Project Fudge

[Activ8]

As above. Only able to view the last picture.

Would it not be better to use an earthing spike on the chassis to both protect the van electrics and occupants?

[No Sliders]

Cheers guys, my connection dropped off last night, so must have scuppered my uploads - hopefully all sorted now.

Would it not be better to use an earthing spike on the chassis to both protect the van electrics and occupants?

Not quite sure what you mean by earthing spike, do you have a link or some pics?

[Activ8]

Not quite sure what you mean by earthing spike, do you have a link or some pics?

Similar to your house mains earth, use a metal cabled spike to earth the van whilst on 240v rather than rely on the more distant EHU and possibly irregularly tested if at all?

[No Sliders]

Similar to your house mains earth, use a metal cabled spike to earth the van whilst on 240v rather than rely on the more distant EHU and possibly irregularly tested if at all?

Gotchya, thanks for the heads up - most helpful.
Safety is paramount, so I've hit the gurus up at Rayne Automotive where I bought the kit from for further advice.

[No Sliders]

Something I knew I really should do before feeding all the cables through the ply and screwing it up for last time before carpet lining, was making sure I was actually getting a live feed through to all my cables in the back from the split charge and leisure batteries that I'd wired up, but not tested yet.
Pointless putting all the effort in and ploughing on with the build only to find out when everything was finally fitted up and complete, that nothing actually worked.

Again (for me), it was one of those moments I was almost dreading, but there was nothing for it so I just got on and connected everything up. The only electrics not to be tested at this stage was everything on the 240V hookup side of things.

First up was the secondary leisure battery under the driver's seat. I clamped it into its new home, and here it'll stay for a good while…



I fitted the primary leisure battery for the last time under the bonnet. While I was at it, I replaced the clamp that came with the dual battery tray and made my own which held the 2 batteries in place much more solid.

Then I temporarily connected everything up apart from the live from the 240V automatic battery charger. Everything is snug but I'm really happy I went to all the effort to do this conversion…



Everything fits back into place nice and neat without a struggle. I even managed to fit the cover back over everything…



Fudge was fired up and left to tick over while I hopped in the back with my voltmeter.

Voltmeter on, grounded the neg probe, pos probe to the first live, voltmeter reading = 14.14 volts. In the stadium of my mind, my brain cells were going wild, celebrating and hugging each other as the ticker tape rained down.
Continued to test every wire - same reading on all of them (live only of course). Engine off - tested all live wires again, voltmeter reading drops to just over 13 volts. Now I could breathe a sigh of relief and plough on with everything more confidently.
Also pleased at this stage that I decided to invest in some fused 12V regulators for my LEDs in the back. They're the Ikea Dioder type (warm light), which I'd bought yonks ago and had read that they may not need them, but that it was best to fit regulators with them. I wasn't taking any chances - for a couple of extra quid, the regulators were getting fitted up.

Everything disconnected again, I happily went about feeding the cables and screwing up the ply lining for the last time.

First fit done…

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Decided to treat Fudge to a new badgeless grill.
The previous one already fitted I'd picked up years ago when dropping round to see a guy who had a T4 he was breaking. I got a decent handful of bits and bobs off of him at the time including the grill and he only wanted £20 for the lot.
I'd literally picked the grill up out of the mud in front of the deceased T4. At the time I wasn't even sure if I wanted a badgeless grill, although it was something I was chewing over, so for part of my £20 package deal I was willing to give it a punt.

It got a good clean to the point where I T-cut it to bring it back to life. Didn't look too bad, only problem is over time, no matter how much I cleaned and tried to keep on top it, there were some white marks on it that gradually got worse and worse over time.
Could have resprayed it but the 3 tabs along the bottom of the grill were also snapped, so it never was the most secure and tended to rattle about a bit like big ol' black teeth. Not sure if the tabs were snapped when I got it or if they'd been snapped when being fitted up at Fraser's?

Either way, it was going…



New face…

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Thought it was about time I gave the van a wash… it'd been a while.

About an hour later after finishing, I was walking back towards the van and spotted something on the rear bumper?
Seems I wasn't the only one that appreciated Fudge's nice clean glossy finish, turns out I have a slider after all…

[Activ8]

Lovely install.
Got any more pics of the fridge disassembled. What type of pipework connects the refidgerant compressor to the fridge body? What distance?

[Fruitbat]

Any pics of the battery tray ?

[No Sliders]

Lovely install.
Got any more pics of the fridge disassembled. What type of pipework connects the refidgerant compressor to the fridge body? What distance?

Cheers!
Here's another that shows the compressor and cooling unit detached. You can see the pipework which connects to the fridge body - it's connected to the copper pipe and is powder coated white with the black foam insulation around it, although I've no idea what it would be made of? It's fairly rigid and does bend and stay in place like copper pipe but I'd very much doubt it is, purely by the fact that it's not continuous from the compressor, could be wrong though?
This pipe along with the cable allows it to be relocated up to 1.5m away apparently.



A couple more after I refitted the unit to the side which might help you?…

[No Sliders]

Any pics of the battery tray ?

Sure, it's not the best but it's the only one I could find without a battery on it…



Bought it secondhand.
You can just make out the clamp which I've now replaced with a better box section that holds both batteries nice and firm. Then just forward of that under the cables is the main bolt which goes through the existing hole and holds it solid.
The back and sides of the tray have lips which fold up and over to help hold the batteries secure. The front is flat with a lip that folds under for strength and allows the batteries to be slid into place.
I'm sure you'd still be able to get hold of these somewhere?

