Killing Time

Mail Order. I've learned to take delivery times with a big pinch of salt, but it's always frustrating to have to wait a week for a tiny part that could arrive within 24 hours if the supplier could be bothered...

So, since I'm still waiting for the Pony Express to arrive with the replacement resistor, the heater repair has had to be put on hold. There's no point in putting everything back together only to dismantle it again, so we're immobile until this £3.00 bit arrives. I could link the heater hoses together but, to be honest, it isn't worth the bother of topping up and bleeding the cooling system just in case a dump of snow means we need the truck on the road. It isn't likely to happen.

So I've turned my attention to other little jobs. Now that we've proved the concept, I replaced the plastic tabs that had been holding the "downpipes" in place with proper "P" clips. I wouldn't say that this is the first experimental fitting that has made it to Full Production status, but probably not far off.

Having spent months thinking about the rear wash/wipe system I eventually admitted defeat and bought a new switch from MUD UK which is supposed to be a "plug'n play" replacement for the existing one - if it was there.

  Since it isn't I thought it would be easy to find the wires behind the dash - they must be there somewhere - and connect the two components together. Of course, the new switch arrived with more spades on the back than there are wires to connect....which goes where? And the promised wiring diagram is nowhere in site/sight. I went onto the website in the hope there was a clue in the "fitting instructions" menu. No chance. Never bloody simple is it? Especially when you discover this on Saturday evening and you can't get advice until Monday. Yet another job gets shelved...Late entry: the matrix  - on the website - that explains the pin locations assumes that you know that the pin numbers are etched into the side of the switch in numbers as easy to read as the Dead Sea scrolls. Simple when you've found 'em, though. I also got a bit stumped with the wiring to the wiper motor. I had 5 wires but only 3 connections. All the on-line diagrams and pictures showed a 3-pin Econoseal connector on the top - that bit was easy.

They also showed another 2-pin connector, apparently on the side. It is, actually, on the "back" of the motor. Having already bolted it to the door this connector is hidden...once I'd taken everything apart the connector revealed itself but, of course, I hadn't got a 2-pin plug to go into it. A bit of lateral thinking ensued. I'd bought 2 Econoseal connectors in case I messed one up, and the pins would fit into the connector with a bit of persuasion, all I had to do was insulate them...Of course, it wasn't quite that simple. Since the pins in the socket don't seem to fit the female pin I had, some force was required. This resulted in one of the pins disappearing backwards into the motor body and required the dismantling of the motor cover to get it back. Eventually, though, all 5 connections have been made and the wires - albeit not the correct colours - led out of the door to the loom. I'll make the final connections later, once the switch is in place. I'll make sure I keep a note of the wire colours in the Little Black Book, though.

The wires exit the door on the left of the picture and normally have a plastic cover and rubber tube to lead them into the tub. These are silly money so I'll make my own out of something, although I've ordered the little support bracket to keep it all aligned.
The motor and cover protrude quite a way from the inner door skin and this needed to be accommodated if we're going to retain the drop-down table. I could just cut the appropriately sized piece out of the table top, but this will look a bit odd and probably make the thing unusable. The solution I came up with was this:

First, cut the table flap in half, rivet a new hinge along the cut line.

 

...then re-attach the flap and connect the stays. There's a bit of a kink in the joint, but it's in the "right" direction to stop things rolling off.

The flap then goes through a double fold before being retained as before. We might enclose the chains with something to stop them rattling.

We might do a bit of colour-co-ordination eventually to make it all look a little less experimental.
                                          An EGT gauge. Do we need one?

Having bought a "boost pin" - they can dramatically improve the pulling power, apparently -  I really don't want to fit it until I can monitor the engine temperatures more carefully. This requires a method of measuring the exhaust gas temperature. I have two from a kit that came with a Rotax engine and tried to find a way to connect the probe to the exhaust system without drilling through the EGR housing, which is how most people do it. I replaced the EGR system earlier this year for the benefit of the MoT rules which now state that any interference with OEM EGR systems etc will mean a "Fail", so I don't have this simple option and will have to find another. Before getting the drill out, though, I tested the probe by heating it with a soldering iron. The results weren't exactly spectacular. The temperature needle didn't budge. Either the sensor or the gauge are broken (or both?) or the connections between the two aren't good. Given that there are 2 wires from the sensor and 4 pins, some guesswork was involved anyway. Another job that didn't get beyond the tinkering stage.


