I had frowned at the South African grills because I felt people were paying well over the odds for a grill that was just a ‘bit’ different in the UK. However, the first time I saw Terapodz in the flesh was at the T3 Bus Meet. To me they added extra function and extra character above and beyond a wrap around to the indicators.
So these were on my Xmas shopping list. Fortunately my wife had caught wind of my wanting and bought them as an early Christmas present. Suffice to say, mid December I was adding these bad boys…
Lights out for installTerrapodz fitted
All back together 🙂
Sorted 🙂
Update (2019). All of the surface mount LEDs have failed on one lamp, and some have failed on the other. This happened over a period of months so really disappointed as they were not cheap. Would I recommend them…No. However, there is a second generation coming out I am told, but I can’t get my money back so it’s going to be a repair job or take them off!
My wife Mandy had seen the front tables fitted in other vans and thought it would be a good addition to ours. I wasn’t convinced initially, but the more we camped the more it seemed like a good idea. We were continually using the rotated front passenger seat to position the TV when in day mode, and then we would drop the cooker cover down and re position it there to elevate so we could watch TV in bed. We also struggled to find a place for pots we had used, but the addition of the front table over the drivers seat has been a massive bonus for both TV and any pots. This has freed up the passenger seat if we want a change of viewpoint in the van.
So we bought both the leg and the leg mount from NLAVW website. They seemed to be the best prices. However, both parts were the earlier type Westfalia items. This wasn’t a massive issue to be honest and I decided live with it. The items were galvanized and weren’t that pretty so I choose to color code grey. I already has a tin of etch primer and brought a can of spray paint from Halford. I scoured the car paints and couldn’t find anything that fitted the bill. I found a colour that looked like it could work in a miscellaneous section more for household work. It was called ‘Industrial Grey’ . So i got home and gave it a coat. I couldn’t believe how good a match the paint was against the carpet.
Colour coded and ready to fit
I did the same with the leg. When it came to fitting the bracket i decide to take the leisure battery out. I chose to drill a small pilot hole in the body to provide a good biting point for the self tappers. I didn’t want to damage the battery while doing this so i played it safe. Anyways, all went smoothly and within an our it was all fitted and ready to go. 🙂
My van came with a Sherpas Combi Translift roof rack system fitted. I didn’t know at the time that some of the components were missing and just saw it as a roof rack much the same as you get from any motor factors. The previous owner gave me the impression that the leaking roof may have something to do with the way the system was mounted to the roof. So i took the whole lot off just to be on the safe side. It transpired that the water ingress was down to a perished skylight seal but i didn’t miss the rack initially.
However, the more i thought about it and the more i looked into the Sherpas system, the more I realized that it was a pretty well designed and functional addition to the van. The fact that the rails slide off the roof allowing easy mounting of things like kayaks and roof boxes made it pretty darn cool.
I had the alloy roof runners that mounted to the roof, and the main cross members mounted to them. There were some components that i had cleaned up and tried to refurbish, but they weren’t brilliant and could really have done with replacing. So I set to looking for the parts to make my Translift complete. I searched on Gumtree one day and saw a complete set of bars and sliders going for £20. This was ridiculously cheap as they are pretty rare and hard to get hold of. So I snapped them up 🙂 …..
Gumtree bargain 😉
So I added them to the van and here you can see the system in action. The top rails slide of and position at the side of the van for easy access
So I was pretty happy. But I continued to search to find some of the extras like the locks to secure the rack sliders to stop theft, and kayak holders. . I found another complete set of on E bay, but the price was quite a lot more expensive. Probably more realistic in the grand scheme of things. This was a complete system with all of the bells and whistles that i was missing. At £200 it was a lot of money, but I know these don’t come available very often.
So it’s now complete 🙂 .Here you can see the rack from above with my new 200watt solar array attached 🙂
Unfortunately my van never came with a night heater fitted. It must have been removed at some point in the vans life prior to me owning it. We lived with it for a period of time, but I knew it was something that i would want to get sorted at some point in the future. I managed to buy a second hand one from a guy on the Brick Yard forum.
I brought it as an unknown entity and stripped it down to find that the motor had blown and the blower assembly had seized.
