Project Erica - Part 6 - You've made your bed...

When we started planning for our van conversion, way back last November, we had the clear notion that we would do things in a sensible order. First we would strip, then we would run cable (including the solar panel), then we would insulate (including the roof), apply a vapour barrier, then apply the final finishing layer to walls and ceilings, before moving on to constructing furniture. We continued to hold onto that notion of a sensible order right until about a week or so after we took delivery of Erica.

With the whole debacle with the solar panel, it became clear that if we waited until we had the solar wiring in place, and the roof insulated, and the roof liner back in, then we would be doing an awful lot of sitting around waiting – particularly with the need (once we have a solar panel we’re happy with) for good weather for that job. Likewise, if we waited for the wall carpet to be delivered, we would be wasting a spell of dry sunny days. When we analysed the situation, we concluded that even though it didn’t feel like the right order, there was no reason why we couldn’t build the sofa/bed, even if we weren’t going to fit it just yet (and it was thus going to take up residence in our living room). Moreover, doing that would feel like real progress.

So, a week last Saturday that’s exactly what we started. It took us three half-days to complete (i.e. 1.5 days total). The process was approximately as follows:

• Build the base
• Build the frame for the lid/slats
• Take the frame back apart and make it the right size
• Apply hardboard to the slat frame
• Remove hardboard from the slat frame and refit it the right around
• Cut the slats, make design modifications on the hoof to take account of two issues we foresaw
• Fit slats
• Remove slats, modify slats, apply washers to create a stand-off for slats
• Stand back and feel mightily proud of our handy work!

I cannot tell you how many hours it took me to put together the video of the process. Probably longer than it took to build the bed!  Here’s the final result:

You’ll notice that in this video we made good use of the workbench that, if you missed it in a post last week, you’ll find me describing in this very short video:

 

Erica takes over the world…

…or at least our house.

I’m currently sitting at the dining room table. About six inches from my right arm is a roll of insulation. To my left is a stack of timber, hanging over one piece of which is a solar panel extension cable. Behind that is a box of high temperature spray adhesive. Behind me is my large toolbox. At the other end of the table is Mick’s laptop, next to which is a pile of notebooks, plus multiple loose sheets of paper, mainly bearing sums and sketches of bed designs. Beyond the far end of the table are three cut pieces of insulation board.

Out in the room that might loosely be described as a conservatory there’s half a sheet of insulation board, behind which is Erica’s rear header liner. In the middle of the room is the boxing in made for the nearside wheel arch, standing on top of the surfaces of our two makeshift workbenches.

Fortunately, from here I can’t see all the stuff that’s in the other half of that room, and as there’s so much of it, I won’t subject you to that list.

If I was to walk from here to the living room, I would pass through the hallway, where I would find a piece of Erica’s trim (from next to the driver’s seat) leaning against the wall, under which is a large coil of cable.

Then there’s the living room, which until a few days ago had retained its function as just that. Now it’s exploded into a new role as a store room. Immediately on walking through the door you encounter the base of Erica's sofa (and if not paying attention will walk straight into it, as I’ve learnt). My knitting chair sits in front of that, but my knitting is feeling sorely neglected, and I couldn’t get to that chair at the moment if I wanted. In front of it is the huge box for the second solar panel*. A few inches in front of that is a boxed PortaPotti, next to which, leaning against the coffee table is the sliding-slat sofa-seat/bed base. On the coffee table is the stove/sink.

I’ll describe the utility room with a photo, but with the comment that it has got worse since this was taken.

And all this after the house was so clean and tidy through lockdown! I could, of course, dedicate some time to having a bit of a tidy-up, but many of the items that are lying around are so big that we’re limited for options as to where we can put them, plus it seems a futile endeavour whilst work is on-going. At least at the moment I’ve got a good idea where everything is.

On the one hand, I hope that nobody announces that they’re coming around to see us in the immediate future; on the other hand, I’ve got kilos of freshly picked cooking apples and there’s going to be a lot of apple-based cookery to be shared over the coming weeks.

(*I’m not in the habit of sending back things that I’ve ordered online. Indeed, I can only remember making one return previously, and that was when I carelessly ordered the wrong item. However, I’m not making a good job of choosing a solar panel as having sent the first one back earlier in the week and received a different one, I’m now sending that one back too. Third time lucky, I hope.)

Review of our sophisticated new workbench

Just for a giggle, here's a short (less than 2 minutes) video review of the new workbench, with interchangeable tops, that I manufactured this week. 
 

Project Erica Part 5 - In which Erica is stuffed and wired (with a bit of deadening thrown in too)

Once we'd got Erica's floor down, our attention turned to making her a bit quieter via some sound deadening and plenty of insulation, interspersed with the running of cables through some of her voids.

You'll find the YouTube video of the process here:

 

I'm highly dubious as to the value of sound deadening in a vehicle of Erica's size, but it's not one of those things that you can easily add in afterwards if you regret a decision to omit it, so after spending far too long weighing up the specifications of the various offerings on the market, I went for the cheaper end of the spectrum of butyl-based products available. 