About the only major progress this weekend, then, has been the installing of a waste water tank and the sink plumbing.

This is the old fresh water tank from Dapne's kitchen.

The pump, tap plumbing and sink waste are all shoehorned into the space between the cooker and the forward storage box. I originally had the cover screwed on, but Sue suggested that Velcro would be a more useful alternative if I needed to get in there in a hurry. It's a 6mm ply panel and very small, so we did it that way. The pump filter is now more accessible than before and the whole thing is much neater...

As is the wiring behind the passenger seat. This was sorted out when we installed the second aux battery. The wiring for that is now in place, although at the time I photographed it, some tidying was obviously needed!

Once it was all done, though, we could box it in  and sort out the lounge bar!

The seat base is an old cushion from a Series Landy....doubles as a seat back, too.

The seat back folds down and the fridge carrier can still slide over it.

I think the sink is a bit of a  triumph!  Having wasted a lot of time trying to find one that will fit into the space and find someone who's prepared to sell me one without ridiculous delivery charges, we changed tack and looked at simpler solutions. Well, not simpler, exactly but cheaper, a bit easier, outside the influence of the courier's charges and with a little bit of imagination applied.

This is a folding washing up bowl. Collapsed, it takes up little "vertical" space so doesn't take up space underneath that would otherwise be needed by a traditional sink.

Most of the commercial items are about 145mm deep - quite a lot of space for something that just holds air most of the time. This bowl unfolds upwards, and doesn't need to project below the worktop, so avoids that wasted space. All it needed was a waste outlet. The 12mm ply carrier allowed enough of a lip to secure the bowl's feet so when the Soup Dragon pulls it up, it won't take off!

The bowl is inset. A bit of carving to provide a flat surface...

..for the 90 degree 3/4 inch outlet,

..for the waste. 

The sink is aligned with the tub capping, so with the truck sitting normally it isn't horizontal and the water won't drain towards the plughole unless we've set up on the ramps, which is what we normally do anyway. If this becomes a nuisance I'll have to adjust the worktop a bit to compensate.

The waste water catch tank is in the wheel arch. I made a cradle to support it, bolted to the crossmember, and moved it as far to the rear as possible to give more room to fit a storage box in future. 

Looking aft

It's a semi-permanent fixing using a bungee and a rubber strap rescued from the garden. We've got dozens of these which were used to tie our young trees to stakes years ago. They seem to have a half-life of about 500 years, so should be ideal as underbody lashing! Routing and spacing everything around the exhaust for the hob was a challenge, as the tank is plastic, but we now have a simple system with no expensive bits to maintain or break. 

A right Lash-Up!Works, though...so far.

I'm still considering moving it to the rear corner, over the exhaust, where we had a storage box in the previous truck. This would allow us to make another storage box to match - almost - the one on the driver's side, but given that the hob hoses have already compromised the space under the wheel arch, it might not be worth the bother. I'll make some measurements and see what can be achieved - it's a valuable empty space which we don't want to ignore.

The kitchen is now almost finished, so when it stops raining and blowing the leaves about we'll pop the roof and check it all works....

Remove, Recycle, Reorder

Decision has been made - rip it all out and start again.

Remove. Well, everything short of the wiring. We've finally accepted that the constraints imposed by the water filler and the sink have got to be removed. Easiest way is to do exactly that. Once the tank is out, everything else will follow it as the pipes connect it all....No, that'd be a little extreme but by the time we'd wrestled the tank away from its hidey-hole in the wheel arch I was beginning to feel that attacking it with a saw and stump puller would've been far less effort.

