Zel's Motoring Adventures...Volvo, Renault, Rover, Trabant, Invacar & A Sinclair C5 - Updated 13/11.

[Zelandeth]

You can get water free traps for sinks these days (basically just a large check valve) which is what I'll probably use when I upgrade the drainage system.

An issue the Jag has had as long as I've had it is a brake fluid leak from somewhere in the vicinity of the master cylinder. 

The whole cylinder has always been wet with fluid, and the deposits in the area suggest to me that it's been leaking like this for a very long time.

I had originally assumed this was down to the seals between the hose stubs and the cylinder body, right up to the point that I discovered that the hoses weren't snugly fitted.  I guess over the years the rubber has shrunk and compressed below the hose clips so it's no longer a tight fit.

I don't want to disturb the actual hose connections until I know that all the bleed valves are operable...and I'm slightly scared of the rear ones as if it breaks off I'm looking at having to pull the entire subframe to fix it.

Decided to try an experiment.  Got a couple of small table ties and fitted them as tightly as I could.  Result of sitting over ight and after about 1/2 an hour or driving:

That looks better to me!

Longer term the hoses and clips will obviously be changed but at least I'm no longer losing brake fluid in the meantime.  Glad the issue turned out to be a bit of hose rather than an issue with the cylinder itself, it's a lot cheaper to fix.

I discovered while doing this however that I do not have a working brake fluid level warning light.  The float is jammed in place at the top of its travel and one of the terminals has corroded sufficiently to part company with the lid.  I'll get a new one ordered.  If I wasn't the sort of person who actually does a regular check of fluid levels that could have been nasty.

[Zelandeth]

So this afternoon I set about progressing with the van.

Tidied up the tail light wiring in the gas locker.  Nothing fancy but better than the spaghetti that was in there before.

With a bit of fermangling I managed to make the gas line for the water heater reach.  Not the prettiest but of work but it passed the leak test just fine.

Attention then turned back to the worktop.

The location for the hob was pretty much fixed by the position of the framework under the worktop, so that was the obvious thing to start out with as far as cutting holes in my nice new surface.

By some miracle (and thanks to quadruple checking things!) I managed to get it fitted straight.

After a bit of thought we went for this layout as it gives a decent clear area at the rear for food preparation etc.

After generating approximately fifty tonnes more sawdust...

Nothing actually hooked up yet, but it is actually starting to look like a kitchen again.  Now it's time to actually get things reconnected...which I'm honestly looking forward to far more than the bloody carpentry!

Only bit of further cutting needed (well, aside from making a few holes for pipework) will be to make a blanking plate to sit in the sink to allow that to be used as extra space if needed.

I do have to admit to feeling quite satisfied with how things are looking now though... hopefully I won't foul it up before I'm finished.

[GBJ]

20 hours ago, Zelandeth said:

So this afternoon I set about progressing with the van.

Tidied up the tail light wiring in the gas locker.  Nothing fancy but better than the spaghetti that was in there before.

With a bit of fermangling I managed to make the gas line for the water heater reach.  Not the prettiest but of work but it passed the leak test just fine.

Attention then turned back to the worktop.

The location for the hob was pretty much fixed by the position of the framework under the worktop, so that was the obvious thing to start out with as far as cutting holes in my nice new surface.

By some miracle (and thanks to quadruple checking things!) I managed to get it fitted straight.

After a bit of thought we went for this layout as it gives a decent clear area at the rear for food preparation etc.

After generating approximately fifty tonnes more sawdust...

Nothing actually hooked up yet, but it is actually starting to look like a kitchen again.  Now it's time to actually get things reconnected...which I'm honestly looking forward to far more than the bloody carpentry!

Only bit of further cutting needed (well, aside from making a few holes for pipework) will be to make a blanking plate to sit in the sink to allow that to be used as extra space if needed.

I do have to admit to feeling quite satisfied with how things are looking now though... hopefully I won't foul it up before I'm finished.

Is the grill going to work with the hob orientated like that?

[Zelandeth]

28 minutes ago, GBJ said:

Is the grill going to work with the hob orientated like that?

Should be fine.  The burner is directly below the slot in the middle of the hob (the slot is it's flue effectively).  Just means you might need to orient your toast the opposite way to under the grill in the house.

In all honesty I'll be surprised if the grill ever gets used anyway.

 

[Zelandeth]

Today hasn't seen all that much actual physical work done, but quite a bit of thinking regarding the plumbing was done.

I'm going to be doing away with pretty much all the convoluted pipe in the greywater drainage system in the van in due course.  I'm not bothered about the one vent line or the outlet from the bathroom sink (which is a specialised caravan one), but the vast majority of it will be getting binned.  The bathroom sink I can get to the back of easily at least as the line it dumps into is accessible in the service compartment below the wardrobe, so I can add a trap in there easily enough.  The couple of inches of line between the sink and the trap I'm not going to lose any sleep over.  This is something I can look into though once I pull all the lines underneath the van off (the one from the bathroom side is more patch than original pipe!) and replace them with 40mm rigid plastic.  Just now though I'm not quite feeling like facing that challenge.  However as I've already got the kitchen in pieces it makes sense to me to pipe that up properly so I don't need to take it all apart again.

Firstly, we need to ditch this outlet on the sink.

To replace it with a standard household one. 

The overflow port on here is where the draining board will hook into.

The one challenge I did face was that I had very limited clearance to work with in the cupboard and I really didn't want to go cutting holes in the shelf to make room for the trap.  So I went scouring both the Toolstation and Screwfix catalogues to find the shallowest trap that anywhere locally has in stock.  I may replace this with a waterless one in the future as I'd rather have a water free solution to prevent possible freezing issues in the winter - not that a scoosh of antifreeze when I winterise the van wouldn't solve that issue - and the new heater controller that's on the way has a frost protection mode anyway.