For insulating the body we used loft insulation made from recycled plastic bottles, so if it does get wet, it won't hold that moisture as other traditional loft insulation materials would. We recognise that solid board insulation would have been more thermally efficient, but Erica's panels aren't big enough to warrant using it. Over the top of that (except for on the tailgate) we put a vapour barrier, held in place by foil tape.

As for the wiring for the pump, lights and 12v socket, it's surprising, in such a small vehicle that all of the cable runs worked out at around 6m long. They were, however, easy to put into place, with the exception of the one that needed to run behind the driver's seatbelt pillar cover - and even that one would have been straightforward if I'd run it when we had the pillar cover released, rather than about three hours after I'd put it back!

We got as far as cutting the insulation for the roof, where we are using solid board, but we can't fit that  until the solar panel cable is in place. The latest on the solar situation is that I did an about-turn over the weekend the result of which is that the original panel is due to be collected today and a different one is being delivered on Thursday. Despite my previous comment about a flexible panel not even being in contention, that's exactly what we've now bought. It's nearly twice the price and will likely have a short life, but will also raise Erica's height by less than 10mm, rather than nearer 70mm. Taking into account that it's also 25% of the weight, will produce less wind resistance, will be quieter (no air gap under it for wind to whistle), and only needs to be bonded to the roof (rather than needing eight screws through) I can convince myself that it's a sensible decision.

Project Erica: The Plan

A couple of weeks ago, just after we’d stripped everything out of Erica, Mick and I sat in her and had a chat about what our plans were. I should have posted that footage earlier, before the video about the floor, but it got overlooked. Here it is now – six minutes of us talking about the our intended layout:

Project Erica: Things wot I achieved (or not) today

Erica was put to good use as a means of transport this morning, and for the first time in five months, Mick and I went on a little jolly – just a few miles down the road for a run around some woodland for me, whilst Mick took a walk, meeting me at various points on my route to shout encouragement and take photos.

Then we came home to see if we could make any more progress on Erica’s build, although with the hampering factor of it being too windy a day to want to do much out of doors.

By 5pm I felt like I had achieved precisely nothing, but Mick put a more positive spin on my day. I had:

1. Made a decision on and bought carpet for the walls (probably 50% more than we need, and the most expensive of the options I had considered, but at least it’s bought and on its way).
2. Done valuable research on battery options.
3. Made yet more notes about timber options.
4. Together with Mick, made a decision on the timber to be used for the bed/sofa frame and found a relatively local store that has stock.
5. A few other minor bits and pieces of research.

The battery was today’s main frustration, entirely by my own fault. A few weeks ago I spent about three hours doing the exact same research, before putting the matter onto the ‘too difficult’ pile. Unfortunately, I didn’t make notes as to what I had learnt and thus today I found myself repeating the same reading and going through the same process of thinking I’d settled on one type of battery only to then read something that cast doubt on that decision (there’s an added level of complication here that we may take Bertie’s battery to put in Erica and upgrade what is in Bertie).  The end result was that I had a list of four possible answers, and at least this time I wrote them down (although we have such a disorganised set of notebooks sitting on this table that there’s never any guarantee that notes made one day will be found again on another!).

Mick had a more productive day. As well as doing more work on the bed design and helping with the search for the right timber, he produced this…

…finishing the complicated shaping just in the nick of time as rain came hurling down. The finishing of the opposite edge (a straight cut) will be the work of a few minutes tomorrow. 

 

Project Erica: Frustration (without indecision)

After yesterday’s frustrations, we were determined to make progress today: it was to be a dry day and we were going to get the solar panel fitted.

Bright and early I gave Erica a wash, paying special attention to the roof, then we loosely fitted the brackets to the solar panel and offered it up onto the roof, before spending time measuring.

It’s a critical requirement that Erica has to remain under 2m high, as we need to retain the ability to use council tips (which is also a reason we were keen to get car rather than a van). We had, of course, measured her height as best we could before we bought the solar panel and had concluded that we had just enough clearance. It is, however, difficult to measure accurately the highest point of a vehicle whose roof is a long way from being flat, and it soon became apparent that something was awry in our measurements, as the highest point of the solar panel was coming in at only 5mm under 2m. For me, that’s not enough breathing space.

We tried the panel in various positions until we found a place that gave us the required clearance.

Method: A piece of wood was placed across the panel, then with a spirit level it was moved into a horizontal position, thus measuring the highest point on the panel. The horizontal piece of wood was then measured against a measuring stick, held in a vertical position alongside Erica.

We might then have proceeded to fix the panel down, except I thought it wise to double check our measurements by repeating the process on the other side of the vehicle. A good job we did, as for no obvious reason, we came up with different figures and we were now measuring exactly 2m high.

Options were considered:

1. We could return the solar panel and not have one at all;
2. We could return the panel and replace it with a non-fixed one that we throw up on the roof when needed*; or 
3. We could come up with a different way of fixing it, so that it would be positioned lower to the roof and/or be removable.

