Rather than spend the summer refining what "the van" now allows us to do. We are spending the summer making the most of what we've got. This also allows me to refine my thinking on what will work best for us.
This never was going to be a full on conversion from an 8 seater Hyundai i800 people carrier into a full, off grid, live in mobile home. It needs to have multiple uses to justify the cost of having it. It would appear that a 2.5 litre diesel engined commercial vehicle is neither cheap to tax, insure or run.
It was bought to replace an ageing Volvo V50 estate that I had bought as a "truck." Something to take junk to the tip and carry building materials to the my "house project" of the time. It's replacement "the van" needs to perform similar functions with the addtiion of being something we can use as a camper van or as a boot sale / out door fairs vehicle.
A people carrier it could be again, had I not thrown the original, heavy, six passenger seats away. I had no where to store them but I might fit a couple of removable, light weight seats from a mini bus in the future.
It does however fit the bill very neatly. It is fairly roomy, pulls like a train, should be reliable and unlike a van comes with windows and an interior that doesn't need to be added. We also discovered, when parked up for the night in a public car park on our last trip out. That it is not obvious that it is a camper van. The blinds work so well at blocking out the light that it was difficult to find the vehicle in the dark after a short walk before going to bed despite the interior lights having been left on inside.
The vehicle comes with tinted windows as standard and so the blinds I've made are not obvious when fitted in place. This seems to enhance the potential for it to be regarded as a bit of a stealth camper. Particularly when parked up for the night.
The temporary Argos potty, fitted into an old wooden Ikea laundry box, works well sat behind the drivers seat. The top hinges up to provide access and is left up overnight. When closed, with a towel over the top, it acts as a table.
The loo and one single bed are on the same side. This makes access to the side door on that side "tight" to the point that it seems to be the best place to store rubbish and other miscellaneous items.
We have a couple of small low folding camping tables I made years ago. One to cook at, the other to eat from. These are both 1200mm long and fit very neatly in the same place as the rubbish bag.
The biggest issue we still need to resolve is the slippery bed surface followed by buying a proper leisure battery rather than an old one from my previous vehicle.
Slippery Beds
The single beds are temporary but they still need to function reasonably well. Being made from some old shelves that happened to be the right size they are varnished. This makes them slippery. The solution will be to roughen them up somehow.
I've considered a few of the more obvious, matt paint, rough sanded finish, covering them in fabric but am going to cover them in the leather I removed from an old sofa that would otherwise be going to the tip. I recycled the rest of the material but held on to the leather.
The leather on the sofa turned out to be bi-cast and not the "real thing" we had been lead to believe it was when first purchased. This type of leather is leather that has been split from the back of the hide to make the front face thinner and more pliable / softer / easier to work with. This used to simply be thrown away as a waste product until someone had the bright idea of coating it in polyurethane and embossing it with a new leather like face.
It can therefore be sold as genuine leather. It smells like leather, feels like leather and to anyone not then told what it really is, appears to be full leather. The sales people tell you that it is 100% leather with a protective coat rather than the truth.
This "coated leather" requires special care to maintain it in good condition including not placing it in direct sunlight as this breaks down the PU coating making it sticky to the touch. The natural oils we all release from our skin including sweat also break down the PU coating so that over time, unless regularly cleaned or recoated it turns into something akin to a sticky fly trap. We bought three of these around 15 years ago believing that we were buying a leather suite that would last us for a lifetime. BUYER BEWARE!
I kept the leather because the reverse side of it is untreated with a suede like finish that I thought might have another use at some point. I would appear that this might be that time. Once I find the time to cut the pieces and stick them onto the existing shelves.
The need for a better battery.
The little red blue and yellow 12V cool box seen in the video still works well at keeping the milk and other chilled foods from going off. It was originally bought from Lidl. One of their, middle of the store, special buy offers.
It must be at least 15 or more years old. There is clearly a benefit in things being kept as simple as it is if it still performs as well now as the day it was bought. It seems to be no more than a cool box with a 12V fan driven heat exchanger built into the lid. It works at its best if freezer blocks are used in the base but even without these it will draw the inside temperature down to a good few degree below the ambient of the day.
Leave it running all night and it pulls the temperature inside it down to something noticeably chilled. The down side is that it will drain your car battery if the engine is not running which is why I currently have it connected to an old 90Ah battery I kept after replacing it on a previous vehicle. A Volvo V50 that needed a big punch to start it in the winter.
So a leisure battery with all the rest of the tech needed to recharge it both from the engine and a solar panel will be another future investment. I'm still doing the research. The options seem huge depending on what your anticipated power needs will be.
I have no intention of going over the top on this but know that we will want to take off for a couple of weeks without worrying about having to recharge a battery which may only be used to recharge a few small devices and our cool box.
Do we need an awning?
There would be an advantage to the use of the Hyundai as a camper van if we were to add a covered area immediately beside or behind the vehicle. There are any number of solutions already on the market from awnings to drive away tents. None of these really suite our needs.
We already have a large tent that can be connected via a porch like awning for when we are on a long stay at a camp site.
What we need is something that can be put up and taken down in minutes, that doesn't need to be pegged and which allows one to stand up to get changed or dressed in the dry.
Something that attaches over the rear door seems the favoured option I am exploring.
For the moment we just want to get some use from what has been done to date.
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