I put the green end of the bed cabinet on a while ago, and I cut out the door but I didn’t have any hinges at the time. Well now they have arrived that was the first job. I have some really nice black flush catches and for some reason I didn’t use it on this door. Oh well one random latch it is!
Over the past month so I’ve been collecting together all of the electrical gizmos and gadgets I want to include in the van. I’ve built up quite a collection but I had not really planned out where they would go. That is to say, other than they would hopefully all fit in my electrical cupboard.
My laid out all the bits and bobs I needed and then, armed with some masking tape and optimism, started to plan out the electrical cupboard. Lots of campervans have a huge orgy of snakes going on in some random cupboard somewhere. It looks terrible and it must be dangerous. So I’m using a plastic channel thing with fingers you can snap off so that all the cables can be routed neatly.
Once I was happy with where everything was located I started screwing them into the cabinet making sure to use screws that would not go through to the other side and damage my green surface.
I also used some 3D printed cable tie holders to help hold the conduit that was poking out the wall in place. Finally I got to cut these back to a more manageable length. And an offcut of cable tie, taped to the end of a cable really helps it slip thru the conduit more easily without getting snagged.
I’ve also drilled a hole to which I’ll attach the chassis ground. This saves running a really long thick cable back to the battery. I tried to put in a rivnut the old fashioned way, but it just didn’t work for me so I’ve got a proper rivnut tool on the way… So many tools… This needs to be electrically connected so I ground back the paint to reveal shiney bare metal.
As the year moves into autumn the first thing I’m going to need to be able to carry on working will be lights. I’m going to have LED strips around an island in the ceiling in addition to spotlights. I’ll also have LEDs along the toe kick relief to give some low level lighting under the cabinets. Because everything in the van will be 12 volts this means there is potential for quite a big voltage drop if the LEDs pull a lot of current so I’m using slightly oversized cables.
I got the LED controllers and my smart relay boards mounted. And then started running a few of the cables using the plastic channel to keep everything neat. In the end I had to stop as a light faded.
