Saturday, 25 February 2012

Yes ! I think its going to work just fine :).

Managed to get a lot done again today, despite not starting until late afternoon, it just meant I had to work into the night, finally finishing at midnight.

This afternoon I finalised the idea for a design I had, and worked out all the individual lengths I needed to cut, I worked out I needed 22.834 meters of the 34mm x 34mm wood I've been using for the seat bases. Wickes do a pack of 9 at 2.4m, which is a better deal than B&Q who sell it in packs of 4 at 2.1m.

You might think that having done a camper before, by jow my notes would be at a professional level, resembling a well polished Instruction Manual. Welllll, not quite. Thought it would be fun to show you my design page, which really shows you that most of the design is actually still in my head ! :P

The scribbled out bits I did as I was cutting the wood so that I didnt cut any lengths twice.



Inside my head really isnt a good place to find yourself lol, its very messy, unorganised and you really wouldnt even begin to understand half of what I have running through it lol.

Anyway, once I'd done the design, amd cut the wood, this is what the second seat looked like in flat pack form !


That piece just to the left, is what was left over from the 23.7 meters I started out with !

As you can see it was starting to get dark when I finished, this photo was taken on our driveway.

So I decided to take it all into the living room and put it together in there after tea ! :P. At least its not an engine or a motorbike covered in oil !

Before I locked Nina up, I decided to try the lit strips I'd made. I tried the over head strip light first, a strip of 6 white LEDs. It wired straight in to the existing light wiring, so was very easy, and the sticky foam fixed it straight in, no problems.


Sadly though, it really didnt throwout much light at all, it was ok with the light cover off as above, but as you can see below, putting the thick plastic cover over the top reduced the effective light quite considerably.


So, I need to think again. I could just move the strip light from the back one to the middle one. This would mean that both the overheads in the actual living space would be working, and I could use my dimmer LED strip in the storage area.
I also tried the blue strip I made as a downlight for the blinds. I quickly powered it with a PP3 battery, so its not as bright as it will be when its wired in to the 12v system, but even so looked really cool ! :).


I took this accidentally with the flash on my phone switched on, I was quite pleased to see it didnt overpower the LED even on the PP3.

This one was with the overhead lights switched off and no flash.....


I absolutely love it :). Its exactly what I was going for, this will be on all 4 side windows hopefully, if I can work out how to get power to the side door window. Most probably using door contacts to pass electric into the door.

So with all that done, it was teatime.

After tea, Jen went back to her petsitting job, leaving me to build my seat in the living room ! LOTS of drilling and screwdrivering, and as I said earlier, it was midnight, and I finally finished !

This might not make sense to you at the moment, but once I put the boards across the top, and face the framework with ply, it will look like a seat, and when pulled out, a bed.

This is the seat unconverted .....



And this is the seat pulled out. Once its all finished off, this is how I will access the storage via two lids too.



Together with the seat I made before, when pulled out like this, it will make up a 6ft x 4ft bed.

Tomorrow I will put it in Nina next to the other one and take a picture in its L configuration, and then pulled out as a bed. Next week I will order some 9mm ply to go on top, and some more 6mm ply to face off and line the storage boxes.

Thats it for tonight !

Time for sleep (as its gone 1.30am now !) :).

Sweet campervan dreams everyone !



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Location:Gloucester

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