This was the arrangement we ended up with.

You know sometimes that you measure everything down the nanometre and it still ends up looking like you never gave anything a moment's thought?  Well sometimes it works the other way too...when what you ended up with completely at random ends up fitting absolutely perfectly.

The seal and thread on the base of the trap didn't exactly inspire confidence, so I gave it a good blob of assembly goop before putting it in place.

The pipework runs down to the back then drops down where the old drain "downpipe" used to be.

At this point I had a challenge however in that I needed to then hook the 40mm rigid pipe up to the existing convoluted line under the van.  Cue a bit of headscratching and digging through my box of random "stuff" to see what I could come up with.

This was the result:

One boiler condensate drain attachment point with the compression fitting replaced with a washing machine attachment barb.  It won't flow fantastically well...but it will be getting hacked off and replaced with an elbow not all that far down the line when I replace the underfloor lines.  It just needs to drain the odd small sink in the interim.  It will do fine I reckon.  The compression fitting is just an inline coupler with a push fit end cap blocking it off.  That will disappear entirely once the elbow is fitted...In the meantime it can be a sediment trap I guess...

Should get this all together tomorrow and can then get the sink and drainer bolted in.

[paulplom]

None of the caravans I've had ever had traps fitted. I'm not sure they're needed if the waste doesn't terminate in a drain or soil stack.

Top work btw.

[Zelandeth]

9 hours ago, paulplom said:

None of the caravans I've had ever had traps fitted. I'm not sure they're needed if the waste doesn't terminate in a drain or soil stack.

Top work btw.

Thanks.  To be honest this sort of thing I enjoy far more than the carpentry.  The traps are probably overkill given the application, but for the sake of less than a tenner's worth of parts it seemed daft not to add them when upgrading the system.

Especially given that if water can flow to the tank more freely, it stands to reason that whiffy air could flow back from the 30 year old grey water holding tank too.  I've not had issues with smelly drains in this van, but have come across that problem in others.

[paulplom]

Ah right. With caravans there's usually an air gap before it goes into the waste carrier. Probably why you don't need one.

Sent from my SM-G975F using Tapatalk

[Zelandeth]

So up until today, the arrowed line in the image below was the main drainage line that the kitchen sink and drainer dumped into.

That bit of pipe is no more...This is now the main waste line heading out of the van from the kitchen.

Doesn't that look better!

This is the contraption just below the floor to hook it up to the existing line that runs forward to the grey water holding tank (which sits just in front of the living area door step).

The grey pipe with the white tip on it at about 8 o'clock is the original waste line from the kitchen which has now been removed.  The larger grey line running from about 10 o'clock to 3 is the fill line for the fresh water tank which you can just see the end of to the right of the image.

The drainage side has now been hooked up inside and secured with a bracket in the cupboard.

(Yes I fouled up the position of the outlet the first time around).

When I came to fit the taps I discovered that even though it was way thinner than the one I had removed, the worktop was still too thick...so I had to do a bit of modification.

Sorted.

I did consider completely re-running the lines for the taps, but instead decided to just pick up from where the sink used to be.

The last couple of inches of the feed to the cold tap has been run in red hose...I quite simply needed a last couple of inches of hose and I didn't have any more blue to hand.

It almost looks like a sink again.

I did wonder how well things would flow given my Frankenstein's Monster of a hookup to the original drainage system.

It used to take a good few minutes to drain this sink.

That's an improvement.  That low profile trap is never exactly going to allow mammoth flow rates anyway, but it's certainly decent enough.  It was honestly annoying before - if you were rinsing your hands off in the sink it would actually start filling up.

This is quite a big milestone.  Next steps are to get everything actually attached to the worktop, then just tidying things up really.  Few gaps to fill around some edges in the cupboards, seal around the pipework (including patching up my foul-up from earlier with the drain outlet positioning), a couple of brackets to install, some trim to add, and a few screw heads to trim off etc...then we can start tidying up the godawful mess I've made!

[Zelandeth]

Time to start actually putting things back together.

I discovered a bit of a problem when I came to attach the draining board and the sink.

These originally used a very specific type of fastener...Which vanished somewhere after the kitchen was pulled apart.  I couldn't find a replacement locally and I wasn't prepared to wait for something to arrive from eBay.

Hmm...We can work around this.

*snip*

*Rummage in box of fasteners*

There we go.

Note the thick rubber gasket around the edge as well to stop any spilled water getting under the edges.  There's an O-ring under the tap as well though it's not visible once it's fitted.

There we go!  Both the sink and the draining board are now properly fitted.

Sadly I did chip a bit of enamel of the draining board because I over-estimated how tightly to do the fasteners up.  My mistake - though at least it was already chipped in one corner so I don't feel quite so bad!  A little paint touch up will sort it.

Annoyingly there's a "but" as well.  That cheap and nasty low profile sink trap...it is indeed cheap and nasty, and is a complete piece of rubbish.  It's utterly useless, the whole outlet section is held on by two little plastic pegs, one of which has snapped.

Back to Toolstation tomorrow for something more suitable.  We'll stick a straight pipe under the sink and add an in line waterless trap in the drop pipe in the gas locker - Probably this one: Linky.  It's what I was originally planning to do anyway, then I tried to save a few quid...Should have gone with my original plan! 

[Zelandeth]

Having discovered that the sink trap I had bought was as much use as a chocolate teapot I did what I should have done in the first place and grabbed one of these.

This is a "water free" sink trap.  In case you wondered what's inside one, this is the answer.

