Wow ! Second Day Of Big Push

Sunday saw me preparing everything ready to fit the wall lining carpet ! The last three jobs I had left to do, were carpet the OS wall, carpet the bulkhead, and measure the floor for new wood.

Well I did all that and the NS wall ! :).

I started with emptying as much back out of Nina as possible, she had filled up with tools and oddments. Then went and got Henry and vacuumed up every bit of dust I could find. Part of this meant clearing out all the metal channels in the floor, one less job when I come to remove them in the near future.

Next, I washed the surface of the OS wall down. Now if this was the metal wall of the van, I would have sanded the metal a little to get the glue to stick better, but as Nina is lined out with a Fibreglass shell, I felt that sanding it would create more of a problem than not, ie it would create lots of very fine fibreglass dust coating everything, so I left that part out, and so far so good.

Once it was all washed down, I masked the two windows using 50mm masking tape and newspaper. This was obviously to stop all the glue overspraying, and it does, you have been warned ;). Actually sometimes when spraying it, it looks a little like Silly String :S.

The next part was quite momentous, I unwrapped the carpet that had been sitting in my front hallway ever since it was delivered, NEARLY A YEAR AGO TO THE DAY ! Wow, how time flies. Slowly the house is emptying of everything that has been stored there all this time :). Past few weeks has seen the solar panel disappear and the carpet, as well as the smaller bits I have been fitting like the EHU socket.

Well, what happened from there on in, might be better illustrated by the timelapse video I recorded using my GoPro :)



Hopefully that showed you how hard (and fast !) I worked :P. Got lots more little bits of carpeting to do, the side door, the roof panel when it goes back on, some more bits of bare wall, and then the wooden window surrounds, the seat boxes etc. Wont have time now until the weekend after this, almost two weeks ! Hope I don't lose the momentum ! :). Its on my mind a lot now, I really want to finish soon and just use it even for one night at Frampton, just to say I did, it gutted me not to have used Scooby before I sold him !

I'll leave you with a few pics, see you in a couple of weeks, if not before if I manage something on an evening beforehand :).





































NEWS UPDATE -
Remember Emma ?
Had an email from Ben who bought her whilst I was doing this, he has put me to shame ! In the short time he has had her, just take a look at how far his build has gone ! Best get my skates on ;).
Well done Ben ! Sorry Emma has been playing you up, glad its sorted now though, fingers crossed she behaves from now on. Please do keep in touch :).












Thanks for stopping by ! Come back soon ;)

Location:Gloucester

Big Push This Weekend....

It's been nearly three years now since Nina came in to our lives. I have done lots, over 90 posts would indicate that, but she is still not really looking very camper like.

The windows wasted a lot of time, that was a huge set back before I could afford to sort them. Happy to report that all are now water tight :).

So, 2014 is the year when Nina will be useable as a camper, I am determined. I can't believe we are halfway through the year already.

So, firstly, I need two things whilst the roof is down, the tv aerial, I want either an Omni or the Triangle type ones that you can adjust from inside. The hole in the roof and the wiring needs to be done. The second thing I need to do is replace her roof vent. Since I had to undo all the screws on the vent to get the roof down, it's started leaking. On closer inspection on top, the sealer is all really old, messy, and the cover has gone yellow and brittle from the UV rays from the sun. I feel that if I need to take it all off, clean up the surfaces ready for new sealer, I might as well fit a new more modern vent that has the mosquito mesh and a blackout blind. Its a 500mm or 1/2 metre opening, so lets in loads of light, the blind would be good for sleeping.

Today, I gave myself 6 jobs to do over the weekend, and managed to get 3 done today.

First job was to cut a hole in to the interior panel at the back, giving me access to the outer body skin, where I would be cutting a hole for the Electric Hook Up socket. Just as I was finishing cutting the fibreglass liner, the dremel cutting wheel disintegrated and flew in to my head, cutting it for the second time in two days ! Yesterday I lifted the bar up on the gate to the field, and as I was opening the gate it came down on my forehead and bloody hurt ! Bleeding everywhere and gave me a headache for the rest of the day. The Dremel incident wasn't as dramatic, but did draw blood. Luckily I had eye protection on, though thankfully it didnt go near my eyes.













Once the panel was cut out, I had to remove a load of insulation, glad to say that Nina is well insulated, although they didn't insulate the roof, weirdly.






When I was able to get a good look inside, I could see that when Nina was first converted to an Ambulance, they welded some steel girders to the van wall. I think this had a couple of purposes. The obvious one is so that they had solid mounting points for stretchers, wheelchairs and seats. The fold away seats that were on the near side all had seat belts so would have needed to be solid to be legal. The second purpose, if she had had a side impact, the interior and any affixed stretchers or wheelchairs would be pretty safe. Nina is a really solid old girl ;).

I chose a section underneath the rear window, then got my dremel working again, on the outside this time, cutting a big hole in the body.












Last time I did this, I didnt have my Dremel and ended up making a right old mess with a jagged hole, this in comparison was a very neat job. Cant count the amount of times I have needed it to do little jobs, its paid for itself many times over. If you haven't got one, get one.

I treated all the new cut edges with the black stuff they use when they fit windows, completely coats the bare metal and prevents any rusting. Then fitted my EHU socket, which will power a battery charger, and mains sockets in Nina.


















Next I had a quick play with the Solar Panel I fitted in the last entry. Wired the regulator to it, uncovered the panel, and tried out some lighting in the load testing points of the regulator. All working fine, although I did get a bit worried that I was only seeing 5 volts on the meter when not under load, apparently though this is normal. It went up to 10-15v when under load, ie the lights were switched on.


















Really pleased it all works ok, cant wait to finally connect it up to the leisure batteries and use all that sun energy !

Next job was to remove all the window surrounds and feed in the wiring that will power the blue LED downlights that will light the blinds for some mood lighting. This job took me most of the afternoon/early evening as the people that converted Nina to an Ambulance did a really good job and sealed/glued/fixed everything, meaning a simple job like feeding a wire through to each blind was very physically and mentally demanding !

I bought a set of feed rods from Aldi in one of their Specials, and broke two in the process. They are basically fibreglass rods that screw together, a bit like drain rods, and you can fix an eyelet or hook on the end to draw wires through narrow spaces. Got there in the end after much drilling, banging and pushing, yes, still talking about the wiring :S, and now have a feed to each window, except the side door one, which is a little more complicated and will need a set of contacts for the side door to take power up to the lights.






























By the way, when running wires, be sure to buy yourself a roll of masking tape, to mark the wires each end, so you dont get confused with what you are connecting up, when it comes to it.

The last job today was doing the front to back runs. I basically needed wiring to take the power from the leisure batteries which will be in the rear, to a fusebox that will be in the overhead bit above the front cab, powering the switch box and 12v accessory sockets. Another drop was made half way down for the tv I already have, and the aerial amplifier once I get an aerial.

This is how I left it all tonight, a right old mess, but it has to get worst before it gets better, and it certainly is !


















Tomorrow, will see big changes, something more visual and a definite sign of things to come.

If you want to see, you better come back and take a look ;).

Thats it for today, I'm now going to sit and relax and wait for England vs Italy to start.

COME ON ENGLAND ! ;).




- Thanks for stopping by ! Come back soon ;)

Location:Gloucester