It's a tight fit.

  The weather was, once again 'cos it's a weekend, pretty foul and I got completely soaked during the job. I had to take most of the bolts out of the rock slider to get the room to manoeuvre the tank out, but eventually I got it free, complete with the cradle and a few kilos of crusted sand. I was glad I'd taken the trouble to grease the bolts when I put the tank in 2 years ago, and the repair I made to the cradle has held up very well with almost no (additional) rust.

Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My...lens.

The cooker and sink came out next, followed by the airline boxes and the plumbing, giving us a blank canvas to work with. Since the trigger for all this was the position of the water tank and the filler, I started with that as the foundation stone. We also want - in no particular order:-

The diesel hob/heater near the back of the cab so we can use it when the bed is down but the "cat flap" up.
The airline boxes re-used in some orientation.
A pull out table like John has made  - see the last post.
A set of storage drawers for kitchen utensils etc.
A permanent sink to allow us to dump waste water into a container instead of the nearest bush.
Some comfortable seating for when we need to hide from the weather, again, like John has incorporated.
A second auxiliary battery. One is OK for Morocco or places equally sunny, but not up to coping with our needs if we can't use solar to recharge.
The ability to sleep one person (me) inside without having to raise the roof. This means keeping the central "aisle" clear but capable of taking Wolf boxes to provide a bed base.

After 2 weeks of work and a lot of recycling and/or rethinking, we think we're getting there. 

The water tank came from here, and holds 60 litres which is enough for our needs for about 4 days if we aren't careful, over double that if we are - like if we clean our teeth in the dregs of the morning brew and "wash" with a wet sponge (no re-wets allowed). It has no holes in it apart from the large one for cleaning, so we have the freedom to be more creative with the positioning of the plumbing. It's the perfect size to sit on the wheel arch and overhang the load area far enough to mate with a Wolf box - the Basic Building Block of the plan. We'll reuse the pump and the pipework since it uses those easy push-fit couplings that make maintenance so easy. The pump'll be placed so we can clean the filter more easily, too. The tank will be insulated and of course warmer anyway being inside now, but have a drain tap that'll allow us to fill a kettle without needing the pump. This might be important as the height of the sink and tap may make this awkward with the bed down, and that early-morning cup of tea is important!

The size and position of the water tank dictates the layout of the rest of the "kitchen". After playing around with half-a-dozen combinations we agreed on this as a basic layout, to be improved and fine-tuned as the build developes. The airline box sets the height for the hob and the sink, with space at the front for a sitting area.

 

The dog bowl was intended to be a "representative" feature, but...

Sue went away for the weekend to visit Glasgow and daughter, leaving me to fiddle about with the options, drink lots of tea and spend lots of time ruminating over the possibilities. As usual, the details morphed as they were incorporated into the Grand Design and I decided at the beginning not to use any glue until everything was in place and working. A lesson learned from several earlier attempts at "camper planning"...making it up as we go along works until that essential item, assumed to fit, doesn't. Previous designs have all shown the scars left from unplanned "modifications".

This more flexible approach creates its own problems, though. The Flexibility, in that nothing is firmly fixed to anything else, has created a few annoying errors of measurement when a datum point has shifted a little, which throws out the rest of the plan for that item. While it adds work, I've cut everything slightly oversize to try to get around this until final assembly, when the excess can be trimmed off....since it's easier to cut off than add on.

At some point, though, we need to have all the components to hand to make sure they all fit and we haven't built something that makes maintenance etc next to impossible, or makes it necessary to dismantle four things to get access to one. With this in mind, I delayed some of the more critical jobs until the Wallas hob and the sink arrived. 

Moving now to fitting the hob. It'd arrived  during the week in a large shipping crate that required a 2-2 in Safe-Breaking to open.

