Rod's Rig - Round 2

[VMN]

Very nice Rod, well done

You wouldn't believe how excited I got when I thought I saw a pair of slippers at the door on that third pic
For a moment I thought it too good to be true that we would be finishing your buildup thread on such a note

Nah mate, I keep my slippers in the caravan these days.

There are still a few things I have up my sleeve so the buildup is not over yet!

[paw55h]

nice camoer we did look at the coramal and liked it

lots of room and not much weight and a big improvement from our jayco in terms of quality

[Kat00m]

BLOODY HELL 36 page's .... fantastic read

[VMN]

BLOODY HELL 36 page's .... fantastic read

Thanks Mate, I Changed my name along the way...

[VMN]

Well I finally have time to show you what I've been doing for the last few weekends getting ready to go into the Qld Outback for 3 weeks. This time in 2 weeks we'll be in the thick of it.

I finally got the water tank fully fitted and the drawers back in. Braced every join on the deck so the deck is now tied to the floor at every upright.



I also scored a drop down fridge slide on Ebay







Geez I need a bigger fridge now! The Occy strap is to hold the handle in place as the slide was never designed for such a smll fridge!. I had to mount the fridge on a board so it did not fall through . We've spent too much to set up for this trip we are going to have to run with this. We also have another 90 litre fridge in the van. Fridge choices to go with are 40 litre Engel 47 litre ARB or 60 litre Waeco. At this stage, I am leaning towards the ARB one (Engle seems a bit of a waste of the slide). I might run this 35 litre one as a freezer. So if you have any recommendations, please let me know.

Taking Doctor Pitt's advice to to some manly things, the slide was missing a pin that holds a bearing that takes the full load of the fridge, so this gave me a chance to make something on my lathe.



Also put some mudflaps back on. These are the Factory SR5 ones which are wider than the SR ones. A panel beater bought one for me when I dinted a sill and I bought the other (just as well I only bought one at $130!)



The other thing I did quite a while ago was to fit colour coded Anderson Plugs (they are not interchangeable so you can't get them mixed up). Red one is wired directly to the Caravan 3 way fridge which draws about 15 amps.





To make sure the van fridge does not flatten my battery, I added an extra isolator in the drawers before the Red Anderson Plug.



Tucked below the isolator are a couple of self resetting circuit breakers for the Anderson plugs.

Becasue the fridge is now on the opposite side (for better load balancing with long range tank), I had to add a new Merritt plug in the back of the drawers.



Another thing I did was make up some mudflaps that hang off the 2" receiver. Actually, I did it twice becasue I caught the rear corner and bent it reversing in a tight spot so I had to cut off the collar and reweld to a new Piece of RHS.





We are not bothering with a stoneguard this trip so I grabbed a piece of Corflute from a signwriter to cover the back window on the canopy.



To really make sure I dispel the Triton disease diagnosed by Dr Pitt, I mounted an axe to prevent any aerial contamination. I had the axe holder since before I had the Hilux but never worked out where to mount it. In the end went the easy way and whacked it on the Rhino Rack. I had to buy a basket mounting kit for about $40 to get the Rhino mounting hardware. If I had a bit more time I might have made up the threaded parts required.









Readers will remember that I run his and hers drawers. Her drawers have all the food and I got all the Man Up stuff on my side! We decided for this trip that a couple of removable dividers which fit into some 10mm aluminium channel you can get From Bunnings for $4 per metre. Cut the rear divider down a bit to make it easy to access. The channel is perfect sung fit for the 6 mm ply divider.



I countersunk the holes but I could not get a countersinker into the channel so I used a drill bit which worked out surprisingly well.



I also replaced the winch rope with some of VMN's floodbuster rope and added a Dynamica Hawse and spacers to bring the Hawse forward 50mm so the rope can't get cut on on a sideways pull. The Hook is a Dynamica Ally hook. All the Dynamica range is available from VMN.


