Its Always the Little Things

Converting a cargo van to stealth living space has given me lots of big projects to write about.  There have been lots of big tasks to accomplish.   I don’t write about them near as much but also, behind this are a ton of little things.   The little thing project list is lots longer and might never be completed.  But this week’s post I am going to cover a few of these instead of the big ones.  Just like the project list, this post is going to be longer than average.

First off I want to tell you about a what should have been a little job.  I say should have been, because though it should have been a fairly quick little job, it took hours.   

My van is a cargo van.  So when it was built, all the wires (referred to as a wiring harness) going to the tail lights, blinkers, etc. were run on the surface of the frame.  This is opposed to, in the passenger version of this same van where they are run out of site.  Inside the upper frame.   My van is all about, “who needs to look nice?”  The cargo doesn’t care if there is a bundle of wires going across the ceiling.  This is I suppose a time saver for the manufactures, since they are building hundreds of thousands of them.  For me though it has created a dilemma.  I have been going back and forth about if I want to take the time and effort to move them inside the frame.

Wrapping tape around the offshoots will
keep them from snagging as you pull.

Pulling wires through the frame is a task fraught with cut fingers and torn skin.   Many of the edges inside the access holes of the frame are quite sharp.  Even the places where they aren’t that sharp, by the time you’ve wedged your whole hand in there to grab hold of a wire which is, dammit, just barely at your finger tips…    You will shed blood. 

The reason to more the wires is it will make it much easier to fit the trim.  But, the downside, the odds of screwing something up and suddenly the tail lights don’t work any more are quite high.   What I ended up doing was a combination of both.   Now that I am done, sitting here on the safety of this barstool, I really have to confess I have created the worst of two worlds.   

What I (stupidly) decided to do was not bother with the long run of wire going down the side of the van.  I only changed the wires going across above the back doors.   The reason for this decision was because I already had several wires run inside the frame going down the kitchen side of the van.   I was worried the harness wires would get entangled with my new wires and I wouldn’t be able to get them free.   In hindsight, because of how I taped the harness wires up, I don’t think this would have been likely to happen.  But it was certainly still a possibility. 

The vent behind the tail lights, once I got
it broken out of it's home.

The problem with the decision I made was with the wires outside the frame on part and inside in the next part I lost about three inches of total length.  I shouldn’t be surprised, again because the manufactures are building hundreds of thousands they make the wires *exactly* the length they need.   There isn’t much slack to give and getting everything hooked up again after losing that three inches was really tough.

Here is what I did.  This seemed like a four handed job again so I enlisted The Wife’s help.  I unhooked the harness from the brake & tail lights.  Pulled it through to the drivers side.  I actually own a fiberglass fish-tape but didn’t have it immediately available.   I just used a length of 14-3 wire that I poked through the frame from the passenger side to the drivers side, above the back doors of the van.   I hooked the wire up to the harness.   Then I applied tape around each of the harness connectors and strapped them tight to the harness itself.   Using this tape I was also able to taper some of the square corners of the connecters so they wouldn’t snag on the frame or other wires.  Doing this taping is what would have made it so I wouldn’t have had to worry about snagging if I had decided to the long run up the side of the van, but I didn’t know that at the time.

Once the vent was pulled out I had access to
the wires in the channel inside.

Getting the wire pulled through the frame was tricky and difficult.   I should have used the fish-tape rather than the wire, that would have made it easier because it would have slide through the tight areas whereas the wire wanted to catch.  Then in the end, we came up short.   There was enough harness length to barely plug in the connectors, but not enough to really reach them well or to get the anti-snagging tape removed.   I fought and I struggled.   My hands got all chewed up from reaching in the holes of the frame trying to move the wires along or get the tape unwrapped.   

In the end I had to go outside the van and remove the passenger side tail light assembly and the trim.  Then I had to break out the rear internal frame vent so I could get my hand inside the space to access the wires.   It totally sucked.  All in all it was about a three hour job.  Not fun at all.   For now I just covered the vent hole with tape.  I don’t know if I will buy a new vent or not.   I really can’t tell you if this project was worth the effort or not.

The LED light pods attached to the underside of the bed.
Each of these plastic pods contain four bright LEDs.

The next project was totally worth the effort and is going to be great.   I think I have mentioned (maybe in a need to keep this normalized) I have named spaces within the van.   Sure, I only have 63 square feet.  But I still refer to areas within that space with names.   I have the kitchen, the bedroom, the dining room, the living room.  I even have what I refer to as the garage.   That’s the space under the bed where the batteries and propane tanks live.   So my next project is to add lighting to the garage.   

I used what on Amazon Prime are called (12V 40 LEDs Van Interior Light Kits, Ampper LED Ceiling Lights Kit for Van Boats Caravans Trailers Lorries Sprinter Ducato Transit VW LWB)   These are ten little square pods of four LEDs all wired together.   I cut the wires between most of the pods so I could spread them out further.   I spliced in longer sections of wire and put heat shrink tubing around the joints to keep it all tidy and dry.   Not a big job, just make sure you keep track of the positive/negative wires and don’t mix them up.  These lights are AMAZINGLY bright.   They seem to draw very little current and the ten of them light up every inch of my garage space.   Very much worth the fourteen dollars I spent on them!  I bought another set which I am thinking I will wire into the cab some day.   I will be able to light everywhere.   Under the seats, under the dash.   All of it lite up at the flip of a switch.   