Checking the contents against the list provided, I couldn't find the expected collection of fittings to plumb the fuel line into the truck's diesel tank. There was, though, this thing:

A bright and shiny "bean tin" with a pipe connected to it. Clearly some means of picking up fuel, but no indication in any of the manuals or on-line resources about how it should be used. I phoned the salesman. Had I looked at the You-Tube video? I had. It showed in some detail the fitting of the hob to a Volkswagen T5, so not a lot of use to me in answering my question. Once I'd described the shiny bean tin thing I could sense a large Thinks Bubble at the other end of the line. He'd call me back...

A little while later, he did. The upshot of the conversation that followed was that 1. he had no experience of fitting this hob to a Defender, wasn't aware that there was a special fitting for the fuel pick-up and 2. he didn't know if it had ever been done before, but his supplier had assured him that it was the correct fitting. He proceeded to explain how (he'd been told) it was to be used.

This was a bit of a surprise, as the manual and all the other illustrations showed a very simple flange and tube arrangement for tapping into the tank. The bean tin is designed to fit into the rubber filler tube between the tank and the filler cap. Easy, right? My problem is that I have a long-range tank as well as the normal one, and as a result I don't have enough room in the filler tube to fit this thing. It was, apparently, my fault for not informing him of this detail prior to ordering the kit. But...since he didn't know anything about putting the hob into a Defender or how it could be done, and didn't know anything about the special fuel fitting either, I fail to see how telling him earlier about my long range tank was going to make any difference at all.

Then there's the sink. I spent a lot of time searching the caravan shops via Google, trying to find a sink that was small enough, not too deep and with an offset drain hole. 

Quite a few options came up, but all the suppliers wanted to charge me a ridiculous amount for shipping so the search took a lot longer than it should've done. Eventually, though, I found someone who'd sell me my chosen £48 sink and only wanted £5.95 to send it. While all the other retailers advertised "free shipping to UK Mainland" this somehow didn't apply to me, living as I do on the UK Mainland but north of the Iso-Postage Line, so I was happy to accept this charge as they levied it on everyone regardless of their postcode. They said. Until I got an e-mail saying that "their courier" had added an extra £13 to the delivery charge so would I authorise this extra charge, please?

No.

That's why there's a dog bowl in some of the photos. It'll be our new sink. Just needs a bit of re-engineering to incorporate a drain hole. Goes without saying that I'd like to make some alterations to that supplier's drain hole as well. I see they blame the courier, though...nothing to do with them...

Then there was John Cr***s, that well known purveyor of Parts Landrover. They accepted an order worth over £150 from me for the bits I needed to finish the rear door and the wash/wipe system that I began work on some weeks ago. Everything was, according to the website, "in stock and ready to ship" so I expected to have it within the stated time of 3-5 days. After 6 days, there was no sign of it. After 9 days, 3 e-mails and a long listen to a recorded sales pitch I finally got an answer. The order hadn't been shipped because they were "waiting for delivery of one item". Perhaps this was one of the major components, like the wiper motor perhaps? No. Part Number AMR3933, Sir. That's a washer, right? Costs £1.50...and you've delayed my entire order for that? Why? To save yourselves the cost of sending it later - a second class stamp and little envelope!!!! AArghhhh! Another name to add to my rapidly-growing

Which now includes these people; or perhaps just one of them. A Mr R****n BSc (Hons) - his bold type, not mine. Apparently this is important enough to highlight, but it clearly doesn't confer upon him any extra ability to read an e-mail. I first contacted the company for which this chap works as an executive back in August. I wanted to obtain a matching seat to the one I bought at a bargain price on eBay. Previous post refers. To cut a long and boring story short, my last e-mail to him offering to arrange payment for the said seat went without a response until I banged my fists on his desk - figuratively speaking - for about the third time. His reply, completely ignoring my observations on his communication skills, terminated my enquiry...I'll sit on a plank before I spend £150 on one of his products - with a 6 week lead time even after 2 months of negotiations.

Rant over. For now. By contrast, the folk at Vanguard provided what I ordered, on time and without fuss despite having to rob made-up kits for the bits I knew were out of normal stock when I placed the order. They sell bits for DIY camper conversions and are based in Fort William. Best to shop locally? 

