok. No more buzzing and distortion when someone with a deep voice talks on the radio yay ! :)

Ok, now for the amazing bit !

In traditional fashion, Jen decided to buy Nina a present rather than me ! This time, she bought Nina A BIG SOLAR PANEL to go on the roof :). Its a 100w model, roughly 4ft x 2ft, came with the fitting kit including the wiring, mount brackets and regulator. On a sunny hot summers day when the sun is out the whole day and Nina is parked so that the sun is hitting the panel, it should easily recharge one of my 70ah batteries fully from flat in one day, but with our weather in the UK, its more likely to just top the batteries up a bit, and keep them with charge in when Nina isnt being used. VERY pleased, thank you Jen ! xxx :)

So, yet another job that will need doing, once I decide where my batteries are going to be, once the rest of the windows are done.

Just before Christmas, my friend Rich accidentally bought himself 2 inverters from ebay whilst bidding from his phone, something about a dodgy 3g signal ! Anyway the upshot was that he only needed the one, and asked if I'd be interested in the other before he tells the seller he didnt want it.

They were Durite modified wave inverters, 1500w. Max at 3000w, but being modified, will give a constant 1500w, which will run a LOT of things :). These inverters still sell now, and are £400 new most places, got mine for a bargain £82 :).

This is it, its definately 'used', its been in a van, but works perfectly and the Durite inverters have a very good reputation for reliability. Good clean up and bolted in the storage area and jobs a good un :)


I think the next BIG buy now is the seating/bed cushions, which will be around £250, other than the windows which are around another £500, so getting there slowly. Its a shame the windows needed replacing, but I am determined to get it all done properly, so that all my hard work isn't ruined by water trickling in.

So, Nina is doing well for presents, and even though it doesnt look like it, progress is taking place bit by bit.

She had to be brought in to service a few weeks back, one of our Animal Ambulance vans died on us, it had done 174,000 miles, and we decided it was time to get something a bit younger, so the week it took us to find one, Nina had to step in as the second Animal Ambulance, and collect dogs for walking etc. She performed faultlessly ;).

One last thing, a while back I bought a couple of LED halogen replacement bulbs to replace the power hungry halogen bulbs that are in the door spotlights, they are fitted above the door openings and come on with the sidelights, ensuring that there is plenty of light to allow you to enter/exit the doors without problems.

The one on the side door will also make a good awning light as its aimed slightly outside the side door.

I did think about removing them completely, then realised that actually, they are quite useful. :)

So, the idea was to cut the old halogen bulb holder out, and somehow fit the new bulbs in, which are a completely different fitting, new ones are like the headlight halogen bulbs you get in cars, but made up with lots of cree led lights around where the halogen glass would be.

It was a bit of a fiddle and involved some soldering and chopping, but managed it.

This is with the new LED bulb fitted and the old halogen and bulb holder removed.






These next photos are with it all fitted back up in Nina again and showing the spread of light, which is brill from LED ! :) Perfect and hardly any power drain. All I need to do now is the one for the back doors, and supply with a different power source and switches so they can be switched on as needed seperately. At the moment they both come on when the sidelights are on and the door is opened.










Well, thats pretty much it for the time being, lots of plans still, and definately not forgotten, hoping to get the interior finished in 2013, so should have been tried out at least once by next Christmas, I would hope so anyway. ;)

I have been watching the stats for this blog, and its brill to see around 30 page views a day at the moment, even without a recent update.

I'm guessing that means there are loads more of you out there converting too ! Please do leave a comment with your blog address if you are writing one too. I love to look at fellow converters adventures !

See ya soon ! :)







- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Gloucester

The Windows Saga

Ok, its been a while since my last post, which can only mean one thing, it didn't go to plan.

Sooo, I left you last time, having decided that I would take Nina to Malc and Jon to have the frame fixed, then it was just a matter of getting Dave from Five Valleys to come and fit the new windows.

