Van crew - assemble

[paulshane]

9 minutes ago, whitehorses said:

Love it. This is what I’ll be arriving looking like. 

Eriba Puck?

[whitehorses]

@paulshaneyep 1972

[paulshane]

1 hour ago, whitehorses said:

@paulshaneyep 1972

I'm jealous, I want something like that to tow behind my 1978 VW T2 🙂

[whitehorses]

1 minute ago, paulshane said:

I'm jealous, I want something like that to tow behind my 1978 VW T2 🙂

Exactly. That’s exactly what should be towing it, not my crappy focus! And you should colour code the bus and the van 🙂

[curiouscat]

2 hours ago, grumpyhack said:

I've sat at festivals watching couples turn up with their trailer tents or awnings to put on caravans.  The first bit is ually easy and then the domestics start as there are arguments about which order the bits go on.

Hahaha, yeah, I can imagine there's a fair amount of people buying one just for a festival, and not having a clue when they get there 😂😂

Were pretty good at it now thankfully! 

[paulshane]

8 minutes ago, Lesley2337 said:

Hahaha, yeah, I can imagine there's a fair amount of people buying one just for a festival, and not having a clue when they get there 😂😂

Were pretty good at it now thankfully! 

Thats another fun thing about mine, it literally takes about 90 seconds to put up, which every year so far, has had people wander over to ask how on earth I did it 🙂

[curiouscat]

1 hour ago, paulshane said:

Thats another fun thing about mine, it literally takes about 90 seconds to put up, which every year so far, has had people wander over to ask how on earth I did it 🙂

Hahahaha, love that!! 

Them all just stood there, pint in hand staring 😂😂

[carlosj]

This is our 2 vans in the fields. My mate's is the 86 classic and mine is the 05 Fiat. It's passed the MOT easily and will be there in June. 

[blutarsky]

Been out to the beach in the van this afternoon. Here it was at Beautiful Days last summer. 

[irnkrtn]

Off for a short motorway run in the van this weekend to head to a wedding. Taking the van not the car cause its MORE FUN.

[paulshane]

'van crew disassemble 🙂

 

less windy today, so I made a start on repairing the door side panel on my folder. Like I mentioned earlier in the thread, the panels are a wooden frame, with the ali outer glued on, the middle filled with polystyrene, glued in place and the inner some hardboard faces with plastic 'veneer' , also glued on. I suspect the designers didn't expect some cheapskate like me to still be using one forty years after it was made, so I'm dealing with the unexpected.

 

What is happening to this one is the lower edges of the panels are rotting, which makes the screw holding the hinges in place work loose, meaning it pulls in all directions when trying to raise the sides, and will fail with the panel completly detaching - no fun at all if it happened on the Tuesday ...

 

'van next to van 🙂 yes, I have a new cover on its way, this one is quite a few years old and has become brittle with age and the recent storms killed it.

hinge in situ

panel folded down so I can unscrew the lower hinge screws, the other panels will get a refresh too - there are years of 'make do' fixes here 😄

 

Panel manhandled into my garage

[paulshane]

ready to go

 

This is the issue, dry rot has dissolved the lower part of the fram, which means the panel has no strength

basically fucko'd

surgery begins

[paulshane]

This shows the coinstruction, you can see the inner hardboard with the plastic covering, and the poly filling

board removed

cleaned up a bit, you can now see the back of the outer ali panel.

 

thats all I managed this evening 🙂

 

 

[paulshane]

Round Two:

 

 

Also got a shout out on Marc Rileys show, (got the radio on in the garage) after guessing the 'whos on my tshirt' game, which was nice 🙂

[blutarsky]

1 hour ago, paulshane said:

Round Two:

 

 

Also got a shout out on Marc Rileys show, (got the radio on in the garage) after guessing the 'whos on my tshirt' game, which was nice 🙂

Pic not showing fir me, but all the others are fascinating! Keep them coming! 