The blue section is a very flexible material which feels like silicone to me.

While it required a bit of rearrangement of the pipework this really is what I should have done originally.

Before:

The fitting wedged under the trap is the only thing stopping the outlet section falling off in the above photo.

After:

Yes, I utterly fouled up cutting the new hole for it vertically.  That's what I get for rushing to get finished before dinner.  I knew pretty much the moment I started that this was going to fight me, it just felt like one of "those" jobs.

Obviously this also required changes to the main waste line as the kitchen outlet was in a different spot.  The less said about this the better probably!

Not proud of it but sometimes that's just how it goes.

Patching up the divider won't be too difficult.

Really irritatingly though I apparently managed to nick the line from the draining board while cutting the new hole in the cupboard wall, so I need to replace that now as it's got a hole in.

EDIT: Draining board hose has been replaced - with the original main drain hose. 

Only took ten minutes, but was annoying to make work for myself!

[Angrydicky]

Nice work on the motorhome, looking very good inside.

[Zelandeth]

3 hours ago, Angrydicky said:

Nice work on the motorhome, looking very good inside.

Hopefully it will start looking better tomorrow when I actually get some of the trim fitted and tidy up...at least the bloody plumbing is finished!

I've given up on waiting for the previous supplier to reopen or respond to any attempts at communication regarding the parts for the Xantia... they've had plenty of time to at least say "sorry for the delay" so they can fight it out with PayPal. 

Will get the bits I need ordered from somewhere else and hopefully get this poor thing sorted.

Feeling exceedingly guilty for the state of the poor thing.

[Zelandeth]

Finally we've got to a point where all the heavy construction in the kitchen is done.

Few cosmetic things that still need to be done, like fitting edging.

Which will tidy up a few of the gaps and rough edges like this.  It's just sitting here at the moment as I'll need to get some sealant to go behind it - and more edging as I currently only have one strip.

You get the idea though.  It will cover the gap left by the drop in worktop height as well.

Starting to look halfway decent I think.

I did however have a little bit of a mess to tidy up.

Much better.  Still a whole pile of stuff that needs to be moved back into the garage, but we're getting there.

Still to do:

[] Patch up dividing wall between the gas locker and under sink cupboard.

[] Dremel the ends off a few screws.

[] I'd like to tidy up the drain pipework in the gas locker.  I reckon I can get shot of that triple elbow nonsense with two angled connectors which should flow better.

[] Apply edging at back of units.

[] Make a door for the cupboard under the oven (may make it a drawer actually as it's so low down).

[] Add proper latches to all the cupboard doors.

[] Paint inside the cupboards.

[] Cap off worktop retaining screws.

[] Wire up in cupboard lighting (waiting on arrival of parts).

[] Touch in paint on the draining board.

[] Give the sink a really good scrubbing to see if I can remove any of the stains in the bowl.

[] Fit some surface dressing on the cabinet faces/frame.

[] After a bit of actual testing of the kitchen we'll make a decision on whether to trim the edge of the worktop back at all.  Once that's made I'll trim a radius on the front corner and apply the edging trim on there.

As any van owner will tell you there's a rule that you're never allowed to finish one job without finding another.  While I was tidying up today I got dripped on.

This roof light has already been noted as being worse for wear because several of the screws look to have been overtightened and it's cracked the frame as a result.

It was absolutely hammering it down today so if we were going to have water getting in at any time it would have been doing so today.  Conveniently it's dripping off the frame in very specific locations so a temporary solution has been deployed.  I'll need to move "buy and fit new roof lights" up the priority list a bit it looks like.

Despite the appearance of a leak I feel quite positive about what we've got done today.

[mat_the_cat]

If I end up not fitting the newish roof light which I've removed from the Airstream today, you are welcome to it. I'm 50/50 at the moment at the thought of cutting a hole in the roof of the LT!

In other news, YouTube appears to know that I spend too much time listening to your XJ-S videos - recommended for me (and I would suggest, anyone with ears):

 

[paulplom]

https://www.screwfix.com/p/mcalpine-flexcon5-flexible-waste-pipe-fitting-white-32-x-210mm/5146v

This'll sort your waste pipe.

[Zelandeth]

On 6/8/2020 at 7:12 AM, paulplom said:

https://www.screwfix.com/p/mcalpine-flexcon5-flexible-waste-pipe-fitting-white-32-x-210mm/5146v

This'll sort your waste pipe.

I may well go down that road, just feels kind of like cheating given getting rid of flexible lines was one of my main targets!  I know it's not the same thing, but it's the principle of the thing!  I'll get it sorted one way or another...it's a relatively low priority right now as what's there works...it just isn't ideal.

 

Yesterday I had a few things turn up in the post.

In here we have:

[] 1/4" EPDM hose to replace the leaky brake fluid reservoir to master cylinder lines on the Jag.

[] Afterburner Heater Control kit for the van.

[] A Series 1 Ford Ka dash clock just because I've always liked the design and I stumbled across one on eBay for £0.99 and fancy sticking one in a nice little case to put on my desk.

 

Our first task was to do the brake feed line on the Jag as it seemed a pretty simple job.

This is the overcomplicated mess that was on the Jag when I started out.

Small stubs of hose coming off the reservoir (I don't imagine the orange hoses are original), which then feed onto steel lines, before jumping to fabric braided hoses (which do look original) which connect on to the stubs on the master cylinder itself.

Looking closer the hose ends being the source of the leak was evidenced by the fact there was brake fluid running down the cable ties which I'd used to help stem the leaks a few days ago.

My intention was to do away with the metal lines entirely here...There are eight potential points of failure here rather than four.  So this lot came out.

