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Looking very good, the garage is neat
Very nice.
Cheers fellas! Need to post about starting the interior furniture next!
Loving this!!
Could you use wheel bags and just hang them from hooks?
Maybe @Straightliner - know of any cheap ones? That would certainly reduce the size of the needed hook and take care of the padding. It's also something a son could be doing while I'm lifting in the bikes (at the moment there aren't many opportunities for dividing up the work, so I end up doing it all.)
Bonus step pic - taken today - showing the polyeurathane and the machining on the back of the hatches. As you can see I got through to the ugly glue line, but I don't really care.
I guess it would be a case of trying it and seeing where the various bits touched. I think the axle on the van back doors would need protecting. I don't like the idea of tyres constantly moving against the frames either. Easy enough to test with some scraps (or even straps) though as you say
I would have a look again at trying to get a couple of wheels hooked onto the inside of the back doors with a couple of bungee loops to stop them swinging about.
We have that arrangement on the rear bulkhead and it works well for 27.5 & fat bike wheels (no 29ers here). Road wheels go in a wheel bag if we have road and MTB in the van at the same time:
Thanks @tillydog - I'll check again with the widths of 29ers because putting them on the doors would be a dream. Currently got 1 29er and my next bike might be too.
At this point the c-pillars were still bare metal and I needed to work out how to clad them before starting the furniture (which would trap them in).
After a bit of measuring and head-scratching, I decided that a flat piece of 6mm ply with an extra layer of 6mm around the edges would do the trick.
So I made templates, cur the ply and then glued strips all around the edge.
Then used a router to flush trim the strips to match the panel.
Once done, I decided they looked a bit severe, so got the router table set up to bevel the edge to 45-degrees about 8mm deep.
I couldn't do it in one piece (sheets not big enough in the grain direction) so I decided to stop at the seat belt bolt. I probably shouldn't have done this in retrospect as if I'd have gone to the top, the rest might have been covered by overhead lockers - ah well 🙂
To affix to the c-pillar, I sikaflexed in some ply behind the holes, so that I screw into those. You can just see an example in the very top of the pic below.
The sliding-door-side was a bit different as it doesn't overlap cladding
(sneak peak of the kitchen framing just getting provisionally assembled - try not to get too excited)
Framing of furniture
After much deliberation, I decided to frame the furniture a little differently to what I've seen before.
I thought that using 15mm birch ply would be too (needlessly) heavy. I still wanted it to be birch, but didn't really like the idea of unbroken sheets of birch, so I decided to make the framing a visible part of the structure.
To do this I had to rebate the framing so that I could fix in the 6mm birch ply sheets.
Pretty complex to work everything out, but I got there in the end.
Plan was to use dowel joints to assemble it and then attach metal brackets inside once we were sure of everything.
To help with the dowelling, I 3d printed 2 little marking jigs to stick my bradawl through. I made them fit on the ends of the pieces and then transfer the hole positions on to the verticals too.
Once I'd got a frame together, I stained it with Liberon Dark Oak and then covered with Osmo Clear Matt for protection.
Roughly placed it all in position to check all dims
You can see I've left room behind the front part of the frame to run the wiring to the service channel and also the fridge (which is going to go under the side bed)
And then screwed it all down to the floor and wall and glued all the dowel joints.
Some of the wall piece screws into vertical battens that I put in before on wall and garage bulkhead, but some of it just goes into the 6mm ply walls.
Same with the floor - some of it goes through into battens, but other bits just go into the 12mm floor.
I was expecting to have to brace this further with diagonals, but it feels really solid.
Repeated the same with the kitchen unit. The kitchen was a little more complicated as we wanted to include storage for the rear bunk user.
had loads of ideas, but because of using 6mm ply, most fast joint methods don't work. I could have used modesty blocks behind, but instead decided to invest some time into creating a box-building CAD file in Fusion 360 that would make easily machined finger joints. I knew I'd need it later for drawers and other cubby holes, so got cracking.
It's all perameterised, so that you can change dimensions, tool diameters and material thickness and it spits out the g-code. They aren't the prettiest joints in the world because they have tiny gaps where the tool has to run beyond to leave a square hole, but they are quick to machine, fit together really nicely and have a decent 'machine aesthetic' that appeals to me personally.
Cutting on the machine
Assembly
Finished panel osmod and ready to fit
Fixed into position
Because we were going away on holiday again, I fitted a temporary 15mm birch ply worktop on top of the kitchen unit and covered it with book-covering plastic (to protect it in case I wanted to use it as the basis of the proper top).
I realise I haven't shown how I did the bed fence, so I'll take some pics sometime (it's a pain that the van lives a mile away).
