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.

Slowly picking away; little things add up!

So today I: made a wood pedestal, etc. for new fridge, painted the lower "Dometic" grill, furred the 110VAC outlet about 1.5" out (too far, could've done 1"), fished new Loomex from rear outlet forward, installed a screen on the "city water" fan, sealed up the Dometic flue, modifying cupboard shelf to fit over repositioned 110VAC outlet. In regards to the fridge mounting, I mounted small pieces of 3/4" plywood on the inside face of each cabinet wall. Adding a strip of thick close cell foam to each piece made for a nice "tight" fridge fit.  Edit: that foam made fridge too tight I think. Have downsized thickness a little. Should be fine. The idea was to stabilize the fridge and reduce and insulate contact of fridge to cabinet. To that end, I'll leave the rubber fridge feet installed.

Yesterday I fibre glass patched the top and put on one coat. Rain is in the forecast so not sure what I'll do. Install seal, replace canvas, paint later? We'll see.

Had to laugh at myself. Was so happy to install the stove face plate and see how the newly painted part looked. Then I realized I hadn't refinished the batt/water plate. That thing looks like ass now! Ha! I may strip and paint it. Am thinking to relabel it as such:

Battery: Green. "Ya!"  Orange. "Meh". Red. "Boo!" etc.) You get the idea. Won't help resale value but will amuse ME no end.

Pics to follow.

My arms are tired.

Thankfully I'm used to holding up and operating a trombone so this wasn't that much work. Still. It was a fair amount of scrubbing by hand! Used a really coarse SS sink scrubber. The brush with scrub pad worked "ok" but the SS scrubber was way better. Eco friendly soap worked fine.

You can see a cracked spot. There's at least one other. Not sure if I'll just fill with fibre glass resin or lay some cloth too. The top was incredibly dirty. The photo shows it cleaner than it looks (over exposed) but it's ready for paint. 2 coats of this paint will look awesome!

Trial fit the new DC Truckfridge TF-49. Seems I can use the old Dometic trim as others have done. I'll very likely install the Dometic grill at bottom and a drawer at top. The drawer would make a great place for tools ....... or spare parts.    ;^)

Stuff arrived from Van-cafe!

Picked it up today. My first impressions of the tan German canvas. Image  It appears to be good quality. I'll know more after opening it up and installing it. Hope to have it all installed and top painted by Monday, but at the rate I work, well, we'll see.   ;^)

A Sunny Day

Yesterday (Mon.) saw a nice full day of sun! Got several coats of Assuan Brown brushed on to spots worn by the luggage rack and pop top, and a 2nd coat of Interlux Brightside Gloss cut in along edge of pop top. The plan was to install the new pop top seals, use as-is (canvas is WELL worn) and paint etc. later, but decided to "nut up" and get on with the canvas replacement. Ordered a new German canvas from Van-cafe late Sat. That, a new Bentley, and some odds and ends will be most welcome.

The saga of Jaco continues, and some of it has involved improving old work, but I once again see the goal of trouble free trips coming to fruition. Only once did my '81 fail me  image: failed ECU relay  after doing several + more road trips and thankfully, it wasn't an enormous failure. The only other failure I can recall was a snapped cat. Even then, not a big deal. Got that sucker welded up and continued on. We'll see if V 2.0 of exhaust holds up better.   Bunch of new exhaust pics starting here  At some point I want to improve the coolant hose arrangement in the engine bay, (reduce joins basically). This would involve installing a diesel Vanagon inlet elbow at the coolant pump which should allow a single hose between engine and long pipe. Should .....  

My '88 Westy will see an ABA of some sort at some point. Needless to say, I'll be following a more beaten path; for starters it will be mounted at 50º using diesel Vanagon parts.

So the repair, er, restoration of Jaco continues. Found some Rust-oleum "High Heat" brown paint that is in the "ball park" of a match for the OEM colour. Sadly the "Westfalia" and stove warning got removed and painted over, but that can be remedied easily enough. Had thought to make each out of fridge magnet material. Mainly b/c I want "Westfalia" to be: "Westoration". The stove warning would become some kind of "If you use this stove as a heating device, you're only proving Darwin correct".

Edit:  Rust-oleum paint code 242 666 "Brown". This appears to be it:

 rust-oleum web link

My intentions of getting down to the Baja have been thwarted by all things Vanagon and Wesfalia. One thing turns into another it seems and learning curves are present most of the time it seems. I will get some van camping in before music work starts in late April.