The garage, all lit up!   This area subject to needing to
work on things, now I am going to be able to see what
I am doing!  This project turned out great!

Speaking of LEDs, I like my color changing mood lights in the bedroom area of the van so much I am going to run a separate string of them in the kitchen area.   I have the bright puck lights mounted into the ceiling but wow are they bright.   Sometimes I just want enough light so I can see what I am doing without being blinding.   What I am going to do is run a length of LED above the countertop, but then I also bought some six conductor extension wire, so I will hook a strip of these lights under the table as well.  I can’t really put the lights in place yet because I need to get the trim installed.   But I got the six conductor wire run in the frame and I got the light controller mounted in the kitchen side of the floor to ceiling shelf.

Gluing the bulkhead door plywood onto the
door.   Because of the way the door is built,
there is nowhere to attach screws.  So it is only
held by the glue and a guitar hanger base.

I got a step further on the main bulkhead project.  First I took a six inch wide strip of the blackout shade material and fit it to the gap on the hinge side of the bulkhead door.   I had to cut out the areas for the hinges.  I ran the fabric through the gap on the hinge side.  I taped it to the insulation on the inside, and to the bulkhead steel in the cab behind the drivers seat.   With this fabric in place there is no more light leakage.   No more bright strip of light inside the cab and causing a loss of stealth.   Once this fabric was in place I cut out the size of the door from the sheet of bead-board plywood and affixed it into place.  One step closer to having the bulkhead finished!  Very cool!

I bought a second battery level gauge.   I have one already in the garage because it was nice to know how much juice the batteries have in them when plugging or unplugging from shore power.   But all the rest of the time when I am living inside, having the gauge only back there sucked.   I couldn’t read it and my work around was to lean over the bed and hold my camera down there to shoot a (usually out of focus) picture of it.   The second gauge I wired into the top of the floor to ceiling shelf.   What I didn’t realize is just how bright that little sucker is.  It lights up the whole van when I am trying to sleep.  So, going to have to figure out something there too.

The toilet docked in its bay.

I built the plywood base for the toilet.   My original plan was to mount the toilet to some plywood that would slide out for use.   Thinking more about this and how sturdy the toilet is built I decided to just cut out that step.  What I did instead is cut a chunk of 3/4 plywood to fit the space, then I set the toilet in place and marked the base of it.  Then, I cut that section out as well and placed felt furniture moving pads on the bottom of the toilet.   Now it sides in and out and nestles into place when it is stored.  It seems heavy enough to not really slide around when I am going down the road unless things get really violent.

To get the vent holes to line up I marked the centers on the bulkhead wall.  Then, I transferred those marks to the plywood when I had it in place.   I drilled out the holes oversized by a quarter inch.   That way there is a little room for discrepancy.   Plus, I thought it wouldn't hurt to have a bit of a ledge there. 

Use a round object to trace
curved profiles.

One last small project.  I built the bulkhead for under the kitchen counter.  The one that separates the kitchen storage area from the toilet area.   This is built out of 3/4” plywood because I wanted it strong enough to support several drawers.   The first part was really easy, cutting it to the right height.   Everything is (surprisingly) level and square so it was just a matter of measuring and cutting.   Then I slid it into place and used a round object —I used the cap from a jar of honey :-) to mark the curve of the side wall onto the plywood.  Something round works much better in a case like this.  Just make sure you are marking the point furthest from the outer wall.  When you are done marking, slide the cap up and down to make sure you can see your pencil line the whole way.  If your mark disappears at any point, you need to re-mark it. Once the line is drawn and confirmed, I cut the curve, then fit the plywood back in to mark the cutouts for the wire passage and trim holding the back of the counter.  For now I just taped this plywood in place using some aluminum tape.

The under counter bulkhead
in place.

A project for the future is going to be figuring some way to tighten the hinge screws for the bulkhead door.   When I took it apart to cut the door off, I should have put it all back together with thread lock.  I didn’t though and now over time and miles the nuts have vibrated looser until the door has quite a bit of play at the bottom.  The nuts are sealed in place by the bulkhead plywood though and I can’t get at them to tighten them up.   They just spin.   I am thinking maybe I can drill some small holes and then use a nail through the hole to keep them in place.   I have to think more about this though.

I guess the good news is it's only flat
on the bottom.

If you don’t remember it, and I would be surprised if you did, I was talking this spring about a particular flare fitting on my gas lines.   I was having trouble with leaks and I couldn’t get it to seal.   Back at that time I heard about putting oil on the threads of the flare and some thread lock on the actual surface of the flare.   Well, some time has passed and that fitting seems to still be tight.  Of course, the first step would be to take the fitting apart first and see if you can determine why it isn’t sealing.  But if you don’t come up with anything I am going to call this a cure and recommend it as a fix if your joints don’t seem to seal.  

I don't know where y'all store your spare drywall screws.  I guess I store mine in my tires.