A Major Re-think.

It had to happen. We've been convincing ourselves that the interior plan was workable and some elements couldn't be changed....

Well, we finally managed to meet up with John McP***.

We'd originally intended to visit him back in May or June, when the idea of a roof "lift" first popped up, so to speak. For various reasons this didn't happen before we actually took the lid off the problem and decided that the only option was the Alucab.

As I said, until recently we'd pretty much accepted that some elements of our current design were fixed in stone, mainly the arrangements for water, cooking and ventilation. The water tank filler was in an awkward place but we'd worked with it because the actual tank made very good use of what would otherwise be dead space, in the wheel arch. Because that's where the water was, it dictated the position of the "sink" - in our case a removable bowl. With that fixed, it just made sense to have the gas cooker on the same side, particularly as the NAAFI flap would provide ventilation and a decent view for the Chef.

So, our meeting with John to inspect his version of the Lifting Roof was a bit delayed but well worthwhile. A few minutes of discussion revealed that he had some very good ideas for getting the proverbial "quart out of a pint pot". I took a lot of photos and measurements...

At first glance there isn't much here that we haven't already thought of and incorporated in one way or another, but once you're inside...

...the ability to stand up has been taken advantage of to full effect. The lifting roof is much like the one we have but the bed base slides towards the front instead of lifting, which provides a table space. We have the same facility, but at the back, over the door, which isn't quite so convenient. The cupboard on the left slopes which gives a bit more room to climb in and out, and the worktops "step back" along the length of the cab to give a little more turning room when inside and working.

John's fridge slides out like ours does now, but his has a lower profile - no 2-Zone upper compartment - and opens along the long edge, not like ours. As a result he needs less height above the lid to get it open and can afford to fit it under the working surface. In addition, the design of the roof provides a shelf all around the edge which John has found extremely useful.

Moving forward, there's a proper seat which swivels to face the front when on the move and a "banquette" seat which sits on top of a storage box. Sue liked this a lot...somewhere to relax and stretch out...

Once installed in this area there's a bookcase, a window on both sides to enjoy the view, all the electrical gubbins, a flap-down table and...a spice rack.

The whole thing is insulated and lined with plywood. John used to be a joiner so is obviously adept at working with wood and getting a neat result. I was thinking that we might make more use of aluminium in our new build, but the wood gives a nice cosy ambience, is warm to the touch (even without insulation) and probably quieter to live with. Ply is easy to find and easy to work with at my amateur level, too, so perhaps we'll just stick with what we know.
The one thing that John doesn't have and we feel we need is a built-in, inside cooking arrangement. 

Edit: I sent John a link to this and he replied with: 

I went backwards through the blog and found the write-up of your visit - one error there - I DO have inside cooking - the worktop above the fridge is designed to take the two burner stove - the gas bottle has quick-release fittings and a permanent gas feed pipe is run through the van side above the quarter light, with a quick-release on the end so if I want to cook inside in rain or bugs I simply connect the cooker indoors and I have the sink behind me and the option of pulling out the fridge to use the top as additional working space. 

 

 

So, I stand corrected! I did wonder whether he either liked bugs or was immune...

The nearside of John's cab has a sink but the cooker is a small camping double-burner which normally goes on the fold-down table inside the back door. This is fine if the weather and insect life allow it, but wouldn't have been a comfortable option in Morocco for two of our trips and on a still, warm, Summer evening in the Highlands would be just as impractical unless you want to invite a million bugs to the party. It would, of course, be possible to cook inside and John does have a small backpacking stove which he uses when on his own, but Sue wants something more permanent and weatherproof. John also has a separate diesel heater which we combine with a diesel hob,which again means the installation must be permanent.

We left with a lot of ideas for things we hadn't considered before or had relegated to a low priority because of the "fixed items" in the present design. In a radical moment, we decided that if we ripped up the current plan and so-called fixtures, nothing much would be lost, we could have a more comfortable space and not be constrained quite so much by the things we'd seen as a permanent arrangement. Luckily we haven't progressed very far with the new plans yet so even if we have to undo a few things there's been no major investment in time and the elements like the new hob, seat and fridge are "must haves" so will be included somehow. I guess the first thing to do will be to remove everything on the "wet" side of the cab and look at it with fresh eyes.