Option 1 was not favoured. We could manage without a solar panel, as we did for 6 years in Colin (and Erica will have much less equipment drawing power) but we also know from experience with Bertie how good it is to have solar.  

Option 2 would be the easy option (and would solve the electronics issue over which I spent hours vacillating yesterday, as they have the solar controller built-in), but not very practical. Aside from needing to find somewhere inside an already small space to store the panel, we wouldn’t want to leave it just sitting on top of Erica’s roof whilst we were out, and if we only used it when we were both in and stationary, then its utility would be severely reduced.

So, we need to veer away from off-the-shelf mounting plates and make some bespoke ones, which will also involve drilling new holes in the aluminium frame of the solar panel, invalidating its warranty in the process. Yikes and gulp! Fortunately it didn’t take me many minutes to find and buy what I was looking for: some unequal (50mm by 25mm) aluminium angle.

As the new fixings won’t be with us until the middle of next week, further work on the solar installation is now postponed, which in turn postpones our ability to fit the insulation to the roof, which in turn postpones our ability to refit the roof liner.

There are, however, other things that we can be getting on with, and I’m pleased to say that a small piece of construction was completed today, albeit another piece that will be completely hidden once the cupboards are built. There was an 'oh no!' moment at the end of the day when I realised that we'd overlooked a major consideration in our design of that piece, but I *think* we’ve got away with it.

(*It could be considered that a fourth option would be to have a semi-flexible panel, which are only 5mm thick and can be bonded directly to the roof, but we discounted that possibility as they're more expensive to buy and tend to have a short life due to overheating, due to not having an air gap under them.)

Project Erica: The continued frustrations of indecision

The forecast for rain for most of today proved to be accurate, so it was allocated as a planning and buying day.

I had great plans to order all of the electrical gubbins that I haven’t already bought, including connectors, cables, fuses, fuse board and the bits and pieces I’ll need to make a control panel (my current preference is to make my own control panel; this may yet change).

What I have actually achieved is hours and hours of failing to make a decision on the very first item on my ‘to buy’ list*.

We need a way to charge the leisure battery from the starter battery/alternator. We also need a solar controller. The options to achieve this are as follows:

1. A voltage sensitive relay (VSR), plus a solar controller.
2. A battery-to-battery (B2B) charger, plus a solar controller.
3. A combined B2B and solar controller.

I like Option 3, but my chosen unit comes in at £150-£170 more than Option 1* and whilst I wouldn’t hesitate in spending that if this was a van in which we were planning to use for extended trips, it’s difficult to justify in this context when a VSR + solar controller would do the job. I’ve pretty well ignored Option 2 as if going down the B2B route then it makes sense to go for Option 3.

So, I checked the specification of some VSRs and chose one. I was just about to come over all decisive and order it, when I spotted another that had better features and wasn’t much more expensive, so I thought we’d go for that one instead. I ran the options past Mick and it appeared that the decision was made.

Then I fell down a rabbit hole related to the appropriate cable to use with a VSR. The manufacturer’s instruction manual told me I needed to use cable rated to at least 120A for the 120A VSR, but surely, I thought, the fact that the VSR is rated to 120A doesn’t mean that’s what we’ll be putting through it, so surely we didn’t need such enormously large cable? Some (where ‘some’ = ‘a lot of’) Googling ensued and that question was answered to my satisfaction. However, what I read during that diversion also alerted me to potential problems using a VSR when you also have solar installed.

What to do next? Spend at least another half a day researching the best way to make Option 1 work, or go for the easy (and technically better) option of spending the extra on Option 3 (after I’ve read the unit’s manual again, to be sure that it does meet all of our needs)? 

Whilst I was tearing my hair out over things electrical, Mick was having his own frustrations (and making equally little forward progress) with specifying the materials for the sofa/bed – an issue that is not being helped by both Wickes and B&Q apparently having a timber shortage just now (at least around here, if not nationally) and with minimum order values for delivery being prohibitive. Once we finally settle on the specification, I think we’ll be getting in touch with some local independent timber merchants.

__We have various sizes of timber lying around, which resulted in some highly scientific strength tests__

Both the electrics and the timber will have to wait another while now before our attention returns to them, as it’s forecast to be dry tomorrow and thus a suitable day for drilling holes in Erica’s roof.  

 

*Worse, on top of not managing to order so much as a single fuse, I received confirmation that the order for the toilet, that I would have sworn I placed last week, didn’t go through and the supplier is now out of stock.

Project Erica Part 4: In which Erica is floored

On 5 and 6 August Erica enjoyed plenty of attention as we stripped her. The next activity she experienced was on 12 August. So, what happened in between? 

