Getting high in the hi-top!
July 4, 2010
How time flies! It’s been about 6 weeks since the last entry and there’s been a lot of work on Mr O Leary. There’s been a lot of planning at this stage to make sure things go in in the right order – it’s a right pain when you realise you’ve got to take your cupboards out again because you forgot to hook the water pipe up!
So, three things have been going on really – routing the electrics for the leisure batteries, lighting, sockets and laying the cabling for the in car entertainment. Insulating and carpeting the hi-top. Building the cupboards and other wood trim bits.
I finally managed to pries some X-trem insulation out of Torbay Conversions, after 10 weeks of waiting, constant phone calls from me, excuses from them and generally the worst service ever, they sent me 4 meters of the 8 meters I ordered. Not the actually stuff I ordered – that’s be too much to ask for – 4 meters of 15mm (instead of 20mm) X-trem equivalent. I’ve now given up with the rest of the order and I’m currently trying to get a refund out of them.
The 4 meters of X-trem(ish) I received was used to insulate the floor and the hi-top – there was just enough to do these although it did mean using every little scrap of it. This meant that finally get the floor down – yay! After double checking all the cabling was tucked away and I hadn’t missed any I screwed the 12mm ply floor down. I ran the cabling through trunking so I would be able to add any more later if required, the idea being it would route through the trunking without too much trouble. I also tried my best not to put any screws through the water pipe that runs from the water storage tank under the van to the pump under the rock and roll bed. I think I succeeded!
The X-Trem was then glued to the hi-top, I used the contact adhesive from Mega Van Mats to stick this to the fiberglass hi-top. It didn’t stick perfectly so I used plenty and hope it’ll stay there – a few hot weeks on and it’s still fine so hopefully…
My roof section carpet is split in two, I’m going to build a new surround for the roof window which incorporates two down lights which reachers across the whole floor section, this has the added benefit of splitting the carpeting up. I decided to spray the carpet a section at a time, starting in the middle and moving towards the back, I ignored the fact it was about the hottest day of the year. I’d inadvertently created a glue sniffing tent in the h-itop! I was lying on my belly in the roof area trying to spray into the corners of the roof with the remaining carpet draped over me. If you’re going to carpet your camper roof – try and find another way of doing this!! Although I was taking breaks I was feeling decidedly iffy, giggling but a bit sick – I can’t for the life of me think why anyone would want to glue-sniff, OK, the giggling was fun but I could probably have induced that by looking on the internet at kittens falling over without the sickness and headache!
Anyway, I survived, I’m not addicted, and the carpet went on fine.
