Storage Space

Despite Jim being considerably bigger than most European motorhomes, the space inside is still fairly small, especially when compared to some of the huge trucks and coaches you see at Teknivals and on traveller sites. I have so far managed to squeeze in seating for five people, a full size double bed, a bathroom with a shower, sink and toilet, and will soon have a kitchen with a fridge, oven, hob, and sink; however one thing that I can foresee a shortage of is storage space.

The garage/boot area under the bed is pretty sizable, but it's only really suitable for items like chairs, spare parts, recovery gear, tools and other general items which are rarely used, or only used outside. I don't think that Naomi would appreciate having to jump out of the truck, walk around the back, drop the taillift, and unlock and open the doors, to be able to get a change of underwear each morning, or get a teabag. I therefore need to find space inside the main body of Jim for all the items we'll use day-to-day.

With the bedroom largely finished, I was left with a space approximately 50cm wide, between the back wall of the bathroom, and the front wall of the bedroom on the offside of the truck. It's not a very wide space, but at 75cm deep, and the full 1.83m height inside Jim, the volume is fairly sizable.

As with all space in Jim, it would be too simple to use it for one purpose. To make my life slightly more difficult, I decided to fit an air conditioner in the bottom of the space. The air conditioner is a Dometic HB2500 and is designed to be floor mounted, discharging heat and condensate through holes cut in the floor. The first job was to cut the necessary holes, giving me another opportunity to play with the plasma cutter.

I then fitted the retaining straps which hold the air conditioning unit to the floor, and ran a mains AC power feed to the back of the space. The air conditioner uses about 900w at full power in cooling mode (more when heating); this means that most of the time it can only be used when plugged into the mains, or running off the generator. The inverter is just about powerful enough to keep up with air conditioner, so in extreme weather, I should be able to run this unit off the inverter whilst we are driving to assist the cab air conditioner in cooling the space down.

I could then install the air conditioner, and run the ducting up the back of the storage space. I had originally planned to use the space as a wardrobe with fixed drawers in part of the space, but the depth would have made it difficult to use, and so I ended up deciding on drawers. This had the advantage of not needing the pipes to be boxed in, as they wouldn't be exposed.

I screwed together a box for the air conditioner; it can be taken apart in a few seconds if I ever need to get to the unit for repairs. The grill at the front is for the intake air and is just a piece of stainless punched sheet fixed to the back of the laminated plywood.

I had originally ordered some 90 degree elbows to help fit the unit in the tight space that I had, but I ended up not needing them. One of the ducts kinked slightly so I may end up using them in the future, but as you can see it worked fine without them.

I forgot to order any clips for the ducting. Not wanting to waste time ordering and waiting for them, I cut something suitable out of plywood offcuts, they work very well and are probably more rigid than anything I could have bought off the shelf.

Building the bedroom

I haven't entirely finished the front end of Jim's interior, but I fancied a change of scenery, and so I started work on building the bedroom area. The bedroom will comprise of the last 1.5m at the back of the box, spanning the full 2.35m width.

When Jim came into my ownership, the back doors comprised of two ridiculously heavy steel side hung doors, with multiple sliding bolts and electro magnets operated remotely from a computer system which had been cut out when the truck had been decommissioned. I rigged up a locking system so that I could temporarily use the back doors, but they were ridiculously impractical and had dropped enough on their hinges to make using the doors a viable alternative to gym membership.

When I sent Jim off to have some work done by a local coachbuilder, I got the rear doors replaced with the three section GRP doors shown in the photo below taken in early 2012.



The bed will be at a height of about 70cm off of the floor, and the area underneath it will be accessed only from the back of the truck, through the side opening doors. The window at the back of the truck will let light into the bedroom area and the whole flap across the top half of the truck opens upwards on gas struts.


The area to become the bedroom was largely bare when I started work; the whole area back from the side door comprised of a separate cargo area when I bought Jim from Brinks/Loomis and so there was never much clutter here, with the exception of a smoke cloak security system and some load restraint bars which have long since gone. However, in the nearside back corner, there remained a panel at 45 degrees to the wall, hiding the cabling for the tail-lift controls and the rear marker lights. This panel would have eaten unnecessarily into the bedroom space, and so I carefully removed it with a crowbar, lump hammer and angle grinder, leaving a bare space in which to start work.