Well, that’s when I demonstrated that decision making is not (or is no longer) something at which I excel, making me wonder how I ever held down a job that involved decisions* ! If I had enough hair to grip, I would have torn it out and the level of frustration was huge as I spent hours going round and round in circles on questions of what to buy. To give just one example, I spent about three hours trying to make a decision on which solar panel to buy, only then to go right back to questioning whether we wanted a solar panel at all (spoiler: I have a brand new, boxed, solar panel sitting next to me as I type). I may have felt triumph in finally hitting the ‘buy’ button, but then another hour or more was lost in deciding what sort of brackets to get, and even more time on the subject of cables, gland cover and adhesive/sealant. 

We did fit some other activites into this period, like making this year's batch of blackberry jam.

Day after day slipped by, but purchases did gradually start arriving, helping us along towards the point where we would be able to start work in earnest (although the ‘to buy’ list is still a lot longer than the ‘bought’ list; I’ve prioritised the things we need first). Finally, last Tuesday we took Erica into town and proved how useful it is to have a vehicle into which you can fit 2.4m x 1.2m sheets of board and insulation:

There's a big grocery shop under that lot too! 

Wednesday saw me sawing and feeling mightily proud of what I achieved, but then Thursday was lost to more planning (how many hours can one reasonably spend coming up with the dimensions of a sofa-bed, particularly when you already know that the bed will be 1040mm wide? Quite a lot, as it turns out, when you don’t want the sofa to stick out too far into the middle of the van, but also don’t want the backrest to go up above the height of the windows.). Friday and Saturday were then a hive of activity, finishing what I’d started on Wednesday, that being the laying of an insulated floor within Erica’s wheelchair ‘trough’.

You’ll find the story in the YouTube video linked below. I’m afraid I couldn’t make this one short, so it comes in at just a few seconds under 20 minutes. I’d *really* appreciate it if you could make a cup of tea, get yourself a sticky bun and sit down to watch it, because it took me hours (including quite a few when I should have been sleeping) to edit it together. I’d like to think that I’m getting a tiny touch better at this editing malarkey too.

Don’t forget, you can always use YouTube’s controls to watch it in less than 20 minutes!

(*I once went for a job interview in which I was grilled for a couple of hours at the end of which I was subjected to some psychometric testing. The following week I was called back for a second interview, where I was grilled again for another two hours, mainly on the subject of decision making. They later told me that the reason for that was that the psychometric testing had said that I had a weakness in that area. I couldn’t understand it at the time, because whilst I could dither for hours in front of two frocks in a clothes shop, I never had a problem making business decisions. It seems that buying stuff for a motorhome has more in common with clothes shopping than it does with business. Incidentally, when I was offered that job I took it as I figured that if they wanted me after that four and a half hours of intense interviews, then I must be capable of the job. My acceptance was a good move: it was in that job that I met Mick.)

Erica Randomness: In which Erica worries about what sort of negligent owners she has acquired

Yesterday morning we put Erica up on ramps to give a few extra inches of room to manoeuvre underneath her. This involved me opening a window so that I could hear Mick as he gave a commentary on placing the ramps and chocks.

I did plenty of wriggling around underneath (anyone else ever created a scale diagram of the underside of their vehicle, or just us?), then we did various other tasks that saw us in and out of her interior. Given the silly-hot temperature, we left all of her rear doors open all day, until tea-time when I decided I’d had enough of contorting myself for one day.

In the evening, Mick was on his way out to tuck her up for bed, when I told him that I’d already closed her doors and all he needed to do was blip her remote central locking (it’s been a few years since we had a vehicle with that luxury feature!). He took me at my word.

At around 10pm or so, we had a monsoonal downpour with a bit of thunder and lightning.

“Did I close Bertie’s locker door after I got the chocks out?” I asked, suddenly worried that if I’d left it open his boot would be filled with water. Mick assured me I had.

My concern about Bertie’s locker was misplaced, as I discovered as I headed out for a run first thing this morning and saw, with some horror, that I’d left Erica’s driver’s window fully open. What a mistake to make on a night that wet*!

A sodden driver’s seat and a puddle on the floor (the bit of floor under which sits her battery compartment) was the result. Poor love! I do hope she doesn’t think this is an indication of how we’re going to treat her.

(*I’m pretty sure we’ve only ever once before left a car window open overnight. It was at least 12 years ago and it lashed it down on that occasion too, giving us a 100% record for open window = heavy rain.)

USB Sockets for Bertie (Update 3)

On Thursday afternoon, once I’d put Eric(a)’s driver’s seat back in its proper position, having removed the winch mechanism from under it, I thought I’d best give Bertie a bit of attention so that he didn’t think that he’d been ousted by his new sibling. I’d just taken delivery of the connectors I needed to finish the job of fitting his USB sockets and I was eager to get the job done. Aside from anything else, I wanted to finish it so that I could get his table back in place, to remove one item from our dining room, which is currently looking like a bizarre sort of junk shop, scattered with various patient transport vehicle parts!

My first task was the bit that I really couldn’t afford to get wrong: the drilling of holes in Bertie’s trim. Connectors were then crimped onto wires, USB sockets were connected and slotted through those holes then, in the case of the one on the driver’s side, I had the fun of trying to get the socket’s retaining nut into place, without being able to see what I was doing (the access slot I was using is big enough for my hand, but not so big that I can see past my hand).