Ok, what happened was......

I took Nina in to Bedford Street Motors that Monday afternoon, must be about three weeks ago now. Left it with the guys, and didnt hear anything until I went to work on the Wednesday morning, happily minding my own business, when I noticed a Renault Master parked across the road, and believe it or not, had a gaping hole in the side, just like Nina ! Slowly, it dawned on me that I was looking at Nina, on the opposite side of Gloucester to where she should be !


Of course, I couldnt help taking the above photo to send to Jon and tease them about using Nina for 'other' duties !

Apparently she was being used to get some new welding gas.

Anyway, I didnt get a clear look as I drove by, but the window frame looked completely white, which is better than the black and brown it was when I dropped her off !

I called Jon and asked if she was now ready to collect, and was told to come later that afternoon.

This is where things start to slide a little. When I got to Bedford Street and saw the window frame, the tiny feeling in the pit of the stomach that just seems to expand at a rate of knots, was happening. Where the bubbled up rust had been, was now flatter, but, still rough, and the whole frame was Hammerite White, including the dried drips and the splashes on the internal window sill and the surrounding bodywork.

Now here is the thing, Malc and Jon have been friends for years, since I worked with them, and I was actually Malc's apprentice back when I was 17 when we both worked for Julian Rogers Autoservices in Gloucester. I trust them implicitly, and they always do me and Jen a good deal on mechanical work, sort whatever problem we throw at them, quickly, at a moments notice sometimes, well most of the time. They got Nina on the road for me and through two MOT's since I got her.

I will continue to go to them for their excellent mechanical service, and would recommend anyone else to use them too.

But bodywork technicians, they are not.

I paid my money, and in my mind told myself it was to make up for all the times when they knew I was short, and charged well under their normal prices. Then drew a line under it.

I was going to have to be brave, and redo it all myself.

I haven't taken a closer photo of how it was, it wouldnt be fair on the guys, so literally went out, bought some flexible grinding disks, aluminium body filler, primer spray, renault white spray, sand paper, and wet or dry paper.

I ground all the hammerite off, re-ground all the frame, and part of the body around the frame, sanded the layers evenly, then started filling the rusty holes and metal with the body filler. I have barely done any bodywork in my lifetime, so it was never going to be perfect, but hopefully better than it was, and good enough for Dave to fit the window that side.

This is a reminder of how bad it was originally -






This is of it all ground out and the filler starting to go on, ready for sanding.











This is with the frame sanded to something close to its original shape, and the primer spray on.









You can see its starting to look half decent now, hard to tell where the original rust actually was. This is only the primer coat, so is a different white to the van paint. Each colour, incidentally, is from a spray can from Halfords. Around £6.50 a can.


This is with the Renault Top Coat Spray, which went on very easily, I used a handle that clips on top of the spray cans to make it more like a spray gun, which helps you spray more evenly, I bought mine in What ! for £1.00.





It was when I got to this point, last Friday, 2nd November, 2012, that I texted Dave and said that he could come when it suited after the weekend, which would give the paint time to harden sufficiently.

Now all through these few weeks, we have had pretty much constant rain, which has hampered progress. I have had to recover the aperatures a couple of times as the wind and rain have saturated the duct tape and made it start to peel away letting the water in.

So luckily, when Dave rang on Monday afternoon to say he would be here the following morning, the weather forecast was for clear skies to start, turning to rain later.

So Tuesday morning, (today), at 10.15, Dave turned up and for the last time, I peeled off the tarps and duct tape, to have the new windows FINALLY fitted :).

It was a crisp morning, the frost had well and truly started to defrost, perfect weather for fitting windows - apparently :).

Tarps off, first window (NS) prepared....


Dave starts applying the bonding glue to the 'good' side (passenger).



Then with Dave on one side of the window, and me on the other, we offered it up to the frame, then quickly stuck some Duct Tape down to stop it sliding downwards on the glue.



