The last update of 2003 here :)

Back on the 20 something'th of November I took the van upto Wigan to NU-Venture motorhomes to have it's coachbuilt body made, the plans for that body are on the coachbuilt plans page funnily enough :)

There hasn't been an update for a while as Dino passed away on the 25th of November, a few days after i took the van upto be converted, in the last diary entry he was poorly, but seeming to be making a recovery, unfortunately this was short lived, and an x-ray showed stomach cancer, so we had no choice other than to let him go to sleep for the last time, I'm really missing him, I'm still putting things in the van's plans that I'd planned for his comfort.. like the thermostatically controlled roof vent fan, an outside shower and so on.

But it's really been a very very boring month and a bit not having the van, so to keep my self occupied i've been messing about with the ideas for the lighting in the van, I already have the main light, a modified mains flush mount round ceiling light, gutted the insides and fitted a 12 volt D type fluorescent tube fitting, and turned a nice wooden surround for it on the lathe, this will be in the main living area, and for the rest of the lighting I had planned to use hidden fluorescent lights.

Problem with them is they almost always come as part of a fitting, I have a few single and double tube fluorescent lights out of the old van, and they are way too bulky for what I want.. plus they cost about 20 quid each, I have been thinking of using cold cathode lamps, of the type usually fitted by computer case modifiers inside their cases, you can get them in white, as well as the other colours case modders like to use, but good thing about these lights, they are very small, about 4mm in diameter, they aren't a fitting as such, more a tube in an acrylic tube that you stick where you want, and attach the wires to the inverter module that gets hidden.. not the set up you'd want for a light in the middle of the ceiling, but ideal for the under counter lights I want.

Here's a drawing of the vans layout with the positions of the lights, click the picture to get a better resolution pic up, things like the wall switch and remote control I'll be using are shown better on the bigger pic, yes I will be having a few toys in this van, the light controller screen is just the beginning :)

You can see from the plan I want a lot of light in my van, and most of it will be coming from under the overhead lockers, cold cathode lamps are ideal for this, they don't produce much heat at all, give out a very bright light, and have a pretty low power consumption.. about half an amp to run 2 twelve inch tubes at full brightness, they can be dimmed by lowering the input voltage to the inverters if wanted, and that reduces power consumption more, (the actual tubes run on about 600 to 1000 volts, to get this voltage a small inverter is used, this is specific to the cold cathode lamps, it takes the 12 volt input from the vans battery, and turns it into the required voltage, it only produces about 5milliamps, so if you were stupid enough to stick your fingers in the inverter outlet connectors you'd get a mild tingle if that, but you do need to have a little electrical knowledge to install cold cathode tubes in your van)

I shall be going into more detail in an electrickery page on the lighting system in my van as I put it in, but just to let you know, I'm buying the cold cathode tubes for £3 each, with the inverter from e-buyer, these tubes are in the protective acrylic tubes, so are ideal for mounting in a vehicle.

the light switch to control all these lights is a velleman kit, it's a 8 way touch panel switch, that can be remotely controlled as well if required, I want these features so I can control all the lights in the living area and kitchen from the bed area, with the RCU I can control them from anywhere in the van, the touch panel is backlight so can be operated in the dark, again I'll put more details of that unit on a separate page in the electrickery section as and when I get it built.

I'm also planning on having some white LED's in swivel mount spot light fittings to be used as reading lamps, the whole van will be run off it's 2 leisure batteries, and I want to be as power efficient as possible, so no tungsten or halogen lights in my van thank you very much :)

there's a place in America that sells very high brightness white LED's for 90 cents each, and they change just 2 dollars postage to anywhere in the world for a 20 dollar order, fine me somewhere in England that sells them for that price.. that's for the 1200 mcd output led's by the way, i.e. bloody bright. again when I get them and make the lamps up I'll cover them on the electrickery page.. but the site I'll be getting them from is http://www.lsdiodes.com/

Another thing I'm thinking of doing to the van.. I have 2 fuel tanks on her, the original idea to run on just the front one in England, and fill both up when abroad and diesel is a lot cheaper, I'm now thinking of using the second tank for greasle.. (cooking oil) diesel engines run perfectly well on it as long as it's kept at the right temperature, i've got plans on how to do this.. very easy, just a coil of pipe in the tank connected to the vans cooling circuit.. there'll be a cooling line going past the tank for the engine driven heater that's going in the back of the van, so I'll just tap off of the pipes as they go past the second tank, a few more fuel filters and a pump to pump oil from the can into the tank will be added too, then I'll pull up at the local chippy and get fish and chips, and a bucket of oil from the fryers for the van :)

If your the grassing type, don't bother, I'll be declaring what I'm doing to customs, and paying the duty payable.. 29 pence per litre of used oil I put in the tank, i've researched that part a little bit, and I know that I can never start on greasle because my engine is direct injection, no probs as I'll have a tank with diesel in it all the time, so I'll just turn over to greasle when the temp rises, tho I'd like to hear from someone who runs an Iveco TurboDaily on cooking oil, mines a 1997, with the 2.8 litre, direct injection turbo charged engine, My e-mail addy is on the home page of this site.

And for now that's about it, just waiting to hear about the van, and I'll be updating other parts of this site as I get the time, bought a new table saw the other week, as I'll have a lot of wood to cut when I get the van back, got some nice tools for xmas that'll help with the van's build.. I just need her back to begin. keep checking back here to see when things start to take off.