These Hawses are drilled to suit the ARB bar with offset bolt holes so I had to drill a couple of holes in the bar which was not a drama.

Had a spare strap lying around so decided to use it to secure the hook as it did not sit as well as the wire rope version one did.



The Dyneema rope and hawse has taken over 6 kilos off the bull bar which I think will be a good thing for the Hilux!

Well that is the mods to the rig so I think I will post up the caravans mods separately.

[Jack S]

Certainly have been a busy boy Rod, looking great and alot of thought has went into the organization of the rig, giving you exactly what you need! Well done....

[Alby]

Good therapy work you have done there Rod........bet you still did it in your slippers though!?

[VMN]

Good therapy work you have done there Rod........bet you still did it in your slippers though!?

Absolutely! I have special pair of Blundstone slippers I used most of the time.

Spewing here. Just lost a near finished post on the van...

[Steve9R]

looks great Rod.. question.. the folddown tap you have in the rear.. where did you get it from ?

Steve

[pisso01]

You will love the drop down slide. If we didnt have one then the cook wouldnt be able to reach the fridge, that would be a problem..

Looking good mate..

Cheers,

Chris.

[VMN]

A quick update on the van progress too.

Front mudflaps for protection of underside. Drilled and tapped cross member to hold these on with some ally 6mm x 30mm bar.



Basket for water hose etc. Not a lot of room in the boot which holds 2 x 9 kg gas bottles so getting these out are really a good mod!





Conduit and protecton to ll plumbing under van.



Fold down step





My welding is nearly as good as Alby's!



The step does not hang any lower than the drawbar so I think it will work out OK. Only cost $53 for the step from Camec.

Converted all lights to LEDS. reduced power consumption from 8.5 amps to 1.5 amps (about 85% reduction).

Used to be a flouro here:





We replaced opal diffusers with clear ones to restore light output



All the dichroics got the same treatment (including the range hood lights!)




These cupboards used to have hanging space right to the floor and there is an external shower behind the bottom door. It was hard to guarantee a dustroof seal around the shower so we put in two shelves. I sealed the bottom one underneath with foam tape in case any dust seeped upwards. Did this on both sides and it has added heaps of extra storage. (Real men don't hang up their clothes right?)

Shelves are removable. Alby would have been impressed! I did the cabinetry with a hand saw and it worked out really well! Too lazy to borrow Justin's Festool saw on a track! The shelves are 6mm ply and I gave them a hit with clear spray pack varnish to seal them. I used some ally angle iron which was screwed and pop riveted with liberal use of Sikaflex 11c adhesive.



I might have posted these elsewhere but I also added a Jerry can holder on the back bar I had to weld in a new cross member so I clamped it to another piece of steel sitting on top to get it in position.

I used nutserts here and you can see the new cross member in the background.



Mounted a Jerry holder from ARB




Worked out pretty well:





The other job I did is I added an accumulator tank to the Shurflo pump to stop any pulsing of the pump. I forgot to take a pic of it. It has made an enormous difference, particularly running hot water which is very low flow. I was told to make sure to put a non-return valve on the outlet side to prevent town water from flowing into the accumulator and destroying the bladder.

So after all this, we started to pack to go away. Got the essentials on board now! A couple of tins of Spam, 60 cans of beer, carton of West Coast Cooler for the missus, 18 bottles of wine and a bottle each of scotch and Bundy Rum for reserve supplies. IT is amazing how much storage space we have now we are getting it set up properly.

[VMN]

looks great Rod.. question.. the folddown tap you have in the rear.. where did you get it from ?

Steve

Steve got it from Camec. http://www.camec.com.au was not cheap. I think it was about $90 but it was exactly what I wanted. They do have cheaper one but it does not fold flat sideways like this one. Think it is a ceramic disc tap (in a car )

Certainly have been a busy boy Rod, looking great and alot of thought has went into the organization of the rig, giving you exactly what you need! Well done....