Yay ! I've finally got my first new bonded window fitted ! Once fitted though, we noticed this window had a manufacturing fault, a kind of ripple from the centre top, down, so have emailed Leisure Vehicle Windows just to let them know, in case anything happens with it.

View through the drivers side frame, looking gooooood :).


Its also odd, seeing a window in there without the vents at the top.

Then it was the drivers side turn, time to see if all my hard work on reforming the frame was good enough to receive the window.






Weirdly, this side, the frame seemed bigger, or the window looked smaller in it. The window was stacked against the window on the other side, and was exactly the same size, so it wasnt that, and the frame, although had been ground out and filled, hadnt had the actual size changed, so anyway, the window went in great, although much to Dave's disgust, once we had lifted the window on to the bonding glue, I decided in my head there was too big a gap at the front and promptly started to slide the window over on the glue while Dave frantically tried to stop me ! Result, one very stuck on window, but a little bit of a gooey gluey mess inside the rear gap. Only viewable if you look into the gap, but all the same, I learned my lesson ! Sorry Dave ! Will listen properly to you next time !

As you can see in the above photo, Dave taped up all four edges on both sides, just while the bonding glue went off and had the windows stuck on properly.

So Dave went, and I went off to work for the rest of the day, and left the windows to it. Dave advised to leave them taped up until 4.30pm at least.

I got home after 5, it had been raining a couple of hours before I got there, so I gently pulled the tape off in the dark, and checked for signs that rain had leaked inside. Guess what ? Dry !!!!!! :).





And they look great ! :)

The bonded windows look so much better than the rubber sealed ones, cant wait until I get the other four done now :).

Got one more decision to make with these windows now, and that is whether to privacy tint them from the inside, or, cover them in White vinyl on the outside, as the back is going to be storage, and the white will reflect the sun away making the back slightly cooler for whatever is stored in there, like the dogs in the dog cage !

Incidentally, if any of you are converting a Renault Master panel van, which still needs holes cut in the metal, I am selling the perfectly good windows that came out, which are vented. Just use 'S' type rubber and bead to fit them in. Bottom privacy tinted, top sliding vent has a clear green tint on both windows.
£40 each or £70 for the two. Ideal to fit on the same wall that you put the hob/cooker for ventilation. Message me at Damon(at)damoncannard.com if interested ! :)






Thanks for reading, come back soon ! :)

Location:Gloucester

Back to Front / Vice Versa

Oh dear.

This morning, Nina was meant to be having both of her rear side windows fitted, then after 'Rustgate' yesterday, I had resigned myself to just having the one fitted then the rusty frame repaired.

What actually happened, was that the day started off drizzly and wet and dark, and Dave called first thing to cancel, which was fair enough, but Orange decided not to tell me until almost an hour and a half after he left the message, meaning I was out turning Nina around on the drive to make it easier for him, them waiting, for him not to turn up, apparently.

Once my despair of the whole situation subsided a bit (:S), I realised that actually, this might not be a bad thing, maybe, I should get the window frame fixed first, then get Dave to fit both windows in one go, as planned originally.

So thats what I did, I've now taken Nina in to Bedford Street Motors, where Malcolm is going to strip the bad metal off, treat it, make good, then paint ready for the window to be bonded to at the end of the week, or weekend, hopefully.

The rust will most likely rear its head again in a few years, but the only way to stop that is to change the whole quarter panel for a new one, and I just dont have the money to do that right now. Maybe if and when it needs it in the future, I'll get it done.

So, thats where we are with it at the moment. Just a waiting game until Malc and Jon say I can go pick her up again.

Going to be so glad when these windows are done and dusted ! :).


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Gloucester

Window Work....

Been a while since an update, with lots of inside stuff having to wait until things were watertight, I got a bit demotivated. Been busy with other things too, but hopefully thats going to change over the winter.

