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...

Spending a weekend on your knees...

Time to get the floor sorted.

We camped in the van last weekend for the first time at Bustypes, the April evenings were still pretty chilly. Having insulated the roof and walls, the only really cold spot left was the floor. Determined not to repeat the cold night's sleep for next weekend's Stanford Hall show, it's time the floor was put right.

First up is even more sound deadening. Just in select areas to add weight to the vibrating panels.


Next up, insulation, again to begin with, in the larger gaps between the floor's corrugations.


Then on to full lengths of insulation for the whole floor:


Building up those layers. Next it's a layer of laminate floor underlay:


After this, the new plywood goes down. This was cut using the old rough ply as a template, tidying up any edges where necessary.



Finally, the rubber tiles go down as the final layer.


The tiles were bought cheap from B&Q as a discontinued line and, as such, we're not able to buy in batches of continued part numbers. The downside of this is some of the tiles, although black, appear blue in strong sunlight. As this is only a temporary floor until the main camping interior goes in, we're not too concerned. By the time we've given the floor some abuse it won't matter that the tiles don't match exactly!

Here's an example of the kind of 'weekend load' the van gets to carry:


One final tip: As it's hard to source a single piece of ply big enough for the floor of your van, it's good to mark out a centre-line. It's a great way of keeping things square as the floor of the T5 tapers slightly narrower towards the front. Cutting and measuring materials this weekend would have been twice as hard without it!



Next weekend: a trip to the Stanford Hall show in Leicestershire. Picking up our new Khyam Drive-away awning too - a report will follow shortly after.

Time to junk the plywood floor

One of the final traces of the van's former life is the hard-wearing plywood floor. The plans are, like all the other panels, to sound-proof, insulate and cover the floor using a thinner grade of ply and then a top layer of black rubber tiles.

Here's half the floor gone:


You should've seen the amount of rubbish underneath:


Sawdust, sand, gravel, broken glass, electrical connectors, six inch nails, more sawdust, assorted screws and some more gravel. Nearly two hours of brushing and vacuuming have brought the floor back to original.

Updates of the flooring procedure will follow in future posts. That's it, I'm done for the weekend: half of the van put back together, the other half just taken apart!