Spare Tyre Carrier

Heavy commercial vehicles in the UK rarely carry spare tyres these days, and if they do, they rarely have the tools to change them if the get a puncture. A mounted tyre on a 22.5 inch rim is upwards of 100Kg and so it is more cost effective for haulage operators to use the weight capacity for paying cargo, and accept an infrequent cost for roadside assistance from a mobile tyre fitter. It's possible to have a new tyre on your truck in less than an hour almost anywhere on the UK mainland and so it's not worth the cost of carrying the tyre around, and the risk to employees of having to change it by the side of the road. Consequently when Jim was passed into my care, he had no spare tyre.

Even in the UK, I prefer the idea of being self sufficient, but with plans to drive far into Central America, I do not like the prospect of having to wait for days by the side of the road for a suitably equipped tyre fitter to come past. It wads therefore fairly important that I got a spare tyre, and found somewhere to put it, before the truck gets dropped at Southampton docks next week.

The most common place to fit a spare tyre on a heavy rigid, is either under the chassis just in front of the back wheels, or mounted centrally behind the back wheels. Jim's wheelbase is fairly short, and so once I had fitted the generator and auxiliary fuel tank there was no space on the chassis rails for a spare. In addition the overhang at the back is very short, sand so there is no space behind the back wheels either.



This left me with a few options, mostly ideas pilfered from large expedition vehicles. The simplest option seemed to be to mount the tyre on the roof of the cab. I would only have had to mount a platform on the roof of the cab using the threaded mounting points provided by Mercedes from the factory, and fitted a simple swinging arm and chain block to get the wheel up and down. I quickly decided against this option due to the additional weight on the cab mountings. The cab is already far heavier than intended due to the all the armour plating from it's life as a Brinks truck, and so I wanted to avoid putting more stress on the cab hinges and the hydraulic tilt system. In addition, the front axle is rated at 5 tonnes less than the rear, and so putting the weight so far forward isn't preferable. For the same reason I discounted the option of mounting the tyre on a bull bar type bumper.

The roof of the box body is almost completely covered by hatches and solar panels and so mounting the tyre on top of the living accommodation was impossible. In addition, at 2.5m wide, Jim is already a handful on narrow roads and so mounting the tyre on the side of the body would have been absurd. This left me with finding a way to mount the tyre at the rear of the truck.

Bloody Insurance

I hate the general bureaucracy that comes with owning possessions in the modern world, but the last few weeks have really got my goat. Amongst other things that we've had to cancel, change or create, have been: Bank accounts, credit cards, mortgages, human vaccinations, pet vaccinations, water accounts, gas accounts, electric accounts, landline accounts, broadband accounts, mobile phone accounts, house insurance, pet insurance, shipping insurance and truck insurance.

Most have been relatively straight forward, but I'm struggling with getting Jim insured for our travels in the US, Canada and Mexico. There are a number of bureaucratic issues with getting insurance for Jim in the US, the primary ones being:

1. Jim is not registered in a US state
2. Mercedes Atego 1823s do not come up on insurers lists of American RVs and when they do a web search they find lots of pictures of flatbeds, beavertails, box trucks and tippers.
3. I do not have an American address to register the policy at.

A few companies seem to be able to insure a foreign registered vehicle, including Thum, Poli Seek and Progressive, but it seems that only Thum are able to do it without a US mailing address. Too bad because their quote was over $6,000 for a year.

My Apologies

I apologise for the extremely scant blogging recently. Here's a short video as compensation, the first time I've used my new GoPro camera: thanks Leigh!

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.