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  • #46
    If it stays hot even by altering the valve on the heater pipe perhaps that valve is kaput. As it should shut the coolant off and the heater should go cold.

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    • #47
      Weekend Update

      Sorry for the rather long silence on this, been a hectic few weeks of life - non of which involved the van.

      So managed to get 2 things off my list of bits to do to the van (that ever growing - ever present to-do list...)
      1. New stereo system
      2. Curtains / light blocking for sleeping.

      Quick backstory to why these have been the priority, We're at a wedding next weekend where my other half is the Bridesmaid. However the Bride (aside for being somewhat scatty) is having a mini-festival type gathering, so there is live music on Thursday night, Friday day-time is a huge BBQ & drinks, with more music in the evening, then saturday is the actual wedding.
      All of this is lovely, except for one minor problem - The Bride has a lot of foreign family (USA, Australia & Scotland I think?) all of which need somewhere to stay.. meaning that everyone who is not family (us included) is camping for the whole affair! All well and good, except I'm sure many of you have been to a wedding, and trying to get a bridesmaid ready for the wedding day - in a tent - is just not going to happen so - thank god for the Van!

      So I have to turn this very empty - currently uncladded panel van into something that you can sleep in. Now thankfully, we've got a mattress that isn't our main one which we can throw in the van - so sleeping is not really a problem. but as some may have guessed from the pictures, privacy is not something this van has much of. Until today!

      I'm gonna write this up and add the photo's later as for some reason it doesn't appear to upload from my laptop, but does from the phone so bear with me on this...


      1. Curtains (i'll start here because there is an impending rant associated with the sound system)..

      Due to the rather rushed nature of this unexpected turn of events, blocking out light is my only real concern at this point, so off to Trago Mills I went in search of things to block light and give us some sort of privacy in the van for the long weekend ahead.

      Settled upon from Black-out fabric, "heavy duty" Velcro & a staple gun. I'm sure you're all going to chastise me for taking the easy route, but this is only a temporary measure and it will get done properly at a later date when we actually know what kind of style we're going to go for with the interior.

      all in all - took me about 2 hours all told to completely black out the back of the van for our little escapade at the weekend - sorted I thought, on to the Stereo - the easy bit (or so I assumed - I was a studio engineer back a few years so wiring sound systems is somewhat of a guilty pleasure)


      on to part 2 then...

      2. New Sound System.

      grabbed myself a little DAB head unit with bluetooth and dual sub outputs. (for adjusting 2 separate sub outputs - future proofing for when that days comes - it's not here yet!). All in all, nice little head unit. (pioneer deh-8700dab for anyone interested) picked up some little 4" Vibe Slicks to replace the dash paper speakers because they were awful, and grabbed myself some speaker cable and bell connectors.

      Little info before I go into why this took me the best part of 6 hours to complete...
      Whenever I do sound installs, there are 2 massive considerations that have to be thought through.
      1, Fitment & fixings & 2, Placement.

      2 in this case is easy, i'm gonna replace the existing speakers that reside in the dash - so no real drama's there the decision is out of my hands really.
      But as for 1, this caused (and still causes) me no end of headaches.

      For the best quality sound you need 3 things, good quality cable (remember that rant I mentioned.. it's coming), good cones and drives and finally, the least amount of connections / breaking points between amp & speaker.

      For now, until I'm confident there are no horrible gremlins about to appear i'm keeping the sound system on the cheap side so no Amp, and no extra speakers. But this poses the problem of future proofing.
      I have always (and will continue to) solders my speakers and cables together - this is by FAR the weakest point in any sound system, and especially in a constantly vibrating vehicle, is usually the point of failure for any speaker.
      So, speakers soldered - I got my nice chunky copper speaker cable, clamped and soldered some female bell connectors to the other end to connect to the existing stereo wiring and bob's you're uncle.

      [RANT WARNING]
      So my biggest bug bear when it comes to sound systems is the absolute pile of trash they give you as "wiring replacement" - It doesn't seem to matter whether you're buying £2000+ speakers, or £20 jobbies. If you get cabling & fixtures with them. generally it's s$%^e.
      I've done sound systems in most of my mates cars & vans & houses, as well as my partners car and all my previous vehicles that have needed an upgrade from factory units (some don't, High-end models generally have well considered sound so no point in using aftermarket hardware). When it comes to passing these vehicles on - unless they're destined for the scrap yard / the new owner already has his own sound gear, then it's very likely this will travel with the vehicle for a number of years. So why not do a proper job and make it extendable & flexible?

      The amount of times I've seen car speakers fitted using spade connectors blows my tiny mind, they're rubbish. don't use them unless you're planning for imminent failure and enjoy re-wiring your sound system on a bi-annual basis. If you cannot use a soldering iron, find your nearest electrical store / workman that can do it for you. DON'T JUST TWIST THE WIRES AND CLAMP THEM DOWN. Copper wire is fragile, but it's super conductive so it gives good sound quality - unless you break it. By all means twist your wire ends to keep them neat, BUT SOLDER THEM IN PLACE. This has multiple benefits but primarily it means that your cable ends are Hard wearing, not nearly as fragile because everything is "stuck" together and will give you a much longer lasting system that in all likelihood you'll never need to touch again. This also means that if you want to take your speakers out of your vehicle when you sell it, you unscrew them from their fitted place, and disconnect 2 bell connectors - no faffing around trying to figure out the old routing or threading new cables or any of that jazz. in, out, done. - then your new system, you just need to add 2 bell connectors to the existing wiring, screw in new speakers and off you go.

