Time for bed...

So it's finally time to stop sleeping on the floor of the van and reclaim some much-needed storage space. Before bolting the Bluebird bed frame in I decided to fit a harder-wearing floor.

The old floor was only 3mm ply with rubber tiles over the top, it always felt a bit spongy and loose, time to double the thickness and lay some 6mm marine ply:


Next up was to assemble the rear frame - this gives the bed the desired height and somewhere to store camping gear:


Then it's time to offer-up the front assembly of the main mechanism and square everything up to the rear frame (already measured, measured, mulled-over and measured again), check, check again, try the seat mechanism - double-checking everything clears and bolt together:


One final check and then a quick once around to tighten up and fine-tune. Here's the mechanism in the upright 'seat' position:


The one thing you don't see in these pictures is the time spent removing the spare wheel and plastic under-trays in order to fit the spreader-plates that hold the bolts through the van floor. One tip is to spend as much time as you can aligning the bed frame to avoid any chassis crossmembers, take your time and don't drill anything until you're absolutely certain.

There's no way I could have done this on my own; it's definitely a two-man job. Thanks must go to JC at JC Motors for his years of experience with this kind of thing.

I'll post some more pics at the end of the weekend showing the fitment of the boards and the foam going in too...