With that destined for the bin (figuratively speaking...those metal lines will be cleaned up and definitely stuffed into the "box of potentially useful things" for future use), this is what replaced it.

I've sleeved the one where it's just sitting on the air cleaner housing since the photo was taken,  I don't think it's likely to be a problem, but best to be sure.

Why Jaguar didn't just do this originally rather than messing about with those metal lines I've no idea.  So far "because Jaguar" is the best I've got!  While it's obviously not, I think this looks a lot more "stock" than it did.

Interestingly given that this didn't involve actually interfering with the brake system (I had the pedal held down while the hoses were changed), suddenly the car brakes a lot more evenly!  It's always had quite a pull to the left on braking since I picked it up...but now it does it far less!  So yeah...a full system bleed through definitely needs to happen sooner rather than later.

The Afterburner, in case you haven't heard of it is a replacement for the ones that these Chinese diesel heaters ship with.  While the heaters themselves aren't actually bad the controllers are...sub par.  This came to the attention of an engineer over in Australia who decided that this was a ridiculous situation, and took it upon himself to "build a better mousetrap" as it were.  He reverse-engineered the communication protocol used by the heater and the stock controller and basically built a better one.  In doing so (the design has been refined over a few years) has allowed in addition to far better basic control of the heater, addition of a far richer feature set including wi-fi connectivity, timers, frost protection modes, several GPIO channels which you can access, a humidistat, and a proper high quality temperature monitoring head.

The details can be found over on the designer/maker's page here.

Looking at the back of the PCB it's immediately obvious that an engineer is behind this thing...Immediately obvious and labelled programming/debugging headers and a plethora of status lights blinking away at you.

When you initially hook it up you need to attach it along with the original controller (there's a socket on the harness for that purpose) to download the unit specific fuel tuning data from the original controllers.  This is clearly documented in the instructions that came with the unit and took all of about 30 seconds.  After this is done and the power is turned off the original controller can be unplugged and removed.  I gave the system a good test with the controller just lashed up to make sure everything was behaving, got the network set up etc.

In these days where more and more devices hide away as much data from the end user as possible the data this little screen is willing to show you with one button press is refreshing...and has that look of "yeah, an engineer has put this together."

Quite a bit of data here...so here's the run down.

Doing this left-to-right unless otherwise stated.

Top row: Wi-Fi signal strength (it also shows additional network status messages there when relevant).  Current time.  System voltage & battery charge state.

Middle: Current running mode.

Bottom row: Current room temperature.  Target room temperature (also shown by the arrow on the thermometer graphic on the left).  Fan speed.  Fuel pump rate in Hz.  Fuel used since last reset.  Current burner case temperature.

In recognition of the fact that everyone doesn't want to see all of this all the time, the home screen can be set to show either the current room temperature or the current time as shown below.

In addition to the data which the main system display can show in person...having this hooked up to your Wi-Fi network means that there's the ability to get data out of it that way.  There is actually a web server running on there which you can access from anywhere on your network.

This gives you the ability to turn the heater on/off, change modes, adjust the thermostat etc remotely...which is pretty cool.  You can access all the stuff from the GPIO ports as well, so the ability exists to turn things on and off in the van remotely as well if hooked up to this.

The Afterburner runs an access point as well, so if you're away from home you can still hook up to it with your phone etc to get into this interface - probably the most useful item there is the priming option as that's a bit buried in the menus on the actual unit, and is something that you might want to access while standing on your head wherever the heater itself is buried in your van.  In mine it's quite a ways from the controller.

Quite cool.

Having it working hanging out of the spot where I'd had the original controller was one thing...however I wanted to actually get it neatly integrated, ideally where the original heater control for the gas fired heater was.  That looked like this by the way, why I chose the black and red enclosure for the new one as a nod to originality.

Getting this in was always going to be a bit of a pig of a job. 

I need to get the cable from the hole down in the locker under the bed to the hole in the wall behind the driver's head.

This sadly wasn't as simple as dropping something in there and fishing it out.  Firstly the plug I needed to get through was bigger than the holes, so they were always going to need to be enlarged a bit...secondly it had to come up from the bottom as the other end is tethered to the heater body.

This was made far more difficult I discovered because there is hollow fibre insulation material in the wall so even if you drop something in there it won't fall all the way down.  I was able to with a bit of swearing and attaching a weight to the end of a bit of wire to get it about 3/4 of the way down but that was the best I could do.  So I had to cut an access hole to get my hand in there.

You can see here the red wire going in the top and out the bottom - I wedged a bit of pipe I found laying around in the locker on there as a weight.

I wasn't too bothered about this...it's in the locker so a functional cover doesn't need to be too pretty.  Plus this is where I'll have a junction box fitted to break out the GPIO connections in the future anyway.

I was then able to hook the heater loom onto this wire and drag it back up through the wall cavity (after enlarging the hole very slightly so it will fit).

Bingo!

Then it was a simple matter of attaching the new controller to the wall.  Oh...and figuring out where to put the room thermostat.  I had a brainwave at this point, remembering that when I upgraded the thermostats in the house to wireless programmable ones I kept hold of the housings that the sensor heads used to live in.  Being made to house a temperature probe they would obviously be designed to handle airflow correctly etc...and being from 1981 when our house was built, would look at home in the van.

Temperature probe fitted nicely across it lengthways.

With the cover refitted I think this looks absolutely like it could be original to the van.

The base could do with a splash of black paint at some point, but I'll worry about that at some point down the line.  It looks smart enough I think.  Especially from a distance I think that I've achieved the sort of "it could be stock" look I was aiming for.