Basically, I bought some aluminium angle from Wickes, sikaflexed it to birch ply and then screwed it into the top of the frame. Added a couple of top angles to support the top of it at the garage and seat ends.
Then I added in the side panels and bed slats and off we went on holiday!
I also made a table, but I'll cover that later.
The van's in there somewhere...
New interior worked reeeeeallly well. Phew!
Anyone else not seeing any pretty pictures?
Pictures work for me
Awesome, I love seeing updates to this thread. Keep up the great work!
No pictures for me either <sad face>
They are there on the server (if you look at the code then copy the image link, it works) so I can only assume that the STW servers are struggling to pull them across for everyone.
The STW servers shouldn't be involved - they should be loading directly from my server.
Weird that you can see it from the direct url though e.g.
I just checked from my phone over 4g without being logged in and it all looked fine.
hmmm - all the images throughout the thread were done in the same way - is it just these latest ones you can't see?
I can see them all, they look great
Dining table
After much thought (as usual) about how to integrate a table into the van, I ended up deciding that a completely separate table was the best route to take. It would move aside to let people move to the kitchen or out of the van. It could also be moved outside.
Also as usual, I decided that no off-the-shelf solutions were suitable so began designing.
In the end decided that off-the-shelf legs would be the best route with a home made thin lightweight birch ply top. This time using Osmo Top Oil (specifically food-safe).
After looking around, I decided on a pair of these legs:
They fold neatly under and looked better than some of the steel ones around although they are not cheap at £70 a pair!
As it happened, it was a good choice, because I ended up needing to shorten them by 10mm and make the bottom foot narrower by 15mm each side.
The extrusion contruction and plastic end plug method allowed this with no problems.
The reasons for adjusting were:
To make the overall length of the table fit under the side bed for storage.
To make the table a tad lower (our benches are a little lower than a standard chair)
Then the foot narrowing was just to allow it to move side-to-side in the corridor slightly easier.
I made the top out of 2 layers of 6mm birch ply - the extra layer was just in the middle to give the leg screws something to grip on and to increase rigidity. Works great.
It's permanent home is going to be under the bed behind the driver's side rear seat. For now it's held in place with a bungee.
It's not quite as light as a cheap aluminium camping table from decathlon, but it's much more practical in terms of sliding your legs out from under it at the sides.
Don't even see the url.....
That's really weird.
I wonder if I add a www. to it, it works. e.g.
Getting a bit worryingly close to catching up to actual progress now!
I'd better get a move on.
Fridge.
After investigating fridges for about 18 months and weighing up the pros and cons of 240v vs 12v, chest-style verses domestic style, etc (I was always only looking at electric).
I decided to plump for a cheap domestic 240v fridge and inverter.
Looking around it seemed that a proven setup was an Inventor 93L A++ fridge for £140
And a Victron 500VA inverter for about £160
The main issue with 240v fridges is that they need a high startup current (in-rush current) to get the motor started, so even though the normal usage current is 4A, the in-rush can be as high as 60A for a second, so you need to have headroom in the inverter.
In theory, I prefer the chest-style 4x4 fridges as they are much more efficient and all the cold air doesn't fall out of them as soon as you open the door, but the good ones (Engel, ARB, etc) cost upwards of £800 for the large capacity and they cause problems with needing access to the top hatch, etc.
In the end, the positioning of ours works well. I drilled some holes in a rail at the back of the base and screwed it down to some battens on the floor, to move the door above the bed frame. Eventually, when the rest of the drawers/cupboards are in, I'll frame it all around.
This is the inverter placed behind - it's high so that it can screw into a proper batten instead of just the 6mm ply
I used 10mmsq cable. Live taken from my big isolation switch and earth direct to my c-pillar earth point.
It's massive (which is good for a family of 4), but the jury is still out on whether the freezer part works well enough. It works when the fridge is set too cold, but doesn't when the fridge is about 5-degrees which is how we like it. Ah well. It's enough to keep icecreams frozen until we get to a nice place to eat them, but that's about it.
We've managed 2 days without driving or much sun with no problems, so that's job done!
Forgot to mention. Fridge is really quiet when running normally, but there is a thump when it starts up. It might be coming from the inverter, but not 100% sure. Anyway, after the 3rd night we all slept through it. Whichever is making the noise, it's bound to get better once I start building the drawers/cupboards around them.
It looks like the image issue is because my server (where the images are hosted) isn't https and singletrack is.
So Chrome doesn't like showing non-secure images embedded in a secure page.
Firefox and Edge seem perfectly happy AFAICT though, so maybe try those if you can't see them.
I'm still going btw - trying to get all the gas done and tested before an Easter break!