[paulshane]

2 minutes ago, blutarsky said:

Pic not showing fir me, but all the others are fascinating! Keep them coming! 

weird, showing for me, but i've manually uploaded it just in case:

[gazzared]

1 hour ago, paulshane said:

weird, showing for me, but i've manually uploaded it just in case:

How are you going to replace the rotten pieces?, Can you use marine ply or would that be too heavy ? Great project 👏👏👏

[paulshane]

15 minutes ago, gazzared said:

How are you going to replace the rotten pieces?, Can you use marine ply or would that be too heavy ? Great project 👏👏👏

the wood thats under the clamps in the pic is the replacement, it's just some rough cut lumber from B&Q 🙂 Only the sides and tops of the panel are wood, the center is just polystyrene (with the ali panel on the outside and hardboard on the inside) the bit of board in the lower left of the pic will be cut to shape to cover the new wood I've added, so the inner panel is back to normal, but I'll also add a strenghtening panel so the two are joined together.

Basically, the panel is a big frame, that hinges from the bottom, but gets lifted from the top when it's raised, so it needs to be strong on all four sides, but the middle can be air, for all the difference it makes 🙂

[DarrenVonBoathook]

On 4/19/2022 at 8:33 AM, Neil said:

my van will be getting its first outing for 2 years i'm scared it might break down.

Same, I'm cra**ing myself.

Van ('89 T25) is supposed to be going to Bearded Theory first which is a much shorter run for me, but I'm wondering if I should abandon that and just go for broke on the Glastonbury trip.

 

Quote

this is the gear I use - it's currently in my day van, but will be swapped to the caravan for the festival, it's a cheap charge controller with a small display , £20ish as far as I remember, this is a standalone system, so it's not connected to the vans electrics, which means it's very easy to setup - panel goes to the panel inputs, battery goes to battery, and lights etc go on 'load' (often marked 'lights)

I run heavy loads direct from the battery though - as i don't need to worry about the leisure battery going flat, as i don't need to to start the van, so the 'auto power off' that the 'load' funtion has on the controller isn't needed.

Same setup in my van, except its got a cheap MPPT charge controller. It useful being able to run the leisure battery down, but its also been useful as a backup in the past when the main van battery went flat and wouldn't start the van. I carry some jump leads, so I can jump the main van battery from the leisure battery if needed.

 

 

[paulshane]

1 hour ago, DarrenVonBoathook said:

 I carry some jump leads, so I can jump the main van battery from the leisure battery if needed.

 

 

Don't do this too often though, leisure batteries aren't designed to do Cold Cranking Amps i.e. whats needed to start a car, so the sudden load can stress the plates and shorten its life.

 

I'm guessing your T3 is a diesel, I have one of these for my T5 and it's worked several times in the winter when the van battery has said its too cold to play today.

 

https://www.argos.co.uk/product/8793591?clickPR=plp:11:31

[Quark]

As someone without (a) a camper / caravan / motorhome or (b) DIY capabilities beyond a bit of painting, I find this thread both fascinating and soothing.

That is all.

[Neil]

someone opened the sliding side window on my van the other night,  luckily they didn't go in or take anything.

the wife fixed it with a bit of bamboo to jam it shut, that's screwed them (thank gawd).

[t0paz]

17 hours ago, paulshane said:

weird, showing for me, but i've manually uploaded it just in case:

Was that every clamp you have? Or do you have some more for bigger projects? 😀

[paulshane]

1 minute ago, t0paz said:

Was that every clamp you have? Or do you have some more for bigger projects? 😀

Got loads more than that 😄

[DarrenVonBoathook]

11 hours ago, paulshane said:

Don't do this too often though, leisure batteries aren't designed to do Cold Cranking Amps i.e. whats needed to start a car, so the sudden load can stress the plates and shorten its life.

 

I'm guessing your T3 is a diesel...

I wouldn't want to do it routinely for the reasons you mentioned, but in an emergency its been needed a couple of times. Mines a petrol, and whether by design*, or more likely just because the engine is somewhat worn out, the compression ratio doesn't seem to be that high and it doesn't take much to get the engine to turn over.

I've seen suggestions in some forums, rather than jump starting directly from the leisure battery, use it to charge the main battery, then start as normal, which might be reasonable if you've got the time to wait.

I keep looking at those Lithium jump packs, but I'd probably leave it in the wrong vehicle or forget to charge it when I get round to needing it.

 

edit. *Looked it up. Compression ratio is 8.6:1

Edited April 28, 2022 by DarrenVonBoathook