One of the GPIO inputs I will be wiring to a switch in the cab as a simple override to turn the heater on, the other I will probably hook up to a float switch as a low fuel cut off.  Not major features, but "nice to haves" I'll look to add down the road.

I've probably waffled on about the Afterburner more than enough here already, but if you've got and questions about it please feel free to ask.  I think this will be a really nice addition to the van.

 

Last little project for the evening was to track down the connector wiring for that Ford clock.  Didn't take long to find, so I'll look at getting a case made up for that somewhere down the road.  For now...here's an example of one of the worst examples of backlighting of instrumentation in a modern car.

Trying to read this while driving at night is like trying to do a crossword while riding a unicycle.  I still like it though, and look forward to it living on my desk.  The dim backlighting there will work well as it won't be annoying at night.

Lordy that turned into a bit of a long post!

[Zelandeth]

Now I've got the clutch assembly here it's time to start looking into getting the A/C working on the Jag.

The condenser looks like hell so I wasn't expecting there to be anything in the system... there's not much sure enough, but there was enough in there to move the needle.  Better than I was expecting.

Sticking a bit of gas in there (just nitrogen, I'll get the system properly pulled down and recharged once I know it's leak tight), has allowed me to do a bit of checking.  The condenser hasn't shown any visible signs of leakage surprisingly.  Though it's hard to get at all of it with the leak spray.

Remember those jubilee clipped joints which I said made my skin crawl and had no place on any refrigeration system anywhere (aside from a condensate drain)?

Bubbly, bubbly...so yep, will need to get that line replaced before we try charging it.

I really would like this system as leak tight as possible before we recommission it given there's no low pressure switch!

[Zelandeth]

Nothing major done on the van today other than tidying up.  I've now removed all of the tools and nonsense from the construction work so it's actually in a usable state again.

The eagle eyed of you might notice a black thing at the far right of the worktop.  That's the switch which will control the lighting in the cupboards once I've fitted it.  This was scavenged from a dead minibus years ago.

Knew there was a reason it was staying in the parts stash...see it's finally got a purpose for which the legend on the switch makes perfect sense!  Plus being illuminated means we're slightly less likely to leave it turned on by accident.  The bus it came out of was on a G plate too, so it's absolutely period correct at least.

While I was on a roll with cleaning today I also set about clearing the upper kitchen locker, which has been full of random tools and bits of general vehicle maintenance nonsense since about two or three days after I got the van.  This is I think only the second time I've actually seen the back of it!

There must have been the best part of about 20kg of assorted detritus in there...That can't have been helping the amount of rattles in the cabin!  Following on from this I then went to have a rummage through all the lockers, cubby holes etc and pulled another five bags worth of miscellaneous junk out of the van.  Given we've only got 78bhp to play with, lugging around unnecessary weight isn't something we want to be doing...plus getting a camper into a state where driving around doesn't sound like you're in a tumble drier full of spoons falling down a flight of stairs is enough of a challenge without having unnecessary nonsense floating around in drawers, lockers etc.  One thing I will be doing now most things are empty I'm going to be putting non slip rubber matting down in all the drawers etc to help keep things still and further reduce the potential for things making a racket.

[Zelandeth]

Very boring but very important thing refitted to the kitchen in the van.

Hopefully it will never be needed, but glad to have it there (and well clear of the cooker).

I realised something yesterday, and that was I had actually already tried to replace the condenser hose on the Jag...however this happened when I actually tried to order the replacement.

Digging around in the evening on the internet revealed that there don't seem to be any actually available outside the USA (other than one stratospherically expensive one in Germany).  Hmm.

Okay, we'll pull the pipe off and take it around to Pirtek and see what they can do with it.  Couple of fittings and a properly crimped hose and we should be sorted.  I'll bet it will be cheaper than getting one shipped over from the US.

[Zelandeth]

A single mains socket was probably sufficient for the needs of the camper van owner in 1990 when they would have had maybe a kettle, hairdrier and possibly if they were fancy a portable telly.  In 2020 however not so much.  Thinking about it though, we don't actually have much call for direct access to actual mains electricity these days...I think the only thing which is routinely plugged into the socket in there is the vacuum cleaner.  99% of our things are battery powered these days, and nearly all of them at least in our case charge from a USB socket these days.

The single socket was therefore swapped out for one with an inbuilt USB charger.

The round pin socket is a 12V DC outlet.  The only thing I currently use it for is to hook up the submersible transfer pump for shifting water from the Aquaroll to the onboard tank.  I'm not likely to even need this much longer as my intention is to fit a 12V socket outside for that purpose to save me having to dangle leads out the window.  Once that's done I will probably replace this with a 12V based USB charger solution, assuming I can find something that will fit into a standard faceplate.  The mains meters aren't really necessary, but are simply there to act as a visual indicator that the mains hookup is connected and live.  I do need to tweak the position of the ammeter though, it's a hair too low.

As I had a hole in the front of the locker where the original controller for the new heater had been so this made sense as a place to install a second mains socket.  That gives is four USB sockets in relatively close proximity of the bed, that should be sufficient to keep everyone's phones and assorted tech charged hopefully.

That red switch to the right of the socket is the master switch for the heater.

While I had the locker open it seemed a good time to attack a few of the other tasks I'd been putting off sorting in there.

A lot of these matters surrounded the heater.

Particularly I had been wanting to add a bit more of a safety margin in the "Making sure it can't set fire to stuff" department for a while...but especially now that the new controller is fitted, which essentially has command authority to start the heater up under certain circumstances now irrespective of whether the van is occupied or not.

When I originally installed it, I cut the hole in the floor for the air intake and exhaust lines using the nice little template in the instruction manual.