Thanks Jack. Beginning to redo stuff now though!

You will love the drop down slide. If we didnt have one then the cook wouldnt be able to reach the fridge, that would be a problem..

Looking good mate..

Cheers,

Chris.

Thanks mate. Watch the Triton disease. Ya don't want the girls drinking all your beer!

[pisso01]

Lol. if I was working instead of traveling around the country I would have got some good slipper photos on site. I havent worked for 4 months now so I might need the slippers by the time we get back, this easy life makes you a bit soft. Might have a little triton itis setting in!

Are all the led lights to prevent the use of your generator?

Cheers,

Chris.

[VMN]

Lol. if I was working instead of traveling around the country I would have got some good slipper photos on site. I havent worked for 4 months now so I might need the slippers by the time we get back, this easy life makes you a bit soft. Might have a little triton itis setting in!

Are all the led lights to prevent the use of your generator?

Cheers,

Chris.

Chris

You are starting to make me jealous now. No wonder you are getting soft! Very jealous!

Yes, I added the LED lights in case I am camping beside you. Should be OK this cold weather camping together as I have also bought a HeatPal metho burning heater for slipper friendly conditions in winter, but in summer when it's hot, I reserve the right to run my air con!

If I can convince scotsr20 or somebody to come and lift my carport roof, the eventual plan is to kit it out for solar power. A guy in my street has just done this to an earlier model of this same van and has 2 x 180 watt panels on the roof. Incidently at 32 kgs, the solar panels weigh over 50% more than my genny... A few of the ideas shown here are borrowed from him. Ya gotta love a D4D Prado driver with a lathe and CNC mill in his back yard shed!

[ScotsMan]

looks great Rod.. question.. the folddown tap you have in the rear.. where did you get it from ?

Steve

Thay have them at carac on dandy/ frankston road as well steve

[VMN]

looks great Rod.. question.. the folddown tap you have in the rear.. where did you get it from ?

Steve

Thay have them at carac on dandy/ frankston road as well steve

Most caravan shops will be agents for Camec. They are a big distributor and actually Own Coromal who we bought our van from.

[felix]

rod
you're going to need a holiday after that lot! once you're all packed and ready to hit the road what do you reckon the gcm will be?

[VMN]

rod
you're going to need a holiday after that lot! once you're all packed and ready to hit the road what do you reckon the gcm will be?

Yes I know really lookin forward to it and will be hard to come back after just 3 weeks, but one good thing is my missus complains my hands are rough from all the manual work I've been doing and Dr Pitt is pleased about that as it is keeping feelings at bay

We have put so much effort into getting ready for this trip we have not even got an itinerary beyond the first day

As far as the GCM goes, it will be well below the GCM but I won't be going over a weighbridge. It will be up there once we add 290 litres of water, 153 litres of diesel, 25 litres of petrol and more than a few litres of alcohol!

The van is comparatively light and at its fully laden weight, it is still 500 kg under the Hilux's 2250 kg towing limit. I am trying to keep as much stuff in the van as I can. I think the GVM will be a more limiting factor. Given there is a GVM upgrade kit for the Hilux that increases carrying capacity by 520 kg, I am not too concerned as I know the chassis is up to the task and the springs are rated for the load.

One of the reasons we chose Coromal was the 500kg or so weight advantage that the aluminium frame has over a timber frame. Some of the so called offroad vans simply can't be pulled by a Hilux!

[Kat00m]

you lucky git ... will there be a ride report so we can find out what things u broke

[VMN]

you lucky git ... will there be a ride report so we can find out what things u broke

Not breaking nuthin! Will try and keep you guys updated.

I forgot to say I also got one of these Inmarsat satphone Pro's as well



From all accounts, they are superior to the Iridium phones and lot cheaper to run.. This one is prepaid and I have 100 minutes at $229 with a 2 year expiry.