Also made some drawers and a high-up cupboard so will try and update soon.
Just need to actually fit everything and stop being scared!
stop being scared!
Haha. Procrastination is the thief of time and all that 🙂 I was the same before I started cutting the window holes out of mine...
Yes - I've never done any plumbing of any kind - so going straight to gas is a little daunting!
I'm just going to dry/loosely fit it all and then get a pro to actually tighten everything, fill it with LPG and then test I think.
I've got 5 bikes, sleeping for 2/3 into a SWB quite comfortably. Could easily do 2 more bikes but I'd lose the projector screen.
I'm about to add loads more images.
For chrome users who can't see the images above, you can follow these steps:
1) Click on the padlock at the left of the url field
2) Click 'Site Settings'
3) Scroll down to 'insecure content' and change it to 'allow'
Once you've looked at the images you can always change it back although it sounds worse that it is.
There's something similar in Firefox as well - HTTPS-Only Mode needs to be off (which it is by default).
If people don't want to do this, or it doesn't work, I'll have to find somewhere to upload the images to that is https, but I wouldn't be able to change the ones that are already posted.
Right - we left the kitchen as a plain flat surface. But that's far too simple. Time to turn it into something that takes at least a week's work 🙂
After looking at all the cookers and sinks on the market, I didn't really like the glass lidded motorhome style ones, or the size of the sink in the combined ones. Most of the 3-burner ones don't have much space between the rings for family-sized pans and some of them are woefully underpowered. Oh and there's the fact I don't seem to like buying anything from the smev/dometic/waeco/fiamma cartel 🙂
If I'd had a 60cm deep kitchen, I would have probably gone for one of those domestic glass 2-ring front-to-back hobs, but I couldn't find a good one for my 50cm.
So I decided I liked the 70s yacht aesthetic of this one - and it's powerful and roomy:
Which as I want overhead lockers, is a little too tall sat on the surface, so will need to be sunk in.
I fancied some nice visible joints in the van (don't really have any yet), so my eldest and I worked on creating a CNC-able finger joint. It's not fast to machine (took about a minute per finger), but it looks great
I also used the CNC to cut the sink hole. I bought a nice deep stainless sink from a catering store.
Cooker just placed in.
Unfortunately this new 'sunk-in' design meant chopping some out of the lovely cubby-hole I built, but it still works well and looks good from inside (got to keep my youngest happy!)
Then because we have a plastic window behind the cooker, we need some kind of heat shield. After much deliberation (we do a lot of that), we decided on a stainless sheet that pulls out of the worktop. It has some ply stuck to the top of it with sikaflex to pull it up with and some roller catches bolted to the bottom to keep it up.
It works really well. Easy to pull up and push down again. Just need to test if it needs stabilising when it's down and I'm driving. Original plan was to have another roller catch on a stalk for when it's in the down position. We'll see if it's needed.
The slot was cut with the tracksaw
Testing in the van - that slot is for the gas pipe to exit, but I widened it later for access to viewing the connection for gas-safety checking.
With sink placed in
Showing a test fit of the water tanks (25L jerry cans)
Even though it's a fairly roomy kitchen, you probably can't have enough workspace, so I chopped down a Wilco's bamboo chopping board and used the offcuts to glue a sink-shaped rim around.
No finished in-place photo yet - I'm getting a bit crap at taking those.
Small repair. During the wet autumn I discovered a small water leak from the rear rooflight.
Reading around on the internet it became apparent that I should have carried out an extra step when installing these.
When they come out of the factory they can have mould release agent on the surface of the plastic preventing the sealant from adhering. Bugger.
So I took it out (wow that's messy after being parked under some conifers for a few months).
It came out really easily which was a bit worrying - the sealant was hardly stuck 🙁
Cleaned it all with scraper, and then isopropol. Took care to get the plastic parts of the window really well cleaned (used acetone in a couple of spots).
Then resealed as before.
Once the interior plywood dried out, it's hardly noticable after a quick sand (looks like wood grain tbh). So no harm done - phew.
Plenty of rain since with no problems.
The front rooflight hasn't shown any sign of leaks, but I guess I'll have to factor on redoing that at some point.
Nice update 🙂
I like the cooker, looks a bit like our Origo - in that it’s square and looks purposeful. And the recess for it is great.
The heat shield is a nice touch, very neat.
Is that the Origo that's been bought by Dometic and then discontinued 😉
Haven't used the cooker yet. I'm hoping that the wood doesn't scorch as it's a bit close (5mm all around). If it does, I'll have to line it with metal I guess, or remake it with a 25mm gap instead.
One of the main bits of storage next.
Large drawers next to the fridge.