At a glance this might seem fine enough...but it's very easy to forget how powerful this thing is.  5kW is a lot.

Putting that into perspective, the most powerful electric heater that you can plug into a domestic electrical socket is 3kW.  So this thing kicks out some serious heat - a significant portion of that being that it's combustion based goes straight out the exhaust.  So it gets toasty.  Toasty enough to have blued the metal over the entire length of the exhaust.  I'd *really* rather have more than 1/2" clearance between that and my floor thank you very much.

That teeny tiny hole was made rather larger to get the floor further away from the exhaust.

Then some heat reflective tape was applied around it (this stuff has adhesive sufficiently strong to remove your fingerprints), wrapping well around onto the underside of the floor on all sides - there are three or four layers here.

I can obviously go back and trim some of the excess later.

While I had the heater free of the floor it seemed a good opportunity to replace the worryingly squidgy original fuel line to the burner with a nice bit of Nautilus Fuel Master, I trust that a couple of inches away from a burner exhaust far more than something that came in a box from China that has nothing by way or markings on it.

It's clear that the exhaust hasn't been fully sealed, so I made sure to put a smear of sealant on there before it was reattached.

In the cabin I wanted to make an alteration to the outlet.  Previously I had just hooked it in to the lower one from the original heater because it happened to line up nicely.  This wasn't ideal however as it results in the lower panel of the door getting very warm, but the rest of the van taking a good deal longer to warm up than it needs to.  Being completely flush with the front of the locker made it far easier than I'd like to block the outlet completely too.  So an adjustable outlet was fitted into the upper cutout instead.

The lower one serves as a return duct, though obviously it's not exclusive as the locker is far from airtight.  I will add a grill or screen to it at some point just for aesthetics.

I do want to add some additional ductwork at some point though.  Rather than the one outlet we currently have I'd like to branch three lines off.  One venting out the rear of this locker to heat the kitchen area, likewise at the front towards the cab (or possibly an adjustable one like above) and I'd like to tap off a small line to provide a little background heat into the bathroom.  I don't need it to be as well heated as the rest of the van, but currently it's like walking into a freezer in there at night.  It's a job for the future, but would definitely make things more comfortable.  Would probably make the heater a bit quieter too.  Decent safety feature too as you'd have to be trying pretty hard to block off four outlets at the same time.

With the heater back in place I started doing something I should have months ago, and generally tidied things up a bit.  It's always going to be a bit of a rat's nest down here with all the wiring, but I can at least try to tidy it up!  It's still a work in progress as I ran out of time, but we're getting there.

The conduit will obviously be attached to the side of the locker once I'm finished.  There will likely be one along the other side too as there are quite a few random wires wandering along that way.  Still need to remove the remains of the old gas line for the old heater as well.

That carpeted box all the mains stuff is sitting on I'd really like to get rid of.  It just makes accessing anything incredibly awkward.  I may well just pick up a small consumer unit like the ones for sheds or garages and redo that whole lot from scratch at some point as this is just a mess.  Especially bearing in mind I've vague plans to install solar on this van at some point in which case I'll definitely be wanting to bring some sanity to this spaghetti.  The DC stuff is a mess too, there's a lot of nonsense like red wires being used for multiple purposes (as you can see on the battery charger output at about 1 o'clock in the above photo) that I inherited with the van.  I'm guessing that's a former keeper to blame rather than the factory...though with hand built vehicles you sometimes just never know...

Before anyone says the supply line to the front socket is too small, it will be fine.  It's rated for 13A, and the two sockets are both attached to a single 7.5A RCD, so it will never be stretched.  I'd be massively surprised if anything ever gets plugged into the mains socket up front anyway!

I would really like to install a guard of some sort to ensure that there's no way that the air intake on the heater body could be accidentally blocked.  I will probably install a partition to separate the utility area at the rear from the general luggage locker at the front.  That should do a pretty good job of keeping things away from where they shouldn't be.  Though I will need to include some means to still stow the supports for the awning (the metal things to the left in the above image) as they do extend a fair ways back. 

It was at this point we ran into a slight snag which took me a couple of hours to get to the bottom of.

Having changed the fuel line I needed to re-prime it.  Didn't figure it would need much though given it was only the 10" or so between the fuel pump and the burner.  Plan was to just run the pump in priming mode for 10 seconds or so.  Given the control panel is a bit awkward to get at when the locker is open like this I decided to use the web interface to do this.  Which would have been fine if my phone hadn't decided to drop my wifi connection the millisecond that I turned the pump priming mode on.  I then spent a good minute fighting with it before realising that I could just turn the master switch off.

I was expecting this to result in some pretty impressive white smoke on startup then as there would obviously be quite a bit of unburned fuel having been dumped into the burner.  It should clear after running for a bit though.

Except it didn't.  In fact it got worse, and started to become denser and darker.  That doesn't look right.

...and it was lingering impressively.

Something clearly wasn't right. 

Thanks to the additional data visible on the Afterburner display it was obvious in addition to the smoke that it was struggling to make it up to full running temperature.  The heat exchanger usually stabilises at full power around 220C, however it was struggling to get over 120C, despite blanketing half of our neighbourhood in smoke and the fuel pump running at the maximum rate of 5.0Hz.

After a certain amount of head scratching, and messing around swapping controllers back over in case it was a problem with the fuelling map etc, the fault was found.

You remember how I put some sealant on the exhaust?  Yeah...a bit of it had managed to ooze into the pipe itself, where it had then puffed up when the pipe heated up and blocked a good 2/3rds of the pipe.  So we were getting poor airflow due to a choked exhaust.