With all connections made I was looking forward to turning the 12v system on at Bertie’s control panel, when I realised I’d forgotten about the most important (and scariest) bit of the wiring: the connections into the Electroblock. Out to his electrical locker I went, where I stayed for quite some time. His Electroblock uses Mate n Lok connectors and when, a couple of weeks ago, I’d practiced crimping a pin onto a wire without the use of the proprietary crimping tool, I managed (by using a combination of pliers and the crimping tool I do have) to get a good firm crimp in place. Could I replicate that on the real things? No, of course I couldn’t! Not to the extent I was happy with, anyway. Hopefully my final solution (the best crimp I could achieve, plus solder) will hold well enough.

A quick test, some admiration of the neatness of my handywork, and (three years after we should have done it) the job was complete.

 

Handy I'd left the piece of string, used to pull the wire through under the floor, as I was able to use it as a third hand to hold the wire up whilst I fitted connectors to the ends.

 

This is the socket on the passenger side. Top snap: being black on a black background, it blends in nicely. Bottom snap: close-up of it open and switched on.

On the driver's side I positioned socket exactly where we used to have a disc of velcro. There's a black 'nobble' just visible on the side of this pillar at the same height - that's the switch which isolates both sockets.

The connections into the electroblock. The orange arrow points at the red wire I added; I also put in the black wire diagionally up to the right of it.

Project Erica: Part 3 - Two days of not achieving very much!

In the two days following the initial strip I removed the driver's seat (and put it back!), fiddled with a dodgy door handle and revealed some wiring. The video coverage of those two days is lacking (both in quantity and in interest value), but I've uploaded it for anyone who does want to view. I managed to get two days down to just over 4 minutes long (and that includes a little interlude in Bertie). 

 

As well as the interlude to give Bertie a bit of love and attention (if you can call drilling holes in him 'love'!), I'm sure there must have been other things that took up my time over those two days, one of which was probably spending far too many hours failing to make decisions about buying stuff - that's an issue I'll return to as it's turning out to be incredibly frustrating as well as holding up our progress.

Project Erica: Let's get stripping!

By Wednesday morning this week Eric(a) had been in our possession for a day and a half and it was time for a bit of activity; specifically, to start stripping out the rear.

There will be another post on this subject, with a written description of what we did and how it went, but in the meantime, here’s the video version (I condensed the whole day down into 8.5 minutes, but remember you can always speed it up using YouTube’s controls if you want):

 

A remarkably satisfactory first day!

Eric or Erica?

A surprisingly tricky question!

There has never been a doubt in either Mick’s mind or mine that backpacking tents are female, hence we have Rita, Susie, Vera and Connie.

When we bought a motorhome, I declared that, being so much bigger and beefier than a tent, he was clearly a boy, hence he was called Colin and his successor is Bertie.

Neither of us has ever named a car, however, in my mind cars are female. Erica is currently a car, but will be becoming a campervan and if motorhomes are male then surely campervans are too. Or are they? I could be persuaded either way.

That leaves Eric(a) a state of limbo, not knowing whether it’s the final letter or the brackets that will be dropped from his/her name.

(Footnote: Rita is a Tarptent Rainbow. Susie is a TN Voyager Superlite. Vera is a TN Voyager. Connie is a TN Laser Competition. Colin was a WildAx Constellation. Bertie is a Hymer B444.)

 

Project Eric(a): Part 5

Just one final post to give a bit more information about Eric(a) before we get into the nitty gritty of ripping apart and modifying (although if you watched the video tour at the end of the last post, you'll know most of this already).

Here are a few key stats, that we knew before we bought:

• (S)he's a Peugeot Expert Tepee Comfort (‘Comfort’ is the lower spec of the two versions of this model; we would have preferred the Leisure) in length L1 (the shorter of the two lengths available)
• 2 litre diesel engine
• 6.5 years old
• 18000 miles on the clock
• More than a full service history (5 main dealer service stamps in 18000 miles!)
• MOT until next February
• No significant MOT failures or advisories in its history

Based on the majority of other similar vehicles we’ve looked at, and the very limited photos I’d seen in the auction house’s catalogue, I also expected that:

• Eric(a) had been in private ownership as part of the Motability Scheme;
• the WAV modification had been carried out by Allied Mobility and was its ‘Independence’ model.

After taking delivery, it didn’t take much looking around to make me suspect that my first assumption was incorrect (it turned out that the second was too, but I didn’t find that out until a few hours later). This was the first clue…

Who needs instructions as to how to open a driver’s door?!

…but it wasn’t until we poked our heads inside that the clues started mounting up. The colour scheme didn’t shout ‘private vehicle’, nor did the head bumpers above all three rear doors, the grab handles, the emergency exit hammer and the fire extinguisher.