On the bench for stripdownStripped and evaluatedDe-coked components
I came to the conclusion that the build up of coke in the combustion chamber probably cause the motor to stop and burn out. So after a strip down and de-coked the of all of the moving components, I had gotten the fan assembly spinning again quite nicely. I could not find a replacement motor so decided to have a go at repairing the faulty one. This involved soldering a very fine wire in place but i did it and was really happy with the progress 🙂 .
Unfortunately my Eber resurrection failed at the last hurdle. I was informed that the heater was in actual fact a petrol model after I posted a picture of what I thought was the glow plug on a forum. I was told that it was in fact a spark plug, so it to an abrupt holt as my is diesel .
Advice had been given previously that i was wasting my time trying to resurrect a 25 year old heater as it was never going to be as reliable as a new one. I wanted to prove to myself that it could be done but the fact the heater i had bought was the wrong fuel type meant that i had to throw the towel in and look for an alternative. I was reluctant to throw good money after bad and buy another questionable second hand unit. Fortunately a forum member suggested I considered getting a newer unit and that he actually had a selection of heaters for sale. So after a few pm’s I settled on a Webasto Airtop 2000st.
The original Eberspacker heater box had already been refurbished by myself previously with a good few coats of Hammerite black in anticipation of the original heater being completed and working.
Original Eberspacher housing
Fortunatly new heater was small enough to fit in this so it would not have to take up space inside the van. Below you can see all of the parts together, including new heater hose which bridges the gap from heater unit into the van
New Webasto and original Eber housing
Here you can see the heater is mounted in the housing and a register plate has been screwed in place for inlet and exhaust.
The original Eberspacher controller was removed from the right hand side of the van to make way for the Webasto controller. The Eber controller was also linked by a loom to the timer unit that mounts at the front of the rock and roll bed so this came out at the same time. That gap would now be filled by a small square clock which was sent as a good will gesture from the fellow that i bought the heater off 😉 .
So all that was left to do was to fit the unit to the van. Knowing that there would be a lot of work underneath the van, and i would struggle to get access to do the job properly, i decided to take it to a local trusted garage. I loaded all of the parts i wanted fitting and dropped the van off.
A day or so later I collected Wolfgang with a fully installed and working night heater. I can’t recommend these units highly enough and wouldn’t want to be without one now 😉
I decided i didn’t want to go upwards with roof bars and top boxes because I wanted to increase the flexibility as far as restricted height car parks were concerned. So looking at other options I saw the Fiamma Ultrabox 320. This was designed to go on the back of campers and motor homes and fits on the bike rack I already had installed.
So after deciding this was the way to go I looked on Ebay, Gum Tree and finally found one that met our price bracket on Pre-Loved. It was virtually new and only been used once before the owners sold the motorhome. We got the box for £140 which was a massive saving from the £400 odd they cost new.
We decided to make a weekends camp out of collecting the box as it was Lincoln way. We stayed at a campsite we had used earlier in the year (Links Lanes Campsite). The weather was a darn site warmer when we collected the box in June. 🙂
So the box sat on the back of the van quite happily and would have performed as expected. However, the front of the box seemed to seat more on the furthest rail from the van which i felt would would put unnecessary strain on it. So with a little marine ply and a short baton of wood I created a spacer plate to drop into the back rail to make up the distance. This was varnished to protect against the element and then bolted to the bottom of the box. (photos to follow)
Also, I felt that the stark white of the Fiamma products were great if attached to most motor-homes or caravans. But it didn’t compliment my vans colours. So in a matter of weeks I had dropped the box off and had it colour coded ‘Cherry Red (LA3E). This was going to prove to be a massive bonus on future trips in 2015
The real reason for this additional storage space was to remove the requirement to have the external camping components in the van. This includes the tables chairs mats etc. This is / was great as we can pull up on a campsite when it is raining and not have to hoof the outdoor gear outside before we can use the living space. This is what we carry in the back box:
Two large camping chairs, two foot stools, collapsible bucket, wash bowl, BBQ, mallet, Fiamma awning tie down and awning mat and a Utility tent for that all important item …the portaloo.