Once the system was started up with this removed and it started to get actually up to temperature the amount of soot that got blasted out the exhaust was truly impressive.  There were honestly bit chunks of it.  Not quite the fireworks you sometimes see from DPF equipped cars doing the first forced regen after months of town driving, but still impressive enough.

It did smoke for quite a while too, though given it spent probably an hour running with a very restricted exhaust that didn't really surprise me.  It did clear up though after 20 minutes or so, and the heat exchanger temperature soon stabilised at its normal level. 

Stupid mistake on my part using too much exhaust sealant!  Entirely self inflicted.

I set the temperature control to max and just left it running for a full hour at full throttle to make sure everything was properly cleaned out.  This also meant I was able to check and confirm that the floor around the cutout under the van is no longer getting worryingly hot.  The fixing plate still gets quite warm, so it does get pretty toasty, but no longer *alarmingly* hot!  Given it only takes about 20 minutes to get the cabin from 0C up to a comfortable temperature anyway it's pretty unlikely to be left running flat out for all that long anyway so this was a pretty good test from that perspective.

Edited June 13, 2020 by Zelandeth
typo

[Zelandeth]

Finally got the money refunded for the parts I ordered for the Xantia back in late February.  Replacement exhaust system has been ordered.

Of course I've lost the note of which bushes I need for the control arm now so will need to track that down later.  Don't suppose anyone knows off the top of their head do they?  Will be a full set of bushes for the nearside front lower control arm.  Sadly I can't easily just buy the arm (which would definitely work out cheaper given the labour involved in swapping bushes) because the Activa has a threaded section to attach to the roll control system which isn't machined on standard Xantia arms.  It's *there* so can be modified to fit, but that's not something my garage is willing to take on...so new set of bushes it is.

 

Once she's got a fresh ticket on we'll get the corner spheres changed, an LHM change done, the rear discs and pads done (already in the boot), see if we can figure out a way to sort the A/C without removing 75% of the engine, plus a couple of other little things I've currently forgotten.  That's what the whiteboard in the garage is for!

Then I can marvel at how frugal 23MPG feels after using the Jag so much lately!

We'll have to see how I feel at the time, but I *may* be starting to consider moving her on if the right circumstances arrived.  I still have a hankering to try an early Jeep Cherokee XJ and they're only getting more expensive.  Plus every time I see one I have a major pang of *WANT* every time I see a GSA.  It's a looooooong time since I last even sat in one though, so I'd need a decent test drive before making a decision there.

I'd not be advertising the car as such most likely, just making sure it was known that a deal might be on the table.  I know that in monetary terms a 1996 Activa with major sunburn isn't ever going to be worth a huge amount no matter how well it drives, which is why it's far more likely to swap hands on here as I know it would be far less likely to wind up run into the ground as a cheap banger by most folks who might fancy it.

Just thinking out loud really... I've been here before!  We'll see.  If we could get the air con sorted I reckon that would probably help me fall back in love with the car a bit, last summer was bloody horrible...hot weather, black leather, less than stellar airflow and dead air conditioning = a very sad Zel.

[Zelandeth]

Nothing much to say really about today's work other than "That's a lot of work for something nobody will ever see!"

Yesterday:

Today:

Didn't get a before shot of the other end but it looks like this now.

I also did a bit of bodge undoing.  For some reason I cannot for the life of me figure out, the slide out section of the bed had been cut in two.  This meant that it was near impossible to deploy or stow it because the two sections would immediately get out of line with each other and wedge the whole lot in place.  The rear section only sat in a runner at the one end too.  The upshot of this was that when the locker was open, the rear section would random decide to detach itself and drop.  Usually on my head.  Aside from one occasion when it managed to land on my right pinkie.  That was reassembled into one piece.  It is now far less likely to fall on me and can actually be stowed and deployed by one person without major swearing.

Well it would have been if the second of the three hinges hadn't then snapped.  Though not really surprising given these were what passed for hinges.

Three of these were replaced with five actual metal hinges.

This was when I realised that a lot of the internal support structure under there wasn't actually attached to anything, so what are essentially some legs for the bed.  You can just about see those in the photos above.

The mains wiring needs a complete do-over at some point, though that's a job for another day.

 

[Zelandeth]

The heater fuel pump wiring was bugging me.

Better,  I don't want to cut it down in case I do wind up moving the pump at a future date as I've not discounted the idea of moving it outside the cabin in the future yet.  So it's just been tidily bundled up for now.

Probably going to leave the van alone for a little while after today and turn my attention back to other things.  Main immediate task will be getting the Invacar hub pulled so I can finally get a replacement Fiat one ordered and machined to suit.  That should get the car back on the road with a bit of luck.  Likewise it looks like I'll have bits on the way to get the Xantia through an MOT shortly.

One last bit of kit I want to get installed in the van is this.

It's a good bit older than the van, but just happens to be floating around in the garage.  I can't really see a situation where we're likely to need mains voltage power while off-grid, but it's one of those things where should that wacky situation arise one day I get the impression that it's something that you could be very glad to have on board.  I will probably wire this up so that it's in the same circuit as the DC feed to the fridge, so will be powered from the vehicle battery only when the engine is running and the charging circuit is active.  As it isn't really intended to be for general use it will get its own socket probably tucked away around the front of the locker next to an isolator switch (there are no controls at all on the unit) rather than trying to hook it up to the main sockets and have to mess around with changeover switches and suchlike.  I will install a prominent indicator light to alert me that it's on as well - not that it should really be possible to miss it given the racket that it makes!

Not wired up just now, but I have bolted it in place in the corner of the locker.

For now though I've put that whole area back together.

I've done a bit of fiddling around in the config options for the Afterburner and found I could set it so that it defaults to the detailed view when the heater is powered up and the thermostat view when it's off before the display blanks after about ten minutes.