Right now, the combined weight of Naomi and me is probably less than many of the people we'll meet in America. I could build the bed out of matchsticks and cardboard and it'd probably last a while, but I have to be realistic and accept that it wont always be this way. We're getting married in September, and it's a recognised and accepted fact that married men let themselves go. As a married man in the worlds most obese country, I would be doing well if I don't return to England having doubled in weight. I therefore decided the build the bed with this in mind, and instead of using 25mm box section steel as I have done for the other furniture, I used 50mm box.

One Step Forward, 110v Back

For some time I have been populating the electrical locker in Jim, with all the equipment I need to provide low voltage and main voltage power while on the move. I had largely finished the mains components and just had to connect each of the circuits to the consumer unit (fuse board) to finish the install. Below is how the install looked.

The red unit at the top is a Sterling Power automatic changeover unit. It automatically selects from the three available power sources (mains, generator and inverter) so that when you plug the truck in to the mains, the power is automatically shifts off of the inverter (saving battery power) or the generator (saving diesel).

Power is then passed down to the consumer unit below, where it is split into two separate load banks each covered by its own RCD earth leakage device. The first load bank was a direct connection from the sterling changeover unit, whilst the second passed through a contactor which disconnected the loads when operated from the inverter. The second load bank was primarily to prevent the battery charger from being operated off the inverter, which would just create a an infinite loop of decreasing battery power. Below is how the consumer unit looks without a cover on it.

 The big green unit below the consumer unit is a Mastervolt Chargemaster, 60a, 3-way, 24v battery charger. The charger takes mains or generator power and uses it to charge the leisure battery and starter battery banks. After careful consideration, I decided that I couldn't live with the colour of the Mastervolt casing, and didn't like the aesthetic of the layout. I therefore ripped out the entire installation, stepping backwards many hours of work and significant expenditure. And leaving me with a blank canvas on which to waste more money and time.

Gas Locker

Whilst waiting for more plywood to turn up, I started making the gas locker, a job which didn't need any wood.

Making the locker out of plywood, would be perfectly effective at preventing gas leaks from entering the living space, but would fail to protect the gas bottle from heat in the case of a fire. A steel box isn't going to prevent an explosion in the case of a serious fire, but it would certainly give you extra time. I'd fitted the locker door some time ago, but it just opened up straight into Jim's interior.

The first thing I did was fabricate the box out of sheet steel. I had a load of rusty 3mm sheet in the garden which I cleaned up with a wire wheel on an angle grinder, I then used my small plasma cutter to cut the pieces out, and welded them together. 3mm is excessive, 1.6mm would have been fine, but it's what I had to hand. It would also have been easier to fold the steel and save on welding, but I don't have a press brake and I enjoy welding. I welded all seams fully, but used some sikaflex anyway to be sure the enclosure was air tight.

Webasto Water Heater Installation

Feeling like having a change from fiddly woodwork and cabling jobs, I decided to fit the Webasto Thermo Top E/C water heater that will form the primary central heating and water heating system in Jim. Jim was previously fitted with an Eberspacher D2 air heater which does a fine job of heating the space quickly (or will do when I repair it), but it's noisy, and doesn't provide any capacity for heating water, and so I decided that a secondary system was needed. Only a small proportion of the heating circuit has been fitted, but there's nothing stopping me from getting the Webasto unit installed, ready to connect up when the circuit is completed.

There is a recess in Jim's floor in front of the side door; this was originally installed to house part of the mechanism for the revolving personnel door. There was a heavy steel drum, fitted on a large turntable, which in turn was installed on a sensitive electronic weight sensor. The operator would be weighed on exiting the vehicle and the system would prevent anyone of different weight from re-entering.

All of this equipment was removed, leaving a square recess about 150mm deep. I got a local fabricator to bend a piece of steel to form a semi-circular entry step, leaving a large are behind it empty. I started to prepare the space for installation of the heater by welding four mounting studs.

To help dampen the noise of the heater both inside and outside the truck, I glued a sheet of lead/foam sandwich to the base of the compartment and also to the underside of the lid which will cover the space. I used evostik contact adhesive, although I have reservations about whether it'll be able to hold the heavy sheet onto the underside of the lid for any length of time; if necessary I can weld some studs to the metalwork and use large washers to clamp the sheet in place.

