Family-friendly bike-carrying camper build

Couple of hours of my holiday well spent. Lots of great ideas To “borrow”.

Thanks Mike_D

This is one of the best van build threads, on any site, ever

@Mike_D
Wondering what to clad my rear doors in, and see that you used a coated ply.
I’ve found 2.5mm PVC sheeting at a reasonable price, but I can’t find something like you used.
Do you have any links or good search terms?

It’s this stuff: https://magnummotorhomes.co.uk/shop/wallboards/wallboards-wallboards/white-hard-glaze-pack-of-4/

Thanks Mike!

Also – I’m just getting around to specifying the kitchen. Just read that you’d swapped your fancy fridge for a domestic one – what model did you go for in the end and is it quiet enough? Are you using the Victron 500W inverter?
Cheers!

Hello! Long time no post. Some updates – going back a little way here but we’ll catch up. I think we’d just come back from the Western Isles. Had builders in so parked the van down the road for a bit, which someone clearly didn’t like:

Somewhat of an arse, especially having deliberately parked it not outside anyone’s actual house. Cleaned that up, then three weeks later:

Keyed for 6m along one side. Marvellous. Touched it in while hatching a plan, but not much happened for a while except for some maintenance jobs like sorting the connector to the cabin fan resistor pack that melted (they do that, if you have one of these vans and the fan only works on full speed, check this):

The following Easter we adapted the bike racks as ski racks:

And drove to the Alps:

Upon return progress picked up again a bit. The fridge wasn’t working too well in hotter conditions so added a vent:

Complete with a fan tucked inside in case it ever got _really_ warm:

And the fan broke again but this time it was the switch, which meant doing this:

Taking all of this off:

To access this:

And swap it for a new one:

And in the next instalment we dismantle the other half of the dashboard as part of Project Cruise Control:

Cruise control was fun. It’s a retrofit kit – later models of van either have it already fitted, or adding is a case of adding the control stalk and turning the feature on in the ECU. Ours was a bit more involved. Needed access to the dashboard fuse box and steering column:

There’s a little control box to hide away somewhere – this little space near the fusebox did nicely. Needs wiring in to power and a vehicle speed signal (which you can pick up from the loom nearby):

It also needs to talk to the pedals. There are extra wires to connect to the brake light switch behind the pedal, and to the clutch, so that if you press either of those the cruise disengages. And so it can actually control the speed, there’s a piggyback harness that sits between the throttle position potentiometer and the ECU so that it can make the ECU think that the accelerator pedal is in positions it isn’t and you can take your foot of it. I’d hoped this would just involve pulling a plug, adding the harness and putting the plug back, but the top of the accelerator pedal assembly is way up behind the dash and no amount of James Herriot-style rummaging was going to do it. So I took it out:

Plugged in, put it back:

Then there was just the control stalk to fit and connect. There’s a handy space on the steering column shroud below the indicator stalk, so drilled a hole and put it there:

End result is, I think, quite tidy – almost factory:

Best of all, it works really well – absolute boon if driving, for example, the length of France. Recommended.

That’s quite some effort to fit cruise! Respect. I very much doubt I’d have the patience for that.

Cruise control is something that is top of the criteria list for me.

I cant believe your neighbours.

Who ever done that wants a slap

A lot of people pass through on foot, I can’t be sure it was someone in the street. Like I say, it wasn’t parked outside anyone’s house – there’s a stretch at one end with a tall hedgerow that always has half a dozen cars parked along it, it was there. It all worked out, as the paintwork was becoming increasingly badgered anyway, of which more later 🙂

Some other odds and ends. This bit must actually pre-date the skiing – we were concerned about the underslung (and uninsulated) water tanks freezing (although it was Easter, so not crazy cold in resort) so arranged an auxiliary tank inside the van. There was a handy space under the sink (usually full of cereal boxes):

Got a 20l container and a tap, and arranged some new pipework under the shelf (which is where the pipe from the tank underneath comes in and where the pump lives). We now have a stoptap on the main tank feed, a Y piece to a second stoptap and a short length of hose with a threaded fitting to attach to the container under the sink. So if we’re likely to be somewhere very cold, we can fill the container (by lifting it out and carrying it to a tap), turn off the main tank, connect the hose and turn it on. Worked well, just had to fill it more often.

