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Funny enough yesterday I discovered that the side door wasn't actually locking. Turns out that the little plastic linkage from the central locking motor had disintegrated. Who knows how long it's been like that.
With the door panel off, it got me thinking about the security issue again, when I realised that all I needed was a switch on the door that disconnected the power to the central locking motor.
This can be handy to use when someone else has the van, like airport parking or when in the garage - to stop people opening and then slamming the sliding door! Usually I just put a bit of electrical tape over the door contacts.
Yes, the back of mine is rusting as well. I just scraped as much of the rust off as I could, filled in the holes, painted with some rust inhibitor and hammerite. I'll need to do the same again this year - so its a bit of a losing battle, but maybe it helps to slow the process a bit. When I lifted the ramp floor, I could see that water had been getting trapped and the metal floor was starting to rust.
In the end I had to put a floor down, due to the the fixing points on the bed being narrower than the ramp well.
Looks good. Looking at the design, this looks exactly the same as my WAV - which was carried out by Constables mobility.
In my case the rear tailgate area was damp, so the wood at the back was starting to rot, so I ended up removing the whole floor, and putting new ply over the top. The ramp area underneath is used for storing the table at the front, and other bits and pieces at the the back via the tailgate.
btw I got £45 for the ramp on eBay
What I was thinking off was to pick up the central locking signal, and then after a few seconds short out the wire going to the switch in the door. This would allow the central locking to work as normal except that lifting the snib on a door would only open that door - so if someone opened the drivers door, the side and rear doors would stay locked.
Maybe I'm being a little paranoid, or maybe there is an easier way to secure the van when we are sleeping.
When we were parked up at an aire in Sainte-Marie-sur-Mer last year, some of the locals thought that they would have a go at breaking into some of the motorhomes. Surprisingly they had a go at our van, with a thud that woke me up at about 5am. Hearing nothing more I went back to sleep.
When we got up in the morning, I found the drivers door lock plastic surround on the ground. Looking at the damage, it looked like someone had placed a screwdriver under the lock and hit it - just once, before moving on to the next victim.
I wondered how this technique was supposed to work, and I can only think that they were trying to bounce the the contacts on the switch that closes when the door snib is down. I'm assuming that if the contacts open, then the whole central locking system will open.
Maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree - but if this is the case then I'm thinking that it might be better to disable this feature.
That Google blogspot you use. How do you get page two, three etc to show up on the right. I add a page and publish yet nothing shows up on the page one link. I have to add a page two url as the bottom of page one what looks tacky.
If you go to the blog design and click the layout button on the left, you can add a "pages" gadget to the sidebar.
Its probably more useful to create pages rather than posts.
Well we do pack a lot because we tend to go away for long periods. Last years trip lasted for 150 days.
The bed is 1.04m which is narrow. I'm 5'10" 75kg and the wife is about 5", and we have no problem with the space. In fact we can pretty much spend the night without touching each other - we have been married a long time. The key to this was fitting in the compressor fridge, which dictates the rest of the design. An alternative may be to fit a chest fridge underneath the seat - using the extra space where the wheelchair ramp was.
Here's a link to the bed frame page http://blue-van.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/bed.html
I did put in 2 swivel seats - but in practice the passenger seat never gets turned around.
Dolomite, the build log was primarily for my own reference, so its not laid out in a user friendly way, but if you wanted pictures of some specific details I can do that. I did some more tweaks over the winter and intend to do some more photos shortly.
Tiree, yes the shade worked very well, especially when we had light rain - we could still cook and eat outside. The only change for this year is an upgrade to adjustable steel poles to help when the rain is heavy.
My conversion was an Expert WAV also. I did a bit of a build log, mainly to remind myself what I did and where I sourced the bits.
The website is http://blue-van.blogspot.co.uk/ you might get a few ideas from it.