The first thing I did to protect my seats was to get a cover for the front. I knew the beaded covers were a retro thing and thought at least it would stop the wear and tear on the front seats. So we approached the local motor factors and they had a set of covers in that were 20 years old at £7.99 each(still the same price tag). We bought both and found that they were selling on the internet at £30 each. 🙂
So we all know that the fabric in the Atlantic is rare right? So I set to trying to protect the most used part of the van…the seats. It would make you laugh to find how cheap this was. I bought a set of full luxury seat covers from Halfords that were pretty much in Westfalia Grey and covered the rear seats in a matter of minutes!
OK, so it’s not Atlantic fabric for those that get exited about that, but for me it is more about not having to really worry about the rarity issue and just enjoy the van.
The front Captain Seats were a little more difficult to fit. My wife Mandy modified the sides to cater for the arm rests. She did this with Velcro after cutting up the sides. So in conjunction with the beaded cover, the seats are now very well protected. Maybe just a little cover for the arm rests in light grey and job is a gud un 🙂
When I purchased the van my canvas was looking tired, stained and moldy. Like the H Bar assembly, it wasn’t something that stopped us using the van. However, It was something that I could only live with for so long as our eyes were continually drawn to it when camping. So the decision was made to change the canvas and ended up going for a GoWesty option from Campervan Culture in light grey.
After looking at some videos I had come to the conclusion that I was going to attempt the fitting myself. I plucked up the courage and one Friday afternoon, booked the afternoon off work and set to stripping the old canvas out….
And replacing the new….
The install took substantially longer than anticipated. At 9pm I threw in the towel and got up early the following day to carry on. I finally finished it late afternoon on the Saturday after a couple of heavy downpours 🙁
All was great until I got up the following morning in excruciating pain. I had issues with my shoulders previously, and the rolling around in confined spaces in awkward positions had aggravated the problem. Long story short I ended up having three weeks off work with tendinitis in the shoulder 🙁 . Not good!
I saw these fridge vents on Ebay and realized that they were actually produced by a friend of mine. He had one that had a slight imperfection in it and got it at a ‘mates rate’ price :). The old vent was starting to show its age and had dis-coloured quite badly. It was only a matter of time before rust would have set in and the paint would start flaking off.
The replacement has the a additional benefit of housing a 12volt socket so win win 😉 . I wired this into the 12 volt power switch that had been installed under the sink to feed the DVD player. This way the power would only be supplied to the socket when required. This would probably be in conjunction with the mood lighting we also had wired to the same power switch.
Table out to reveal ventTable in place, socket still accessable
We had owned the camper for about six months and found that the standard lighting wasn’t ideal for relaxing and watching the TV. So we bought a small battery powered set of Christmas lights which created a nice ambient light source. However, these had to be positioned every time we wanted to use them and this was proving a tad inconvenient.
At one of the previous local campervan meetings I had seen a van that had some mood lighting in the rail on the left of the van. This was just what I was looking for. On a trip to IKEA I spotted some strip lighting that looked like it would fit the bill. It came with a controller pack which allowed the selection of specific colours or disco modes.
Testing the IKEA Lights
So I bought the kit and after a little tinkering the lights were mounded in place using the double sided foam pads. These were than wired in to a switch underneath the sink unit that provided power to the DVD player. This gets used every time we camp so its been a worth while addition. I think the kit was £35 at the time which included 4 strips that are linked together by a short ribbon and a longer ribbon to link the controller to the lights. See link here
This modification is quite a contentious one on, but one I wanted to make all the same. Most of the time when on electric hook up we supply a four gang extension socket from the single access point near the rear seat / rock n roll bed. However, occasionally we want to use that single socket on its own and it was proving a pain when the adaptor kept coming out of the euro socket every time we wanted to change from the four way to desired appliance.
Euro socket with UK adaptor
So the only real option was to change the socket to a UK one. This is how it was done for anybody thinking of doing it…
Removed the rear seat and the internal components, along with the rear table and some internal gubbings in one of the cupboards underneath that table to gain access to the socket itself. The socket was also removed!
Progress
Next I masked off the surrounding coachwork to prevent any damage while i used some power tools to open the hole enough to allow for the UK socket.
Area masked off so as not to damage the surrounding coachwork
From there it was just a case of plodding along and wiring the new socket in place. The day ended late as you can see from the picture 😉
Late night finish
From there it was really just a case of poping every back in to place. But first i cleaned the rear seat bench. It was very dirty and probably housed best part of 25 years dirt and grime. Found 2 forks and a load of playing cards when i took it out 😉
.