As an aside, when I was messing with pipework this little clump of plastic swarf (which must have come from the tank) fell out, which explained why the water flow from the sink tap had been a bit erratic – the swarf must have been constantly bouncing off the filter in the pump. All much better with it out:

Waste water was dealt with by leaving the drain tap open with a bucket under it. Oh wait, we couldn’t fit a bucket under it and the tap wasn’t very accessible so rebuilt all that too. Wanted to bring the drain taps out to the sill rather than having to rummage for a tap at arm’s length, so made up a bracket from folded aluminium:

Offer up the taps (lever valve for the waster which gets emptied often, plastic tap for the fresh which gets emptied rarely (or rather, it often empties but via the taps inside…)):

Drilled (and cleaned up and painted the edges of) two small holes in the sill flange, Sikaflexed and (stainless) bolted the bracket on:

And taps. Much better – easily accessible and they don’t stick out from the side of the van:

We knew we’d be parked on Tarmac in resort, so finally got around to fitting the awning leg brackets that came with the awning in 2015 and had been lurking in a box of bits ever since. Holes, rivnuts, Sikaflex, stainless bolts, bosh:

What else? Oh yes, heat. We have a heater, but there was only one outlet. We had a grand plan to use the boot space as a drying room – there’s a mushroom vent in the top, so we just needed to get some heat in at the bottom. So got a diverter valve for the heater outlet and a load of trunking to split off another outlet:

(Also seen here the actual proper heater outlet that got made, rather than the hot air just coming straight out of the end of the heater into the van:)

Heater duct through the bottom corner of the washroom, which meant pulling out the plastic shower tray (which had cracked anyway, so no great loss). Put another T in here so there’s also an outlet in the washroom itself:

And finally routed to an outlet in the boot space:

(Low-wattage tube heater also fitted in case we found ourselves on a hook-up). Then just had to pop a hanging rail in and:

Worked pretty well, slightly to my surprise. Then again, it’s a 2kW heater so maybe not that surprising. And yes, we did travel with a sealant gun, you never know when you might need one…

This is all pretty awesome. Out of interest, what’s the gross weight up to now? I’d be a bit concerned about breaching the GVWR of the van

I don’t have an up-to-date unladen weight, which is something that needs doing. We’re under 3.5t laden (people, food, clothes, bikes, couple of paddleboards, camping kit etc) but it’s close. We took a canoe on a roof rack to France recently and that was enough to make a couple of the autoroute toll booths reject our tag, so I suspect we’d managed to drift over on a couple of occasions (some of them have weigh-in-motion systems on the drive-through lanes). The van itself is a Maxi with heavy-duty springs and big brakes, we could replate it to over 4t just with paperwork, but it’s easier to travel with less water in the tank and leave stuff we don’t need at home. It’s built very light, everything that looks solid and thick is hollow. I should probably also take the towbar off, which we never use and I suspect is about 30kg.

The worrying ones are all the recycled pallet wood/solid oak worktops/cast iron stove jobs…

The worrying ones are all the recycled pallet wood/solid oak worktops/cast iron stove jobs…

Don’t forget the belfast sink, tiled kitchen and cladded ceiling 🙄

Great to see you back Mike, the original and best “VanLife”, and best thread on here. I have to admit a slight addiction to those YouTube VanLife types, not in an ” I envy your van and life choices” sort of way, but more in a ” how the hell do you make a living ?” sort of way. Then the penny drops…..hundreds of thousands of hits on their channels, and monetise them, makes for a half decent living.

Actually, check out Foresty Forest, a laid back and quirky Canadian, at first living in a people carrier with his fat bike, but now he’s actually got a van. Strangely addictive.

Some more interior finishings off… The plastic shower tray in the bottom of the washroom cracked, and we’d pulled it up to fit the extra heater ducting, so we rebuilt the washroom floor using more PVC-faced plywood and corner joint strips. Some trial runs with offcuts showed that this would be suitably waterproof:

Some sections of PVC from the building plastics place to finish off:

Much better (this pic from before everything was siliconed up properly – did finally add the bottom threshold for the door, though…):

We also had an issue with the table, which looked great in its beech woodblockness but was really too heavy to comfortably lift in and out of its home behind the front seats. So made another one from 12mm ply, which by itself would be too flexible but with some strategically-placed extra pieces of ply underneath is plenty stiff (and about half the weight of the previous one):

The plain look was a bit dull so we covered it with some map-style paper and a couple of coats of varnish, which has proved hard-wearing so far:

After all of which the interior was looking something close to finished, bar a few unpainted bits. Er, and some bits you can’t see from this angle. Anyway:

Meanwhile outside the demands of growing children and the resulting phone/tablet charging meant that a bit of a power boost was required, so found space for a third solar panel:

…shortly before taking all of them off again, plus a load of the exterior plastics:

Because it was time to do something about the paint…

Absolutely amazing build mate. We’re living in a Rollertean TLine 590 currently….really love the look of your van though.