I finally got around to ordering the rear 2 side windows. As I said in a previous post, Vehicle Leisure Windows would not quote for them, so I ended up going to a company called Vanbitz in Barnsley. He had the solid (non vented) windows for the back side windows, and could supply them for £246 delivered, including the fixing/bonding kit.

So, I ordered them, 28th September, hoping to have them in time for the following weekend. I got an email saying that his supplier didn't have stock, and they were trying to source some more. Got a little worried, until a couple of hours later I got another email saying that they had managed to source them, and I would receive them in 7-10 days.

Well, three weeks after paying, I still didnt have my windows. When I emailed asking why on the monday, I got an email on Tuesday saying he had only got the windows the day before, and I should receive them that day, or tomorrow, tomorrow being Wednesday. Despite asking for tracking details a couple of times, none were forthcoming.

No windows turned up tuesday or wednesday, so he had lied to me making me think that the windows were on the way. Not happy.

However, I got an email, late on on the wednesday, from Vehicle Leisure Windows, the original company that wouldnt quote me, saying my order had been dispatched, with a tracking link to Interlink Express.

How odd :S. Hadn't been quoted, let alone ordered and paid for windows from them.

Well, it turns out Vanbitz 'supplier' was Vehicle Leisure Windows, I was actually quite happy about this, as I had lost all confidence in Vanbitz, especially after reading a review for them online saying they sell inferior products. I have to say though, it was one review, on the whole net, so I cant judge them just by that, all the same I was happy Vehicle Leisure Windows were actually supplying them, as they have lots of good reviews on the Self Builders forums, I just dont understand why it was so difficult getting them to give me a price on the windows.

Anyway, from there on in, Interlink's tracking process was second to none, even telling me what hour slot the windows would be delivered in making it easier for one of us to be home to sign for them. They arrived Thursday dinnertime :)

They came with a double fixing kit for two windows, AND the internal trim for the metal edge of the frame.

For the next windows, I hope I can get a quote direct from VLW, will save so much hassle !

So, now I had them, I CHICKENED OUT of actually fitting them, I just didnt want anything else to go wrong. So I called Dave at Five Valleys Windscreens, and asked him, if I took the old windows out, cleaned up the frames ready, would he actually come fit the windows, he offered to do just that for a very good price. The plan was for me to remove the windows and do the clean up over the weekend, and he would come and fit the windows Monday. Brill !

SATURDAY -
Well, today was the day, so I took my knife, and started cutting in to the rubber seal on the passenger side window, I had now passed the point of no return !



It turns out the seal had the window stuck in there pretty good ! With some very determined cutting, finally, the window came out, thankfully, in one piece, I intend to sell the windows I remove to help out with the cost of the new windows.





Once I pulled the large rubber seal off, I was left with this unsightly mess, I knew I was in for a tough time cleaning that up !

But clean it up I did, sharp knife and my brake and clutch cleaner with a non scratch scourer. Took at least a couple of hours, and I ached quite a bit afterwards.





It was starting to get dark, so decided to leave the second window until Sunday. I cut some tarpaulin up to slightly bigger than the window aperature, and sealed it all up with Fabric Tape.



SUNDAY -
After yesterdays success, I started today with high hopes, knowing what you are dealing with really helps the old confidence, and within about 10 minutes, I had the second window out, in one piece again !

Pulled the large rubber seal away.

Then I saw it.

The frame was eaten away by rust :(.

Instead of sorting out the leaks properly as they happened, the NHS mechanics just kept sealing it, which, unlike the other side, which was letting the water flow inside quite freely, it held the water and caused the frame to bubble and rust :(. When I took the the seal off from the top of the frame, lots of water dripped down :(.











As you can see, totally different to the opposite side, no amount of cleaning up will get this side ready for a new window glass. :(

But I did clean it up, the best I could get was this.


Not good :(.

