My brother-in-law (BIL) bought himself a partially fitted out camper van. So why am I making a build thread about it? Because I'm spending nearly every spare minute of my time fixing it and making it safe. I've shed a lot of blood, sweat
and in this van.
Why "Rope Wagon"? Well, blame that sick astardbay Rathburn for the name. BIL is a climber and Rathburn thought it would be funny to own a van with the number plate "RP WGN". Rope wagon was born. BIL is Venezuelan and English is his second language so I had to do some detailed explaining. He was (eventually) amused.
Doesn't fit into my garage so all tasks need to be achieved in the cold:
Interior view from the side doors:
Shaky shot of the rear inside section:
Same view from the driver's cabin:
Cleaned up the under-bed construction disaster zone as best we could. Left the extra rails on the bed and also added a lug to hold the bed in place during transit and possible heavy braking:
Front inside section (door closed). There's a garbage bag hanging off a piece of ornamental drift wood. The wood is lumpy and the first thing I said was "someone is going to lose an eye...". Sure enough, I was the first to get a lug in the eye socket. Didn't lose an eye but stubbed my toe... We're still in the process of removing them as we catch ourselves on them. This one has survived:
Front inside section (door open):
Rear view:
Slow reclamation of the storage area under the bed:
Awkward photos of solar panels:
Details:It's a 2005 Chevy Express 3500 (high top), a former City of Calgary work horse and when it was decommissioned they cut their installed wires left, right and centre. It has not one, but TWO, yellow top Optima batteries. One of which was loosely/uselessly mounted under the frame with a completely corroded fuse. It also has lots of exterior lighting for those campsite rave parties, along with some flashing amber emergency LED's front and rear... which will likely freak people the uckfay out when they're lit up at night driving on the highway. The previous owner was a "dope" stoner and while he may have been skilled at finishing the interior with a joint, wood and a pin stapler he was completely uckfaying useless at any interior structural design and planning. PO also had a bike rack installed on a rear door and the resultant load flexing on the rear window shattered the glass so he repaired it with fibreglass sheets. motheruckfayer. We're still carefully sanding and polishing out the resin off the paint. Cosmetics are not our highest priority so this is now on hold... as is the rust repair here and there.
Don't let me catch any of you doing this to a car:
The thumping great V8 needed new plugs and wires and we replaced one O2 sensor and some IACV thingy to make all the check engine codes go away. Jackie Tong did a brake fluid flush so the pedal no longer sinks to the floor. We hooked up the second battery with a less corroded terminal and now she starts first kick.
Already installed by City of Calgary:- block heater, along with a short extension lead in the engine bay, connected to:
- AC cables from the engine bay to: they just uckfaying stop, cut under the carriage. We could have hurt ourselves pretty badly if we plugged in the block heater and these AC lines were arcing on the chassis.
- miles of unknown source/destination DC cables, also cut under the carriage.
- flood light on every side (Front, Rear, Left, Right)
- flashing amber lights on front and rear bumpers
- reverse alarm. We killed that bloody thing real quick.
- aluminum isolation panel between driver's cabin and rear cabin.
Already installed by PO:- a really uckfaying heavy bed with a sheet stapled down to no less than 3 sheets of 3/8" plywood and multiple slider rails. The bed is formed in two pieces so it becomes rather large bench seat when not in use. It spans across the rear of the vehicle and eats up abut 50% of the floor space. It's uckfaying ridiculous but it's going to be major re-work to modify it right now so we're going to push ahead with the current design.
- solar panels, solar controller, 6V deep cycle batteries and a 1000W inverter.
- AC powered LED TV
- AC powered Bose speakers
- AC powered ceiling lights
- a myriad of various core DC cables, some useful but most not.
- a couple of loose AC cables
- tonnes, okay, I'm exaggerating,
hundreds of kilograms of useless wood framing and paneling.
- a uckfaying hardwood floor.
- a mix of spray foam and fibre wool insulation. Poorly and randomly applied, leaving lots of gaps to fill and repair. He also installed a 1/8" sheet of ply on the aluminum panel between the driver's cabin and the rear cabin and couldn't work out why it was so cold so he bought a furnace which he never got around to installing.
- a permanent rear wall separating the cabin from the rear doors. The space under the bed was also permanently boxed out, leaving no room for random sized containers; being 2' high x 1' wide slots accessible only from the inside of the vehicle (these are 5' deep and thus impossible to reach the end if you're larger than 05LGT).
- batteries and solar controller were permanently framed inside the under-bed boxes with no room to inspect or refill electrolyte level, nor monitor charging/current levels. More on this later.