Ooh, nice. Clever vans, those, you get a lot into not much length. The extra width of a coachbuilt makes a big difference.

Yeah so we’re finding out. From our limited experience, the extra width really does make a difference driving wise. I drive a lwb Sprinter box van at weekends for work now. It’s longer than the motorhome, but the motorhome feels like a lorry in comparison due to the nearly 30cm extra width.

It does make it very comfortable and roomy for two plus a dog to live in mind!

Oh aye. I was referring to the space-inside difference but yes, a coachbuilt certainly has a bit more “road presence” 🙂 The low-profiles are a lot sleeker than traditional overcab coachbuilts, a lot more of them around now than there used to be.

ooh – an update! Good stuff Mike!
I’m starting to get far too anal with mine. Just working on a set of drawers has taken 3 weeks!
Trying to make it all lightweight.

Lightweight is good! But also time-consuming. Anyway, another update incoming!

So the van was starting to look a little tired, not just because of the vandalism up-thread but also because Ducato paint is notoriously not the finest and was beginning to flake off in places. We looked briefly into resprays but the cost was fairly alarming. We’d always had a bit of a soft spot for satin/matte finishes on vans, so with the aid of a massive thread on one of the classic VW forums we painted it on the drive. Got rid of all the flaky bits and rubbed down:

Sanded back and primed some particularly bad spots:

And then set to with paint. We used satin finish Rustoleum Combicolour in a custom colour mix – Brewers decorating supplies will do any colour your want as long as it’s got a RAL code. Followed the instructions on the Club 80-90 Rustoleum thread (Google it, it’s super useful) regarding thinners and application and over the course of a long weekend got to here:

Which is a massive improvement. And also still nominally blue so we didn’t have to do any DVLA paperwork 🙂

Just dropping in a holiday snap – Île de Ré, July 2019:

Oh, and waiting for Le Tour a couple of weeks later 🙂

Actually this is a better Tour pic, it’s got bikes in it 🙂

did you spray or roller the rustoleum? I’ve potentially got a classic T2 van to paint soon (once i’ve repaired the rear gutters/roof)

Foam rollers (and foam “brushes” for the fiddly bits). There’s a knack to it but you can get a good finish (and can be done shiny if you like).

That looks proper smart

Really like that blue!

See an awful lot of older Ducato/Boxer/Relay vans with flaky paint work. Almost always blue.

Fortunately white doesn’t seem to suffer so much.

Was thinking of foil wrapping my van once it’s bought/done (assuming it’s white), but I really like the finish on yours.

Was thinking of going for a earthy light green/brown.

Yeah, the blue ones do seem to be particularly bad for it, although I’ve seen a fair few “white” ones that are down to primer over large areas (particularly the roof above the windscreen). It’s one of the things that makes me nervous when people just glue solar panels to the roof – they’re probably extremely well stuck to the paint, but the paint isn’t necessarily very well stuck to the van…

Is that the same blue as Singular uses? It’s really rather nice. I was idly thinking of doing the front triangle of my Process 111 in something similar to the finish on your van. I suspect Ducatos and 2104-era Konas are painted in the same factory.

Don’t know if it’s exactly the same (and I’ve forgotten the RAL code) but it’s certainly in the same ballpark. Tempted to use some of the left-over paint to do my ancient Cannondale hack bike which is now about 40% bare metal 🙂

Ooh – give it a go! I always thought it would look good on fat tubes as well as slim steel ones. I’m looking at a light matt blue front triangle, matt black rear end, but I keep havering over blue or a sort of pale olive green with a bit of orange. My paint skills are fricking awful – I’m going to have a rummage in that thread you mentioned up there.
But back to the van – it just keeps getting better and better. Seriously impressive.

That blue is lush – well done for having a crack at it!