I did try one of those other trays that kind of sit the battery up on a leg and rest underneath prior to getting this one, but it was poorly made and pretty gash. The configuration was different but it didn't work out very well.
Nothing lined up properly, not to mention the fact that it was too small for my vehicle battery. Here's some pics of it…





…Might look like it fitted ok, but it didn't and I certainly wasn't about to splash out on smaller batteries.
I've still got it kicking around somewhere if you or anyone else wants to take a punt on it, but unless you've got smaller batteries I wouldn't bother tbh.

[Fruitbat]

That’s the same tray as the one I’ve got , it just looked like you had a bigger leisure battery , I have a small leisure battery in terms of dimensions , but it’s a 75amp , I want to get something like a 120-150amp as I find my battery only just lasts a weekend , but the bigger amp hr batteries are longer and I’ll struggle to get it on my tray .

I’m thinking a bigger solar panel too , may try solar first and see how I get on .

[TommyP]

That’s the same tray as the one I’ve got , it just looked like you had a bigger leisure battery , I have a small leisure battery in terms of dimensions , but it’s a 75amp , I want to get something like a 120-150amp as I find my battery only just lasts a weekend , but the bigger amp hr batteries are longer and I’ll struggle to get it on my tray .

I’m thinking a bigger solar panel too , may try solar first and see how I get on .

I’ve got the 150w panel connected to the smart victron thingy and then the 120ah battery and the setup never gets too low. Just to compared to whatever you’ve got.


Sent from my iPhone using Just T4s

[Fruitbat]

I’ve got the 150w panel connected to the smart victron thingy and then the 120ah battery and the setup never gets too low. Just to compared to whatever you’ve got.


Sent from my iPhone using Just T4s

Varta 75amp battery and 40w solar panel

[TommyP]

Varta 75amp battery and 40w solar panel

That’s the same power as a £6.99 solar battery charger I got from aldi once. That’s shit as well. Add solar to your list


Sent from my iPhone using Just T4s

[No Sliders]

Time to paint the town red…

Prior to giving Fudge the red carpet treatment, and after chewing it over, I'd made the decision to carpet all the way up over the strengthening frame and trim all the way around the roof mould.
After giving all the metal surfaces inside the van a good cleaning down with white spirit, I scraped off and removed the black felt tape that was stuck along the top of both sides of the strengthening frame.
The purpose of this was to cushion the folding roof bed as it came down to rest on the frame itself. The tape was grubby and worn, plus I wanted to carpet over this section and the carpet lining would serve the purpose much better anyway…



Cleaned off…



I'd spent many an odd moment just sitting in the back of the van eyeing up all the fussy corners and angles, contemplating what the best approach would be for each section.
The red carpet was rolled out for the occasion and I set about tackling the stage of the build that I'd been playing out in my head for many weeks…



I took my time as it had been stressed in so many YouTube vids I'd watched. Besides, I knew that if any part of it wasn't right, it would be staring at me and whispering my name as I'd try and go to sleep at nights in the van.

One side down, one to go…







This old school 2 way stretch stuff is a good work out, but I loved this red so much that the trade off was totally worth it. I was literally pounding on it in to conform it in various places, as well as using the heat gun on a low setting to soften it up (great tip for this stuff btw).
I ended up finding red in 4 way stretch quite recently, but it was more of a bright post box red which I wasn't too keen on.

Eventually both sides were finished. Completing this milestone and transforming the interior with the carpet brought a smile of satisfaction (and relief), to my face. Cinema/theatre interior came to mind at one point, but pleased all the same.
All the little bits of prep with the panelling paid off to give me a finish I could live with including the section next to the 'C' pillar…



Lastly was the section of roof mould across the front over the cab, and the back section across the top of the tailgate opening.
Front first which included cutting slits for the bed hinges…





Then the back section…











The finish of the bonding around the windows by Fraser's crew was crap and didn't help for a good clean cut that I was 100% happy with (really wished I'd had time to fit these myself).
So, I used the same black fabric trimming tape that I'd used around the edge when I re-trimmed the poptop roof headlining, to tidy up the edges of the windows. Not amazing, but I'm much happier with the standard of them than if I'd have just left them…











Last little bit before fitting all the black trim and seatbelts etc. back up…



…This little section in around the striker at the threshold was ugly and bugged me, but… I had me some carpet so I'mma gonna use it! Because this was a tailgate conversion the striker was welded onto a plate but still allowed for adjustment by loosening the 2 large bolts and tweaking its position.
I cut and stuck this section of carpet to the plate only, opposed to the plate and body, so the striker could still be repositioned and freely moved around if need be.





Quite pleased with the overall transition of the predominant black cab through to the red in the back, helped by the red trim of the seats with their original black fittings and the various pieces of black plastic trim and seatbelts at the threshold, pretty much how I envisaged it…





Before fitting my speaker pod back up I fed the wire for the LED lighting on both sides through. My speaker pod now doubled as a route/tunnel across the middle of the cab to conceal the wiring. The slack will now live up in the roof section over the cab until it's needed…

[fifet4]

Brilliant job mate. It looks huge in the back! That is a lot of red.. but it looks great. Way different look to the normal grey or black. Kudos

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