So all in all I really havent felt like working on Nina.
But, work must be done, so this weekend see's me starting again.
Before I start with a small update, any of you with larger campers out there ? Dont you just love it when parking spaces are like this outside your bank ? :)
Wish supermarkets were like this too. Often I have had to drive round the carpark a few times until two spaces come up one behind the other so I can get the whole length on !
My Fiamma Turbo Kit fan arrived, its really very good, it runs on 8x D batteries, or 12v. It comes with a 12v socket for your car, also another cable that has a removeable tip, this can be taken off and reversed to make the fan push air out rather than pull air in. It comes with a set of brackets that you fix inside your skylight, then the sprung hanger that is attached to the fan, attaches to these. You can also use the hangers to hang the fan vertically on a dog crate, it will grip top and bottom, ideal for fitting to a crate in a vehicle etc. Jen is using it at the moment on the grid window of the bulkhead in her Animal Ambulance, blowing air from the drivers cab in to the rear of the van. Its very versatile and actually more useful as a 'floating' fan that can be used as an when needed wherever it is needed. It also stands on a table as a normal desk fan, as pictured here in our caravan.
I am very pleased with it and we will get lots of use out of it with the animals.
Which brings me nicely into the next bit of news. As the Fiamma Turbo Kit fan is so useful to use between vehicles, I have decided to fit a permanent roof fan to Nina. I bought the fan online, it cost £146, and comes with a 3 way switch, which allows you to reverse the fan straight from the switch and expel air as well as drawing air in.
Now the roof of Nina is VERY ridged, and the ridges are deep, making fitting something flat to the roof very difficult. The good news, at the front of the roof, there is a pattern that I think must have been intended for a sunroof, the pattern is quite shallow and the best place to fit the fan, which needs a 230mm hole.
This pattern happens to be directly above the front overhead light inside, so have had to remove the whole light, so I used the fixtures to mend the back light which will now be able to light up the rear 'garage' space.
The light casing and workings removed, just the wiring remains, which will be reused for something else.
Tomorrow I am hoping to get up there and cut the hole and fit the fan.
We recently bought a caravan to use as a tea room at the field we rent for the dogs. It has seating very similar to my seating in Nina, so I thought I would borrow the cushions and see how the seating will look and work once I have ordered the cushions.
As a seating area, it looks very cosy and homely, and is comfortable to sit on.
Also looks great with the bed pulled out, and is equally as comfortable :) as Bruno here will testify to !
I'm really happy the seating works well as a convertible bed, all those hours of designing and working out the measurements and then the building were totally worth it. Must remember to finish them off soon !
You may remember me saying that I want to use Nina as a show vehicle, and that I needed to build a space into the back compartment for my industrial pop up marquee, which is very heavy, weighing in at around 80kg. I had been wondering how to go about fitting some help in the back for when I needed to lift it in and out when needed.
Well I hadn't really been actively looking for anything, far too many other things to do first, but while browsing Facebook Selling Pages last week, I found someone selling a mobility hoist, the kind that lifts mobility scooters and wheelchairs etc into the back of estate cars. Its maximum lift was 100kg, so ideal for my 80kg marquee. It asked for offers, so I sent a message asking what kind of offers the lady, Clair, wanted, and offered up £20 for it. I was quite surprised when Clair said she would accept my offer, as they go for a bit more on ebay, and I arranged to pick it up a couple days later. This was Clairs pic that attracted me to her ad.
Its a 4 way hoist, so as well as lifting up and down, it will swing in and out too, comes with a control box and a remote. These things are very powerful and very low profile for a hoist.
Anyway, I picked up at the agreed time and Clair was the nicest lady ! The hoist had been in the garage a while after being used in Clairs Dads car before he sadly passed away. So sorry Clair. Promise it will be put to good use !
Today, I got all the bits and pieces together, and realising I might need some welding done to change the configuration around a bit, I popped by and disturbed my friend Andys family barbecue to get his advice on how best to go about it. He told me what I needed to do, so I left him to his burgers and came on home. The hoist comes with two parts, the hoist itself, and a triangular arm that fixes to the car normally. Well the triangular arm was made for the right hand side of a boot, and I needed it to be fixed to the left side of Nina as that is where the bolt mountings are that were originally securing the fold up seats, and I needed to make use of those to secure the arms to for the hoist. Andy kept the one part as he needed to chop it up ready to be welded to a length of square steel tubing I had here that was to be the main support for the hoist arm.
I had to remove the fibreglass covering between the back and the wheel arch, which revealed a strengthener that the support could sit on.
That rust cloured plastic you can see has one of the bolt fixings in the middle which will secure the new strut. That little platform will be the base for the strut as you can see here in the next pic.
You can just make out in this picture a hole to the right of the upright, which is the second bolt hole that held the fold up seat, Andy will weld an arm coming out across that hole, and a bolt will be fixed through it. This is to prevent the strut moving when lifting. Part of the arm Andy has also has the lugs on it that the hoist arm sits on and allows it to swing out, that will be welded at the top of the strut you see in the picture, making it high enough to hopefully clear the floor with the marquee which stands at around 5ft tall.
As I left it tonight, this is the marquee up in Nina with the hoist lifting bar attached and the hoist arm attached to that and hanging down to the side. Once the new bits are welded in and the stabilising arm is bolted in, the hoist arm can be fitted to the lugs and should then be operational. Just hope we get the clearance right and it lifts enough to clear the floor on its way in. I am also looking forward to seeing if the hoist actually can lift it as advertised, as the marquee is bloomin heavy and I can only just about lift it an inch or so off the ground in a bear hug, and even then only momentarily.
I am thinking I may need to drill through the marquee legs near the top, and fix a bolt through either side that the chain can fix to, as I am doubtful that the heavy duty ratchet strap wont slide up as the chains pull on it to lift.
I think that is it for tonights update, more tomorrow hopefully. Oh, one more thing, I did buy some more 34x34 timber to start building the kitchen frame, and a box of 500 decking screws to fix it all together, so that will start happening soon too, although I wont be able to fix it in permanently until the flooring and walls have been covered.
I will leave you with a photo of Nina from the field today, she loves it down there ;)
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Location:Gloucester
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