Will see what Dave says tomorrow, if its not possible to fit this side tomorrow, Nina is provisionally booked in for Tuesday at Bedford Street Motors to see what they can do. If they can make it all solid again, I can get the window put on. In an ideal world.

So now Ive sealed up that side too, its a waiting game until tomorrow morning, when Dave is coming out to fit them.

Everybody cross your fingers for Nina, and hope she can get fixed as quickly, and cheaply as possible !

Hopefully, come bak and see a pic tomorrow of at least one window fitted :).






Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Gloucester

Post 72 - Milestone

This post equals the number of posts I made for Scooby's blog in total ! Also, its just over a year since Nina came in to our lives.

The difference on this blog, is that there are likely to be at least 72 MORE posts before it reaches a conclusion ! :).

So to mark it, and make the post a little more special, I have put together a video slideshow of the past year in photos for you to see in around 6 minutes, the changes, all in one place.

There is something else special about this video too !

Any of you attending festivals and VW meets around the country, ie VanWest back in September etc, you may have been treated to some live music. One of the artists playing to you would have been Kludo White performing tracks from his album Camper Van Radio with his band.

I have just ordered the album through their website via Paypal, its only £7.99 plus postage, and here is the thing, the profits from the album are being donated to the Teenage Cancer Trust. Kludo hopes to raise £20,000 in 2012, and I hope that many of you reading this blog, will pop over to www.campervanradio.com and order one too. If you are self building a VW camper, or any other camper, like Nina, you will find the songs relevant, fun, catchy, brilliant !, and all while helping charity. What better way is there ?
The song playing in the video is Camper Van Driver, one of the tracks from the album. The album is also available through iTunes.

Go buy it ! You wont regret it :).

In the words of Del, 'you know it makes sense...' ;).

So, without further ado, crank the volume up, sit back, and click play below :).




- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Gloucester

Mini News Update....

Not much has been happening with Nina since I did the blind guides on the sliding door, that is to say, NOTHING, has been happening. Time and cashflow have been against me. The weather has been awful again, lots of rain, and whilst the rain is getting in, I am loathe to do anything to the inside as it will just be ruined by the leaky windows. Pretty much all the windows leak now depending on how hard the rain is coming down, but the front 4 side windows generally dont leak enough to run off the window sills.

Last weekend, Nina took us to Slough for a show, it rained the whole time, and things that were piled at the back either side got a little damp :(.

For the past few weeks, I have been advertising my very posh HD Canon camcorder on ebay, with a view to raising funds toward the windows, it finally sold this week, so I have some good news !

Reading the blogs about self builds, lots of people have been recommending Leisure Vehicle Windows to get their bonded windows from. So, money in bank, I emailed them, sending pictures of Nina and a close up of the current windows, and asked for a quote for one rear window, and another quote for both rear windows in the hope that I could afford the latter. Not hearing anything back the next morning, I decided to call, and see if they could understand my ramblings in the email, they aplogised, said they had been very busy, and they would email me the quote in a while, once they understood what it was I wanted.
2 days went by, and I am starting to get a little fed up, so yesterday decided to call again, once again they apologised, and said they were waiting on a quote from Renault as they had to buy them direct from the manufacturer. Promising the quote via email within a couple of hours.
That was yesterday, and still, I have heard nothing.

Im sorry Leisure Vehicle Windows, but you suck, from my experience. It doesnt take days to get a quote from Renault, it takes minutes and a quick phone call, as I rang them myself, and that is all it took.

Sadly, not being 'in the trade', their quote to me was highly extortionate, running in to hundreds PER WINDOW.

I was starting to think I was doomed with these bloomin windows. Nobody seems interested in supplying them !

Searching the internet further, I found another company called VanBitz based in Barnsley. They can supply the fixed (non vented) windows in green tint with the fixing kit (glue), delivered to me for just over £123 per window, not as cheap as I would have liked, Leisure Vehicle Windows were quoting £65 per window in last years price list, but then, they dont seem able to supply them this year for some odd reason.