A quick look at the previous owner on the V5 (and Googling the company named) didn’t help confirm who had operated the vehicle, but then I looked at the Taxation Class, which I expected to be ‘Disabled’. It said: NHSV. We had unknowingly bought an ex-NHS* patient transfer vehicle, converted by O&H (a van-to-ambulance converter).

Not what we expected, but fortunately not something we found at all off-putting: the layout was as expected and one of the most striking things at first glance was how tidy this car was. Vehicles that go to auction are not tarted-up for sale, and some of them are in real states of filth, but aside from some crumbs on the passenger seat and something of a glitter explosion over the floor in the back, this one looked strikingly clean and tidy, with the only notable internal damage being some scuffs to the dashboard on the passenger side. It’s certainly in better condition than the few ex-Motability ones (that had been tarted-up for sale) we viewed back in November.

So far, so good. Now it was time to start the removal of the interior, hoping that didn’t throw up anything unexpected …

To be continued…

By the end of Tuesday all external door handle operating instructions (plus the ‘Diesel Only’ notice) had been removed and the glue residue cleared off. In doing that I noticed bits of glue residue from where neon chevrons had been removed from the tailgate – I decided to ignore that for now!

 (*As an aside, we’d considered a couple of ex-Council Expert Tepee WAVs that had the appeal of being the longer wheelbase version of the Expert. One we rejected on the basis of its tax band, and the other on the basis of its MOT history. It had repeatedly failed on major points, some of them notified as dangerous. So, whichever council had owned it had clearly been driving members of the public around in a dangerous vehicle, not just once or twice by almost every year. As I don’t know which council, I can’t name and shame them.)

 

Project Eric(a): Part 4

At 9am on 21 July we had dismissed the notion of buying a car at auction. Less than twenty five hours later we had, via a broker, bid on two cars, on consecutive days, and had successfully purchased one.

We then set about trying to be patient in waiting for delivery* and every now and then had to reassure ourselves about having given a not-inconsiderable sum of money to a random stranger off the internet who could have absconded with it for all we knew**. The tiny residual concerns we had on that score weren’t helped when the first delivery date was cancelled on the day, then all went quiet about a possible delivery the next day. Then on Monday 3 August it was confirmed that Eric(a) would be with us by the end of the day – and so (s)he was.

It’s a strange thing, buying a car you’ve never seen. In fact, neither of us had ever even driven an Expert. We did, however, have the benefit of having seen a condition report and high-level mechanical report (the good report in the latter was backed up by the delivery driver, who sang the car’s praises as he handed over the keys).

For the next fifteen minutes our attention was split, 50% in being polite and chatting to the delivery driver whilst he waited for a taxi and 50% trying to look at what we had bought. I soon spotted a few things that made me think that this car wasn’t entirely what I had expected…

 

That’s a bit of an unfair cliff-hanger on which to leave this instalment, but if you want a sneak preview of what’s coming, you can click ‘Play’ on the link below to watch this short (3-minute) video tour, made on Eric(a)’s maiden voyage to a local nature reserve.  

(*In normal times we would have attended the auction ourselves, paid in full before we left and have arranged to pick up the car within 24 hours, but these are not normal times and we had to wait for the broker to arrange delivery. The auction house’s Covid-secure procedures include an appointment system for collecting cars, which has introduced its own delays.

**A bit melodramatic. Among other things I knew about the broker, I checked that he is registered with the FCA, which seemed a good indication.)

Project Eric(a): Part 3

Subtitle: We don’t make things easy for ourselves, do we?

We’d slept on it over the weekend and the ex-MoD vehicle, up for auction on Tuesday morning, still looked too good to ignore, even taking into account the faff that would be involved in MoTing and registering and the unknown as to how long it would take DVLA to process the paperwork.

Then I saw a newly published advert for another vehicle, of the same make/model/spec, for sale in Blackpool. This one was a Wheelchair Adapted Vehicle (WAV) and was much higher mileage, but we could see it before buying, it would come with a warranty and, of course, it was registered so we would be able to drive it immediately.

A quick change of horse, then! We were going to go to Blackpool! Not until Tuesday though, because by now I was taking part in the Virtual Lakeland 50, I had 9.4 miles to run on Tuesday morning and I didn’t want to have to come up with a suitable and appealing route in a strange place. Bertie was duly packed for a couple or three days by the sea and arrangements were made to see friends in the area.

My run on Tuesday morning happened very early, because I’d been awake since 3am when I’d had the sudden flash of realisation that we were backing the wrong horse and that the ex-MoD vehicle was the vehicle we should have gone for.

I was back from my run at 7am and I woke Mick with the news of my early-hours realisation. “Are we too late to change our minds?” he asked. Bearing in mind that the auction for the ex-MoD vehicle was starting at 9am and that we hadn’t lined up a broker to buy it for us (the auction house currently being closed to the public), I opined that we were. Thus, at 9am we were on the phone to the dealer in Blackpool to double check, before we travelled, that no-one had snuck in and bought ‘our’ car from under us. They had. What a blow!