The mains socket I removed is this Clipsal unit.

I believe these were quite commonly used in campers and caravans from around this era.  If anyone wants this one for their van so they have an extra which matches their existing sockets let me know.  Happy to pass it on to someone who can make good use of it.  The little blanking plugs for the screw holes are still present and are stored inside the body at the moment.

Last thing I wanted to do for the day was to make a bit of a tweak to the lighting over the bed.  I had replaced the original 15W incandescent lamps in there with LED ones a little while ago simply to reduce the DC load and the amount of heat thrown into the fittings.  However they're quite a cold white which isn't exactly pleasant.  Plus given that we're generally using these only when reading in bed or watching a movie they were honestly too bright.  I'd come up with a bit of a plan for this based on some lamps I had rolling around in the random parts box.  These are also LED based, but are amber (they're meant to be indicator replacements).  As they're phosphor based amber LEDs the colour is actually really quite pleasant, quite reminiscent of the colour of low pressure sodium lighting.

This hopefully conveys how warm it looks.  We'll give it a try and see how it works for us.  I suspect I'll end up switching to some very warm white ones and a dimmer system, but this is a bit more pleasant for now I reckon.

I think this is likely to be the last real work that is done on this, certainly to the interior for a bit.  I do have a few other jobs in mind for the near future, but they are mostly exterior based (I want to replace a good portion of the weatherproofing sealant for one thing...which I'm really not looking forward to as it's a horrible job!), so we'll be moving on to other things for a bit.  Probably be some Invacar work next I think.

[LightBulbFun]

been enjoying the van fettling very much

but also happy to hear others on the fleet will be getting some TLC soon as well, I look forward to seeing the Xantia back on the road soon  

21 minutes ago, Zelandeth said:

Main immediate task will be getting the Invacar hub pulled so I can finally get a replacement Fiat one ordered and machined to suit.

does this mean you managed to source a suitably priced/available etc fiat hub? I have been wondering what was happening with TPAs situation, will you be using the studs from the front hub off ebay, or are you moving to another bolt/stud setup? (and will you be doing the other side too or are just going to leave that be for now?)

21 minutes ago, Zelandeth said:

The mains socket I removed is this Clipsal unit.

reminds me of when I was doing some research to try and date the MK socket on the back of Stuart's Harding 

and I ran into some of your posts on another forum (the vintage radio forum) in doing so, small world eh!  

 

21 minutes ago, Zelandeth said:

Probably be some Invacar work next I think.

yay!  

[Zelandeth]

17 minutes ago, LightBulbFun said:

...does this mean you managed to source a suitably priced/available etc fiat hub? I have been wondering what was happening with TPAs situation, will you be using the studs from the front hub off ebay, or are you moving to another bolt/stud setup? (and will you be doing the other side too or are just going to leave that be for now?)...

The basic Fiat 500 hubs are quite readily available so that's not a huge problem.  I just need to confirm which version is fitted before I can get that ordered.  There are two types and they're identical aside from the pitch of the splines on the drive coupling, so I'll need to physically remove it from the car before I can confirm that.  Very likely to be the fine version as I believe the coarse one was only used on the 500D...but I've learned by now never to assume things where Invacar parts choices are concerned!

Given that we need to get the hubs machined anyway, we will be switching to something readily available off the shelf.  Whether it will be splined Mini style studs or wheel bolts (whether 1/4" or M12) I'll leave up to whoever is doing the machining work...it makes very little difference to me so I'm happy to follow their best judgement.

I'll be giving the studs on the other side (I've got a full set of new wheel nuts to go on around the car) a very close examination in the near future, though if they're looking okay I will probably leave things alone in the short term.  I'd really like to get the car back on the road!  I will by then however have a spare hub on hand, so can get that sorted out at my leisure effectively so can just "bolt it on" in the future should I need to.

The new front hub assembly will be getting left alone.  There's very little chance of getting the studs out without damaging them so it makes no sense to mess around with what's a perfectly good spare.  It will be safely packed away for the time being (or potentially added to the greater Invacar spares stash if that makes more sense to people).  I've precisely zero interest in sitting on a parts hoard - I'd far rather have that hub added to the list of stuff you and @Mrs6C have on hand so it's available if anyone needs it.

[LightBulbFun]

ah cool stuff sounds like a good plan to me

8 minutes ago, Zelandeth said:

I just need to confirm which version is fitted before I can get that ordered.  There are two types and they're identical aside from the pitch of the splines on the drive coupling, so I'll need to physically remove it from the car before I can confirm that.  Very likely to be the fine version as I believe the coarse one was only used on the 500D...but I've learned by now never to assume things where Invacar parts choices are concerned!

is this of any use?  

 

 

 

[Zelandeth]

10 minutes ago, LightBulbFun said:

ah cool stuff sounds like a good plan to me

is this of any use?  

 

 

 

Hmm...Yes it might...

Linky here...

[LightBulbFun]

21 minutes ago, Zelandeth said:

Hmm...Yes it might...

Linky here...

yeah comparing the fine and corse splined versions on that website

I can say for sure the version above which is from the Model 70 workshop manual is the fine pitch version if that helps any!  

[LightBulbFun]

in fact @Zelandeth weird half moon cutouts aside it looks a lot more like this one, then the one you linked, something to keep in mind maybe? 

https://webshop.fiat500126.com/en/final-drive-und-drive-shaft/wheel-hub_axle-stub-rear

they also have a "rebuilt" version for about half the price 

https://webshop.fiat500126.com/en/final-drive-und-drive-shaft/wheel-hub_axle-stub-rear-_rebuilt