      Disclaimer: I've used Bell connectors because that was all I could find at short notice - there are better connectors to use for audio - i'd recommend using phono connectors if you can find them. These do require soldering on both ends, so it's not always the easiest solution when if you're not removing the existing wiring. - hence my use of bell connectors as i only need to solder bare cable ends and clamp the bell connectors down.

      So.. anyway, first rant (oh yes, there is another one!) over.

      On to the reason this took me almost 6 hours to do. I may have mentioned before that I am a real stickler for crappy wiring. if it's no longer needed - get it gone it's just another gremlin waiting to happen.

      So after my speaker prep, I set about taking the NS Trim off the A pillar to run the cabling for the DAB antenna. This was a fairly straight forward process, getting the trim to sit back in it's slot was a little fiddly, but wasn't overly difficult in the end just required some precision "persuasion". DAB antenna stuck to the screen, cables run down the A Pillar and behind the glovebox and then....

      What I can only describe as a rats nest of utter nonsense wiring was uncovered. At some point - presumably when this was a works van in Scotland, it had an after market "Hands free / Radio & immobiliser" fitted, at some later point in its life this obviously caused someone a problem, because most of it was either just naked cables dangling around in the centre console, or connected up to little boxes - that then went to more dangling disconnected cables. Following all of this mess through the van I came to find that some of the tat that had been unceremoniously shoved onto the van battery terminals was largely from this load of rubbish! So out it all came - or most of it. I didn't have a wiring diagram to hand and very annoyingly they've spliced the actual wiring harness from the fuse box in some place so I couldn't just rip the lot out. That - will be a job for when I can find someone with a wiring diagram printed out that I can pour over and a spare weekend to rip it all out and rebuild the wiring loom. but for now, I've removed everything I could that wasn't directly connected to the wiring loom.

      Funnily enough - removing all these randomly earthed bit of junk has actually solved on of my concerns I had. - occasionally the glow plugs were taking a long time to warm up (the light would sometimes stay on for nearly a minute) - after removing all this wiring and cabling on Saturday - and many little trips to get various things like shopping and van bits - it's so far not presented itself so it seem like yet another win for removing excess fire hazards!

      Because of the proximity (and in some places direct connection to) the main wiring loom, this took quite a long time to surgically remove. I'm sure someone mentioned Reg is also a stickler for crappy wiring so I suspect he'll join me in saying that if it's not actually being used by the van - take the damn stuff out - you're just asking for problems!

      [all rants are now over, standard talking nonsense has resumed]

      Once all of that was done, fitting the headunit was a breeze. out with the old tape deck (yep - the factory one!) and in with the new CD & DAB head unit. Hoorah. no more farting bass notes.

      As a side note - if you want anything soldering and I'm around, you're welcome to pop over for a cuppa! I'd rather see more well-fitted audio systems out in the wild than more fire hazards waiting to happen.


      Last edited by bassforce86; 15 July 2018, 04:57 PM.
      2012-2014: Ex-AA 2.5TDi (102)
      2018-Present: 2.5TDi (88) LWB Panel

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      • #48
        Good stuff! Put vibes in mine recently and the sound is actually quite good!


        Sent from my iPhone using Just T4s
        Slowly slowly catchy monkey!

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        • #49
          Anything was going to be better than the incessant farting that was attempting to work before! as you can see - what was left of the "cone" was very little in the end!
          I really meant to make this more of a detailed write-up with more pictures etc, but I've run out of "van time" this weekend - so it's gonna have to wait!
          2012-2014: Ex-AA 2.5TDi (102)
          2018-Present: 2.5TDi (88) LWB Panel

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          • #50
            Originally posted by Thebigredone View Post
            This is the style i used mate, took it apart and cut it in two, straightened it out and you have a spare [emoji106]

            Sell my T4 !!! I'd rather stick wasps up my butt.
            Definitely using this idea red! Cheers

            Sent from my SM-N950F using Just T4s

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            • #51
              Originally posted by Jumbungla View Post
              Definitely using this idea red! Cheers

              Sent from my SM-N950F using Just T4s
              Mines still going strong mate, been over 2 years now, glad to help [emoji106]

              Sell my T4 !!! I'd rather stick wasps up my butt.

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              • #52
                Originally posted by Thebigredone View Post
                Mines still going strong mate, been over 2 years now, glad to help [emoji106]

                Sell my T4 !!! I'd rather stick wasps up my butt.
                Just ordered 3 of those bait things off ebay for £5 ;-) should do the job! If anyone needs a new one, happy to send out.

                Sent from my SM-N950F using Just T4s

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                • #53
                  Happy days buddy!

                  Sell my T4 !!! I'd rather stick wasps up my butt.

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