It was now gone 9am and our fall-back option was in an auction that had already started. Cue half an hour of headless-chicken activity: confirming with the broker that our car was far enough down the running order to give us time to instruct a bid, followed by the swift signing of the brokerage contract and the transfer of a non-refundable sourcing fee* (the most off-putting element of the transaction). 

By lunchtime we heard back: our bid had not been successful.

The ex-MoD vehicle on which we were thoroughly outbid.

We didn’t need to return to the drawing board as we already had our fallback plan: another Expert (WAV) going under the hammer the very next morning. A lower spec vehicle than our top two choices, but (undoubtedly due to Coronavirus) there’s a scarcity of Expert Tepees on the market at sensible prices at the moment and this one had enough good points to make it a contender.

We instructed the broker as to our highest bid and set about waiting until Wednesday afternoon for news.

The news was good! We had bought a car. A car that we had never seen, and wouldn’t yet see for another week or two after paying for it, but at least the period of the full-on search had been short (and we secured it for £400 less than our highest bid, which was a bonus).

 

Eric(a)

 
(*The broker’s sourcing fee gave us unlimited bids over an unlimited period and would also have covered us giving them our criteria and setting them on the task of doing the searching. Because they are a high-volume customer of the auction house, they pay much lower fees than the general public. The sourcing fee we paid to the broker plus the reduced auction house fee came to slightly less than the auction fee we would have paid if we’d been able to attend the auction and buy for ourselves. The off-putting factor was that, given our timescales having already sold our old car, if we weren’t successful in buying at auction, we were looking at writing off a chunk of money if we were then to buy elsewhere.)

Project Eric(a): Part 2

Recap: We’d sold the car on the Thursday and needed to source a new(er) one, but with the slight impediment that we now didn’t have a car to use to go looking for a car*.

The first task was to put together a shortlist. Too many hours spent staring at laptop screens, scrolling-scrolling-scrolling and making notes. There were moments of amusement, like the Mercedes Vito that looked good until I reviewed the MoT history and found that it had an MoT in 2014 at 35k miles and then another in 2019 at 117k miles, with a big gap in between. Conversely there was another that had been owned by ITV and had been MoT’d every 6 months without fail (presumably a condition of insurance when carting around famous people?).

By the end of the Friday we’d conceded that to buy a Vito whose history we trusted, it would be a white van, probably a 1.6-litre engine and with between 75k and 100k miles on the clock (on the plus side, we could have got one that was only 4 years old). I would have gone for a white van (and then retrofitted some rear windows) if the vehicle met all of our other ideals, but in the dozens of potential vehicles we noted, not a single one of them did.

There were many pages of notes like this

Back to the Peugeot Expert Tepee, then! This is a vehicle generally used for one of two purposes: 1) a 5-7 seat taxi; or 2) modification into a Wheelchair Accessible Vehicle (WAV), often as part of the Motability scheme. The main difference (ignoring the WAV mods) is that the latter are commonly 1-owner, low mileage vehicles that have been serviced religiously every year, whereas the former generally have scarily high mileages and hard lives. Our focus was decidedly on the WAVs.

Then I found something almost as rare as hens’ teeth: a high-spec, very low mileage, unmodified Expert Tepee. The downsides were that it was being sold at auction (not currently open to the public, due to Coronavirus) and its previous owner was the Ministry of Defence, so we would buy it unregistered (and I’m sure I said after importing Bertie that I wouldn’t choose to go through the registration process again). It also wouldn’t have an MoT, causing me to fall down a rabbit hole of reading legislation to find out if we could legally drive it to an MoT station before it was registered (bearing in mind that it couldn’t be registered until it had an MoT) and talking to insurers about insuring an unregistered vehicle against its VIN. It was the ideal vehicle, but was it just too much uncertainty and hassle?

We slept on it over the weekend.

To be continued…

^{(* We could, of course, have put Bertie back on the road, but being just past the middle of the month, I held off buying the road tax until we really needed to go somewhere. It was an inconvenience that we sold the car just as the fridge was nearing empty, but the following week I managed to secure a grocery delivery only a couple of days after it reached the point of complete bareness (with the freezer not far behind). I thought I’d ordered plenty, but I hadn’t factored in how hungry I would be whilst running the Virtual Lakeland 50. I then couldn’t get another delivery slot and there was no way we were paying for a month’s road tax for Bertie at that point, just for the few days left in the month. By the time I finally went shopping on 1 August cupboards, fridge and freezer had reached an all-time record state of emptiness.)}

Project Eric(a): Part 1

I’m not sure where to start with this tale. Perhaps last November is an appropriate place?

Our car was getting a bit long in the tooth and in need of replacement (we bought it in January 2013 to fill a temporary need, intending to sell it 3 months later), and if we were going to buy a new(er) car, then why not one big enough to house a bed and a kitchen? After all, surely it’s perfectly reasonable for one married couple to own two campervans? A big one (Bertie) for comfort on longer trips and a tiny one for day trips and short stays in the UK. It was in November 2019 that Mick came to agree with me that this was a sensible way forward and the hunt was on.