With the space prepared I installed the multitude of cables, hoses, ducts and pipes which link the unit to the diesel, air, coolant and electrical power that it needs. Installing a Webasto Thermo Top is not a hugely complex affair provided you have all of the correct components, but it is time consuming and I spent close to two days on this stage. The first task was to connect up the diesel supply.

Cables and Cladding

In a bid to tidy up and finish off the front end of the truck, I have been working on a number of cladding and wiring jobs. I'm keen to start some more interesting projects but I don't like leaving small jobs unfinished if I can avoid it. I started with the wall above the offside bench seat.

I fitted teak rails to both the nearside and offside benches, to allow a board to be dropped between them to create a temporary single bed at the front of the truck. The area above the offside bench seemed like the least disruptive place to store the sizable board, and so I made a section of the wall cladding removable using two bolts. One of the bolts doubles as the pillar mount for the seatbelt loop.

 

My next job was to box in the small section of wall between the bathroom and electrical cupboard. When I took possession of Jim, there was a wall between the front third of the box and the back two thirds, to separate the crew area from the safe compartment. I removed half of this wall, including the door but left the offside half in place. I have been left with a 50mm box section pillar which formed part of the original door frame, rather than cutting it out,  I decided to box it in and use the hollow section to fit a couple of gauges which would have been very low if I'd fitted them underneath the adjacent panels.

I started by running the wiring for the BEP Marine tank gauge. I'm not averse to wiring jobs, I don't get aroused by the thought of neatly clipping rows of colour coded cable, but I don't dread it like I do derusting the chassis; however in general, the smaller the wires, the less capable I am. I perversely enjoy crimping copper lugs onto huge battery cables, but end up cursing my bulbous, stubby hands when I have to wire up signal cables. Wiring up the tank monitor was about as small as I can go without breaking into a cold sweat.

Each of the three tank senders needs a positive, negative and sensor feed, in addition to the positive, negative and backlight feeds to the gauge itself.

The monitoring panel for the Morningstar solar regulator was much easier, just requiring a single Ethernet cable. I then cut out more WISA Multiwall and boxed the area in.

Whilst I was boxing in the bathroom side of the dividing wall, I spotted an opportunity for a bit lighting bling using a cheap LED strip.

Offside Bench Seat

Continuing with the work at the front of the truck, the next job that I started was to complete the offside bench seat, the larger of the two seats facing each other at the front of the box.

I built the basic frame for the seat a long time ago, in fact it was one of the first things that I did in Jim once I'd stripped out the evidence of Jim's former life as a cash-in-transit truck for Brinks. The place now occupied by the bench seat, previously housed a single coach style passenger seat for a third crew member, and an Eberspacher D2 air heater which I moved underneath the truck. I got a good deal on some Rolls Surette 5000 series batteries, and needed somewhere to put them, both permanently when Jim's transformation is complete, and temporarily to get them out of the way whilst I worked on Jim. Below is what the frame looked like soon after I had finished it; it is fabricated from 25mm box section steel as I did not like the idea of 400kg of batteries performing rapid physical rearrangement of Naomi, Boris, me and everything else, in the event of an accident.


I then filled it with batteries and put a piece of plywood across the top, and this is pretty much how it stayed until I restarted work on it a couple of weeks ago.

The first thing I did, was to fit the mounting brackets for a seatbelt. The two bench seats will be able to comfortably seat four people between them, but as hard as I tried I could not find any sensible way of mounting more than one seat belt without severely restricting access to lockers, boxes or cupboards that I need to access regularly. Having a third seat belt in the truck is great, but having six would have been pretty useful. As it is, the seatbelt retractor and buckle both need to be removed for me to access the batteries for topping up the water, but I cannot moan too much about removing two bolts to perform a task which only needs doing once a month or so.

Both brackets came with the Securon seat belts, and so with the exception of the pillar loop mount, the whole installation uses certified components.

Not having a pillar on which to mount the upper loop, I welded a stud to Jim's wall.

Following the last blog post, I was keen to find a home for the amplifier which would allow me to finally get the sound system working. The offside bench seat is largely divided into two sections, the right side which houses the battery bank, and the left side which will house the amplifier, the mains inverter, and a small storage box. Naturally I started work on the left side first.