Back to the Drawing Board, as they say.

A Better View (and drier feet?)

The trip to the AO Show revealed a few shortcomings in the "watertight department"...

Wet feet are OK if you've been paddling on the beach or otherwise looking for trouble, but not really acceptable in one's driving seat. Unless you drive a Landrover, that is. Then it's considered Par for the Course and all part of the Defender's natural charm and character.

Not in my Defender, it ain't. I'd prefer to keep the outside outside, thank you. If I want to let it in it'll be under my rules. Now, the Defender has its quirks, I'll admit. Lotsa people moan about how cramped the driving position is and how they don't like being hard up against the door, having to stick your right arm and elbow out of an open window to get comfortable. But, I wonder, how many of these folk actually go anywhere that requires them to see where their wheels are going to the last millimetre? To do that you have to stick your head out of the hole in the door provided for the purpose and the Defender seating position is ideal for that. It's a design feature and I'm happy with it. I'm not so happy with the build tolerances that allow water in at every panel join, so it's time to sort it out.

I trawled the 'net, as you do, for clues and found this site. An excellent source of useful tips and if you search about the long list of vids you'll find lots on the subject of keeping water where it belongs. I take no credit for the fixes I put in this weekend, then, other than the 2 hours of dedicated effort it took to find the site amongst the piles of useless stuff that Google throws up.

Let's start with the rain gutter at the back of the bonnet. A great idea, but it stops short of the wing top and so where will all that water go?

Not only that, but there's a gap at the back of the wing top skin that isn't sealed. When I saw the video I thought "that's probably not as bad as it looks". Well, I put a torch up inside the wing and peered down the gap, nearly blinding myself in the process...the gap is about 1.5mm on this side and about the same on the driver's side.

You can see that the dry area under the bonnet edge is dirty, but the bit at the back is shiny and clean...wonder why?
This might explain why, when it's raining heavily, water runs out from under the dash - it's being caught by all the little channels and pockets on the bulkhead and runs around all over the place until finding its way onto the floor. Via my feet, in some cases.

In the video, Mike uses some stuff called DumDum to seal these gaps neatly from the inside. This stuff isn't available any more so I tried some "No More Nails" adhesive that I let dry a bit so it was more of a putty. It wouldn't stick. As a temporary measure, then, I used the hot glue gun...

If it works, I'll tidy it up or use something neater next time. To sort out the gutter I used pieces of flashing tape left over from the soundproofing work:

The paint can is just for scale

Formed and trimmed it does the job and is invisible when the bonnet's closed. A simple fix, once you know what the problem might be. Thank you, Britannica!

I'd already used a tiny boroscope camera to look behind the instrument binnacle and seen some glistening wet bits but it's difficult pinpointing exactly what you're looking at. However, it was clear that water was on the lip behind the vent flaps (poor seals?) and immediately behind the seal that joins the windscreen frame (not the glass) to the top of the bulkhead. On inspection it seemed that the seal - the spongy foam strip - wasn't in the best condition and had gone a bit hard, at least on the surface. It would've been better to replace this when the roof was being done and I did consider it, but it would have added some more difficulty and time to the job so I decided not to have Larry do it. Instead, I've cut the sponge back to a level where it's more flexible and then filled it back up, flush to the bulkhead, with TigerSeal. The new seals for the vent flaps are in the post, together with some other bits to finish the ...

..Heated Rear Window. The old one wasn't. This was because when we first got Elly she had some kind of plastic film on the glass that was coming off in bits. Really tatty, so Sue removed it. With a Scotchbrite pan scourer. This didn't do the heating element any good at all and last winter it was a real nuisance not being able to see through the rear view mirror until I'd been on the road for half an hour. It needed to be fixed, so I bought another glass from eBay. I'd have used the Usual Suspect as a supplier but they refused to accept responsibility for any damage in transit and I'd order at my own risk. Given that this placed no obligation on them to package it properly they didn't get my business. The eBay supplier had a bit more sense and the glass arrived intact and at a very good price, hence the link. He deserves a bit of praise for not being an idiot, like the competition.