Anyway, I have ordered both the rear side windows, the ones that leak the most, and hopefully they will be here next week, so I can maybe get started on the following weekend. Just lots of swatting up now on how to fit them properly. Last thing I want is them falling off as I drive down the road !

I am sure I will also have a nightmare job once the old windows are out, cleaning the old rubber, glue and silicone off of the metal, but it has to be done, and once it is, hopefully I'll never have to worry about them again !

Will have some more window tinting to do as well ! Think I will buy a bigger roll of it this time, to do all 6 side windows as and when I buy and fit them.

Thats it for now, will let you know how good VanBitz (www.vanbitz.co.uk) are in the next post which will hopefully be showing you at least one of them fitted ! More realistically the pain I am going through removing the old ones though ;).

Want a pic to remind you of what I have ahead of me ? Oh go on then :P



Please be kind to me Nina ! ;)


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Gloucester

Guided By The Blinds

A job I had always intended on doing, was finishing off my window frames with 'fills' or 'guides' for my blinds on the back of the frames.
This would have two purposes, the first, to guide the blinds down and prevent them from moving side to side, and secondly any gap that was viewable from the outside while the blinds were down, would be blocked.
Well, as I have been using Nina since they have been done, one of the blinds has been a bit of a headache, the one on the sliding door, because each time I slide the door shut, the Blind swings violently from side to side, sometimes twisting out of the frame and creasing, and sometimes, the plastic weight on the bottom, which slides onto the fabric, and is held in position by a plastic cap on either end, well the plastic caps sometimes pop out and then the bottom plastic trim/weight slides out and gets trapped in the door when I close it.
You can probably get a better idea what I am talking about from this photo -




Here you can see how much room it has either side to swing once the frame is on.
This is the damage that is being caused to the blind by its bashing against the frame and twisting -




Thats some nasty fraying :(. These blinds were SO expensive (£5 each for these smaller ones :P) that I really dont want to have to replace them anytime soon !
So I took the frame off, along with the blind, laid it down flat, set the blind bang in the centre, and marked the edges where the wooden battens had to run to give enough space to fit glue some carpet to finish it off, but also close enough to stop the blind moving side to side enough to allow it to come outside of the frame completely.




This is the frame with the battens nailed on, short enough to fit between the upper and lower wooded frames I have fixed to the metal on the door, and just right for the blinds.




A little close up showing it is in fact a 'guide' and sporting my rather fancy pencil marks :P.
Once the frame was fitted back on, I am happy to say it all fitted back together with the new wood, so I didnt have to adjust anything :).




You can just about see the new guides in this next photo, doing its job superbly !




I can slam the side door shut now, even with the blind down, and there is no movement whatsoever, and the blind stays in the down position which is going to be really handy for parking up and dropping the blinds to stop any would be thieves seeing in. Will keep Nina a bit cooler inside too, even though the tinted windows cut out a lot of the heat of the sun anyway.
One thing I did realise with this blind, is that there is no room at the top to fit an LED blue light bar to match all my other downlighters on each of the other blinds, so need to think of something. Only today I found a sliding door contact switch that will allow power to reach the lights when the door is in the closed position, from the main vehicle body.
Now, for all you media hungry people, a little treat for you now, I did a small video explaining the above stuff in my insanely boring Bristolian accent and ACTUALLY showing the door being shut and the blind not moving ! WOW, you is so lucky ;).


Thanks for looking again, this blog would be pointless without you lot reading it, not that many of you comment to let me know you are reading, but I can see from the page stats in Blogger :P
Please do leave comments, they really do spur me on.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Gloucester

Back on track......

A couple of posts ago, I told you about my mishap while transporting a petrol lawnmower, it rolled back and forth and punched a big hole in my 'static' seat.

Well today I got round to fixing it, I don't know why it took me so long to do it, it was a fairly easy job, and I already had a spare panel of the right size 6mm ply.

