Westfalia travel, wrenching and general thoughts.

The rain. The RAIN!   :)

In spite of it, I've been working. Got a 3rd coat of Brightside on the poptop. Still looks a little dodgy, but is such an enormous improvement, any little flaws don't matter. Fibre glass patched a couple spots, she's good to go for seals now as is luggage rack.

So I finally got to work installing the aux. battery under the rear seat. I Shop Vac'd the crap out of the crevice between the end of the rear seat and the cabinetry, (FWIW, a piece of copper 1/2" pipe duct taped to the hose worked great for sucking and grabbing the various treasure found; Loonie (yahoo! I'm rich!), chapstick, clothes pegs, and several mystery items. I've got CSI working on those), then drilled a hole from the area where 110VAC outlet is, into this crevice. I had a biatch of a time fishing the #8 corrugated covered load wire through the hole so finally enlarged it to 1/2". This was *just* big enough. At this point I'll fuse the load wire and connect it to the fridge. At some point I may install a fuse holder in the lower cubby beside fridge.

Found a group 27 deep cycle locally. Before tax etc., $99 Cnd. with a discount clerk kindly gave me. Regularly $125 or so. It's possible it's a cheap off shore offering. Whatever. If it lasts several years, I'll be happy. Am using fused #8 to battery. The #8 from battery (future loads. I can always upgrade the charge line to battery) is possibly overkill, but if I ever get my Amateur Radio license it's very possible I'd install the station somewhere in the rear. At this point all it will power is the Truckfridge. This thick wire is harder to work with.

The rear bench-bed re-upholstery job is becoming interesting. I didn't take into account plywood thickness when buying fabric. Rookie mistake. Clerk cut fabric as asked. 2 yards is long enough but at 56" wide, it's barely wide enough. I may try to use it but it could be wasted time. OEM sees a fold at material where it's stapled to wood.