The glass had been replaced at some time during the vehicle's past, but not very well sealed, which would explain what you see in the picture - half a kilo of Sahara sand - and a fair bit of rust inside the door behind the skin. As usual, then, most of the job involved tidying up the mess left by the previous owner(s) before replacing the defective bits.

Also as usual, it was blowing a hooligan and from a direction that had everything in the workshop getting blown over, about or down.  With the old glass out, I wanted to spray the inside of the door but the paint was gonna go everywhere except where I wanted it, so I had to build a temporary windbreak from a sheet of 8x4 ply.

Note the high quality masking material!

If there's one tool I've really got my money's worth out of, it's the air compressor I bought at Aldi about 10 years ago. Although I'm not going to say I have any great skill in the paint spraying department, it's allowed me to paint two Defender's now, both out on the driveway and with pretty good results with cheap guns but decent paint.

Cellulose is easy to apply and given the conditions on Saturday I didn't need a mask! Once the retaining strips were cleaned up it all went back together easily, with nice new self-tappers and some more TigerSeal to hold it all in place properly.

I need to work out a way to remove the security grille more easily so I can keep this shiny new glass clean (without the use of abrasives!!). I did a bit of experimenting on this subject and the solid, stiff and expensive grilles on the 4x4 market, like we have in the small rear windows, actually work against the objective, I think. If the grille is flexible and ductile then it "gives" when attacked, where the heavier expensive ones don't. This means that the stiffness in them acts as a lever against whatever is holding them in place making them easier to force. The flexible grille material absorbs the energy that would otherwise break through it. That's my theory, anyway.

The next job here is to re-install the rear wash/wipe system. The parts are on order to do this and I've found the wiring in place behind the panel in the rear corner. The only difficulties might be in finding the correct electrical connectors and positioning the washer jet - the AluCab roof seems a bit solid at the place I'd like to use and I may not be able to run the water pipe in there. We'll see.

The OEM wash/wipe switch is silly money, too, so we'll have to get a bit creative there as well.

The Wallas hob arrives soon, so that'll be the cue to start pulling the kitchen apart. With that in mind I've spent quite a lot of time sitting in the back with a mug of tea, going through the various scenarios to work out what will fit back in and where. It occurred to me that a weak point in the design is the water storage. We've sort-of accepted the position of the water tank as a "fait accompli" as it was there when we bought the truck, is very expensive and seemed to be a well thought out accessory. If you live somewhere warm. A lot of these "overlander toys" originate from South Africa where the climate is a little different to ours and they don't have to cope with the same conditions.

OK, I know I cheated here, but it really could be Scotland in July....

An example: drying out a roof tent. If these get wet - and, let's face it, they are going to with our weather - you can't just take it into the greenhouse/garage/bathroom and hang it up to dry like your average Vango, and if the temperature outside is at the usual Baltic level, drying ain't going to happen fast, is it? By the time it's got somewhere near, it's probably raining again anyway.

So, the water tank and pipework is exposed to the elements in a way that is almost guaranteed to give us a problem. Now that we'll have a heater we can "winterize" the rest of Elly and extend our travelling season a bit. The only thing that doesn't have an insulation plan is the water supply, and it's the reason it gets drained down in the colder months and doesn't get used if we do a weekend picnic trip. The answer is to move it all inside, of course, but this will mean dispensing with all that neat, expensive, Gucci kit under the wheel arch. We think it's the way to go, though, and we might get some of the money back through Gumtree when we try to sell the old bits on. Something like this would work,




although the filler pipe might not be in the right place. Lots to think about, and it all needs to be decided before we start the re-fit, or we'll be doing it twice.

Like before.