This was the old panel, removed from the seat with the hole punched out ...



This would have been on the inside of the seat, just in the front of the chemical toilet compartment. Luckily it didnt punch far enough to damage the toilet !

This is the seat, with the panel removed, ready for the new one !


Sorry about the horrible orangey lighting, as usual I took these photos with my iPhone, its just more convenient than using my DSLR and no chance of getting sawdust inside ! The top is the 'front', the seat is on its 'back' to make it easier to nail the new panel on.



And here it is, nailed on and ready for covering.....again. Excuse the gap on the left there, as I was using my circular saw to cut to size, the waste dropped where I didnt have it supported, and made the saw go off on a tangent. Too much haste and not enough care, lesson learned ! Luckily it wont show when I put the finishing lining on.

Oh, and another mistake, you can't see here, but when I was nailing the two cross members a third and two thirds up the panel here, I just merrily went on and did it without any measuring or pencil marks, and just as merrily missed the battens underneath all the way along ! Cue two pencil marks from side to side and some hasty re-nailing ! ::red face::

Here we see my seat back where it belongs all fixed and waiting to be finished off when the rest of the interior is done.



Yay :). Now to make sure I secure anything that I am transporting in future properly so that it doesn't happen again.

I am thinking about introducing some very low profile wheels into the pull out seat to make the process of pulling it out when the storage is full a bit easier. I have an idea on how to do it, will fill you in if and when it happens.

Another finally today, I put my new dog cage in place across the back of Nina, underneath where the kitchen will eventually be. It fits ok, from back to front is right on the maximum that I allowed, so thats good for the dogs, they have the biggest available space, but I have no room for errors in my storage at the back, so I m hoping my big pop up marquee (portable photography studio) I take to the rescue dog shows I attend, will still fit whre I intend it to, stood up on the passenger side right in the back corner.


This is the beast all set up at a show, its amazing how small it packs down, but even then takes up a fair amount of room, so I need it standing, all 70 plus kilos of it ! It also has two big bags that carry the sidewalls which I am hoping will strap on top of it once its in situ.

This is my cage in place, I can see now its there kind of how things are going to end up, but then I have the plans in my head, sort of :S, so apologies to you all if it just looks like a cage in the back of a van, which of course it is without imagination ;). Talking of imagination, imagine some blue LED downlights in the roof of the cage matching the downlights above each of the blinds in the side windows, adding some more atmospheric lighting when camping on an evening. Obviously turn them off when the dogs go to sleep !


Going right across the top of that will be my Smev Sink/Hob combi built in to a wooden surround and worktop, with cupboards from floor to ceiling either side.


This is my Smev Sink & Hob that Jen bought me for Christmas last year, its still sitting in its box on top of the cupboard, can't wait to be at the stage where I am fitting it ! :) Its the same one that I had in Scooby, and it looked AWESOME, really finished the look of the camper off as well as being the 'kitchen'. Here it is in Scooby just to refresh your memories :)




While I was sitting looking at my cage, I started thinking about the cupboards either side, and looking at the wheel arch boxes the Ambulance conversion people made, I wonder if they need to be so big, if they do, I could at least make them square and more useful for storing things on top, so I guess thats another job, take one off and see if I can squeeze out some more storage space somehow, even if its only a couple of inches.



You can see from the mark on the wall that this is where one of the fold up crew seats was positioned. I need to store the gas bottle on one side, and if I can gain a few inches from the length, then it may be able to be seated on the floor, rather than higher up, which I would prefer.

Well, thats it for today, been a fairly busy one so not an awful lot done, just a lot of ideas going around in my head.

Oh, I did find a Vauxhall Movano on eBay that was being broken for spares, it had all the bonded side windows I wanted, but sadly they had all been sold by the time I saw them, so its still buying new ones a couple at a time until they are all done. Probably a better option anyway, saves all that cleaning up ! ;)

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Gloucester