These will be our main clothes storage - one large drawer per person and then a 5th for big cooker items.
Requirements:
Big
Light
Removable - my plan was to pack these at the house and carry to van, but we'll see.
I bought some push-to-open bearing runners, but when they arrived they weighed a ton! 7kg for 10 slides. Also - the push-to-open function felt too light to do its job in the van. A small wobble would open them I reckon.
So I returned them and decided to make my own. I don't need them to be slick and I like timber 🙂
After much deliberation (quelle surprise) about how to keep the drawers closed while driving we decided to just keep it simple (now that is a surprise) with roller catches.
To keep them lightweight I decided to use 6mm birch ply cut on the CNC in the same way as the cubby-hole above.
Trying to fit the vertical supports for the runners in the van proved tricky as nothing seemed to be square. Completely did my head in. So I built a true and square frame in the shed and then took it to the van. Turned out the floor wasn't flat which is what I was trying to take quare off, so it was good to solve that mystery. Kept the diagonal in place until it was all fixed in place, then removed the unnecessary pieces. Needed some verticals at the back too, but they were easy now that the fronts were in place.
5 hours of watching the CNC machine later:
Each drawer went together nicely with a bit of a tap from a mallet:
Then I glued 12mm runners to the sides - I got a friend with a table saw to do all these - just too painful doing thin pieces with a track saw - took him 5 mins:
Then created a quick jig for drilling the screw holes on the 15mm runners that were going to be fixed to the verticals (the 12mm drawer runners would therefore avoid hitting the verticals).
During test-fitting we realised we only needed a top runner on the top drawer. The ones below were prevented from tipping up by the drawer above. Some lost work but it felt good to save even more weight
Then cut all the fronts. Used the CNC to cut a slot in the fronts, and then used a normal router with a flush bit in to transfer the slot to the inner layer once the fronts were glued on.
Used a roundover bit from both sides set at a shallow angle just to lightly curve the inside edge of the handle.
Test fit again!
Then glued some trim to the verticals to hide the raw pine and finish it off!
You can see the roller catches here as well as the fact that the only drawer to have the top runner is the top drawer.
You can see the slot for the table I made earlier on the left of the drawers.
Drawers feel really nice and big (600mm deep, 550mm wide and 180mm tall) so hopefully they'll work well!
Is that the Origo that’s been bought by Dometic and then discontinued 😉
Yes, it’s a shame you can’t get one anymore 😞
Nice job! Haven’t read the whole thread but I assume this is still the same van from the original post. I admire your patience, my conversion took 4 weeks and I was stressing about getting it finished after 3 😂
I am unable to take on a project without it consuming my life until completion, which has its good sides, but also pitfalls
Odd I see your cooker pick but nothing else in chrome...
On Samsung internet I see it all.
Do your draws need to be solid or could you drill them out on the base save some more weight and let them air
My god I'm so envious it's unreal.
Do you own a ply CNC machine, or do you work somewhere with access to one? I'm quite interested in knocking up some study furniture like that...
@chrishc777
I'm embarrassed to say it really is the same van I've been working on for 2 and a half years 🙂
It's been usable for 1 and a half of those though - we've had 21 nights away in it so far (lockdown has been a pain).
@duncancallum
See my post a couple above this one - it's because I'm hosting the images on my own server which isn't https. You have to tell Chrome it's ok to show them - I've given details.
@rossburton
Yes, I made my own CNC - partially 3D printed. It's called Root3 CNC and I put some details in the 'Last thing you made' thread here. Later on in that thread there are some examples of things I've built with it.
singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/what-is-the-last-thing-you-made-pics-pls/page/59/#post-10315860
ALthough it's probably easier to browse my flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/thingswelike/
It's superb, but not as much use in the van as I would have liked.
If I ever move house and get a bigger work area, I'd build this one - Printnc
I think the attention to detail and extra time spent shows 😃
I also expect that you aren’t sinking every hour you have into it either, y’know, enjoying the job and learning along the way rather than doing everything twice like I did
@AlexSimon: you are my hero. Can you be my dad?
@chrishc777 thank you!
No there have been long breaks - but I do worry slightly that I've lost sight of an overall aesthetic. It's starting to look a bit cobbled together compared to what I had in mind at the start.
Hopefully I'll be able to pull it all together in the end - it's pretty stressful learning all these new things. Before this, I'd never worked on 12v electrics, any kind of plumbing, of any kind of work on a vehicle. So each job is treated with a bit of fear and procrastination before I feel comfortable attacking it.
@rossburton
You are very kind. It just so happens that my eldest is off back to uni next week, so there's an opening 🙂
@alexsimon you need some kind of application process. Or I could just fight @rossburton?