Research ensued. Spreadsheets were populated. The conclusion reached was that the best way to achieve our aims* within the budget was to buy a vehicle and do the conversion ourselves. We started scouring the market to see what would suit our needs and narrowed it down to two vehicles: a Peugeot Expert or a Mercedes Vito (both of which come in car and van versions). In late November we came within a hair’s breadth of buying an Expert (hindsight: wish we had!), but we had a wobble and decided we’d prefer a Vito.

An eye was kept on the sale ads through December and we attended a couple of auctions. We were back at the auction in early January, but by then we conceded the project was going to have to be put on hold as we were due to head off to Spain a couple of weeks later. That didn’t leave long enough to be sure of selling the old car and we didn’t want to find ourselves with two cars over that period of time. Plus, when were we going to find the time this year to do the conversion?

Oh, if we’d known then what we know now! Fast forward to mid-March, when we unexpectedly found ourselves back at home with all the time in the world to be working on fitting out a vehicle … if only we had any way of sourcing one … or buying the materials needed for the fit-out … or any prospect of selling the old car privately.

As lockdown started lifting, we decided that we needed to take action. We didn’t want to keep the car for another year (it had been absolutely reliable through our ownership, but at 11.5 years old it was becoming increasingly likely that things would start to wear and break). However, our uncertainty as to the state of the second hand market, given how recently movement restrictions had been relaxed, was such that we felt we had to put the cart before the horse and sell the old before seeking the new, even though that was going to leave us without a car in which to go and seek a new car.

The car sold right in the middle of July (for, I reckon, £500 less than we would have got back in January). The hunt for a new vehicle then started in earnest.

To be continued…

 
(*We could have bought an off-the-shelf van within our budget, but it would be quite old and high mileage. Moreover, tiny campervans within our budget that have been insulated, have a heater and have a toilet are so rare that I’ve not yet found one.)

USB Sockets for Bertie: Why? (And Update 2)

Conrad asked: “What do the new USBs allow you to do that you couldn't before?”

The short answer is: “Technically, nothing.”

The longer answer:

When we’re on the road in Bertie, we are usually off-grid, relying on his 12v leisure battery for our power requirements, including charging phones, watches and the like via USB cables.

Bertie came without any USB sockets, but we have managed for 3.5 years*, albeit with a little inconvenience, by using the one 12v socket on his habitation side**, however, that socket is not conveniently sited and requires the use of a USB adaptor. Fitting the new sockets kills two birds with one stone: accessible sockets and no need for multi-way USB adaptors. 

Here are a few photos to illustrate the location of Bertie’s only 12v socket, on which we have relied to date for all of our charging needs:

This is the TV cupboard:

Looking into the cupboard (the TV is on a slide-out arm), at the very back of the cupboard is the 12v socket:

I searched my gallery for a view of Bertie’s lounge as seen from the cab and almost drew a blank. I’ve photos looking forward, but almost none looking back. This one isn't great, but does illustrates the issue with using this socket – it requires the bottom of the cupboard to be left open, which in turn puts it exactly behind one’s head when sitting on the sofa. I can’t tell you how many times head and door have come into sharp contact.

In case you’re wondering, the wifi booster's plugged in in this snap, hence the trailing wire. 

As for progress on the task of adding the new sockets: well, it’s turning out to be a greater learning experience than I’d anticipated, with associated delays!

I’m no stranger to mains power wiring, but I’m a novice on 12v. It was only yesterday, whilst crimping connectors onto wires, that I realised that my wiring diagram, whilst technically correct, wasn’t as simple to implement as I’d thought. Or rather, I’d just not thought enough about it.

“I’ve got a wire going into A, coming back out of A and going to B, coming out of B and going to C.”

It sounds so simple until I got to the point of ‘wire coming back out of B'*** and realised I had no means of achieving that junction. More research has been carried out and more parts have been ordered.

Given that I’m anticipating more 12v wiring tasks in my future, it’s a learning curve I’m happy to be scaling. Hopefully for the next task, it’ll take less time and fewer iterations to get the shopping list spot-on, with fewer delays as a result.

^{(*And for the preceding 6 years in Colin, who also only had one 12v socket, also in the back of his TV cupboard.
**Bertie also has a 12v socket and a USB point in the cab, but they both run off the engine battery and are only live when the engine is running.
***I think this is a meaningful statement without me wittering on further, but in case anyone’s after more: ‘A’ in this statement is the switch. It has two connection points ‘+ve in' and ‘+ve out’, so that’s no problem. ‘C’ is the second USB socket and again is no problem, as it only requires a to be connected via the two corresponding posts on its rear. ‘B’ is the first USB is where I’d not applied enough thought to the practicalities, in that it requires a +ve feed in from the switch and a - ve in from the Electroblock whilst also needing both a +ve and a - ve going out to the second USB. Research confirmed that shoving two wires into a single crimp is not good practice, so having considered the options to achieve the necessary junction, I’ve got some piggy back spade connectors on their way.)}