Road trip!

Well, not much of a one to be honest, but it was good to get Brian off the drive!

We went to glorious Sunny Hunny for breakfast.

I had the small breakfast.



Yes. That's the small one! If you're heading to Hunstanton then I recommend the Tamworth Tearooms.

The view was good.....





But much improved after J decided to move Brian to where we could see him.



However it was a windy day, so the drive back was eventful. I've tried a couple of videos to capture the ambiance of Brian on a windy day.

Hopefully you'll get the sense of Brian barrelling along at just under 60mph, which seems to be his favourite speed, and the level of noise! The sound of tin rattling comes from under my seat where the cooker is and is the surround for the hob itself.

And now I shall go and finish the second of the beanie hats!

New wheels are here!

To be fair to Retrodubs, they arrived on Wednesday this week, but it's been a REALLY long week for lots of non-Brian related reasons. Suffice it to say that the wheels were the high point!

We had finally made a decision from the choices available and ordered them on the Friday (see previous post) and had been told Tuesday or Wednesday, it would depend when the Lovely Justin could get the tyres fitted.

Tuesday came and went, and Wednesday dawned bright and fair. I phoned the Lovely Justin at lunchtime to say that there were no wheels as yet. He informed me that they were coming by NightFreight, and they would be with us that day. There was no tracker number (NightFreight don't do them) but he said that if there were no wheels by late afternoon then he would phone the courier and sort it out.

They arrived around 4, if memory serves me right, and I received an excited text from J to show me.





Swiftly, we were home and eager to unpack them. (Sharp eyes readers may see Brian's fridge in the background!)




The wheels were individually wrapped in bin bags, well taped, and with thick cardboard over the wheels.





When fully put together they look like this, but they aren't going on Brian just yet. He's being booked into the garage in Swaffham to have his front end raised first, and the whole lot put on together.

The wheels were these and the tyre package can be found here.  The tyres are appropriately load bearing as well, which is a very good thing.

Lovely!

1 down, 4 to come........

I'll do a proper photo post with proper links when the new wheels arrive, but they are finally ordered from Lovely Justin at Retrodubs. They will be gloss black with polished rims. Mmmmm! Retrodubs also do a tyre package available when you purchase 4 wheels, and so we took advantage of that and the whole lot was £543!

The customer service from Lovely Justin was also fantastic. I emailed them in the evening, around 7ish, because I couldn't get the payment to go through. PayPal was messing about. I had an email back by 8pm, solving the issue and clarifying what vehicle I wanted wheels for so they could make sure the right nuts were sent, and generally being professional and great!

I ordered on Thursday night, and phoned to pay over the phone at Friday lunchtime. I've been told that the wheels, complete with tyres, should be with us Tuesday or Wednesday, depending on how soon they can do the tyres. Again, that's a good bit of customer service. The tyres are the correct ones for the van, load bearing to the right level.

We've also picked up 1 wheel today, £5 from eBay, for the spare, hence the title of this post - 1 down, 4 to come!



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Changing the rear lights

Over the last few weeks we've had a bit of a brake light problem.  In other words, we haven't had any.  This is an issue.  So we did the sensible thing, and had a stooge around the interwebs, looking for a pair of replacements.


We had already checked bulbs, connections, brakelight switches (hydraulic switch under the front end - who knew!) and there was no response.  The brake lights were intermittent, and life was not good.

We ended up ordering from Megabug and the items here arrived within a couple of days, well packed and quickly sent.

So this Saturday, we decided that the weather wasn't going to get any better, and if we didn't do it this weekend then there would be another 2 weeks until Brian could go anywhere.  This was not good news.  I wrapped up well, and got in there.

I will point out now that this is an almost literal statement.  I can get in the engine bay up to my waist if I need to, and use both hands.  Hence why I can show you pictures like this.....

This is the back of the campervan light unit, as seen from inside the engine bay.  This back cover needs to come off to expose the wiring on the inside.  It just unclips, and ours needed a little bit of a jiggle to get it off.




Yes.  Even a person with the most basic electrical knowledge could see that these two things should be connected, and that without them connected then the lights will not come on.  The sharper eyed amongst you will notice that the spade connector on the loom side is busted.  This could well be the reason it wouldn't stay on lol!  Also, the bulb holder doesn't clip all the way through into the unit properly.  Whilst this isn't a major problem, it could be why the bulb wasn't connecting properly.

Basically there was a fair few issues, and we went ahead with the change.



This is a piece of VW brilliance, in my humble opinion.  There are 4 nuts, and they all have a flange on them. To get them off I needed a deeper than average socket, 8mm, and a long handle (for most of them, a couple needed the ratchet because of space issues caused by the battery!)  The nuts go onto a bolt that has a plain shank, and then the thread starts, enabling the person who is in the engine bay up to her waist whilst currently getting rained on, to line up the nut swiftly and easily.  Fabulous.  Loving your work VW.



Bolts were undone, and the whole unit brought forward.



The new unit was offered up next to it.  This was part of our cunning plan of Not Getting The Wires In The Wrong Place. We unpopped from the older unit, and popped straight onto the new one.




Da-dah!  There we go!  New wires all in the right places.



New unit though, did not have the plain shank onto the thread.  It just had the thread.  This was not as useful for the person up to her waist in the engine bay, getting rained on, and now with cramp in her legs.  Just saying.



The new unit was offered up and all was good.  The eagle eyed amongst you will notice that Brian has no bulb in his reversing light section.  He's a 1972 camper, and reversing lights were not compulsory until 1973, however because he's a cross-over bay, he has the light unit set up for it ready for when it did become compulsory.  He has none of the gubbins to make it actually work though!




From the inside, with new spade connector clearly attached.




And the completed light unit!  We did the passenger side on the Sunday, as the rain was getting too much by the time we had completed the drivers side and I was wet.  The passenger side was easier than the drivers side, mainly due to the battery being *right* in the way on the drivers side, so the pictures have come from the passenger side, due to the space and the dryness!

We did have to have a little fiddle about, because when we tested the passenger unit it appeared to be stuck on brake.  This was a moment of almost swearing, to be honest.  The drivers side was fine, the passenger side was too bright, with no alteration when the brake pedal was depressed, unlike the drivers side which then brightened under braking, as it should do.  All it took to fix it though, was a chance remark of "What's the worst thing that could happen if we swapped the wires around on the brake light?" and there we go!

Everything was working well and happily!

Of course, Brian couldn't be having that.  He did grumble about going down the road, and managed to make his accelerator pedal stick for no reason, and now the passenger door handle is sticking a bit, and the leak on the passenger door has got a bit worse, to be fair, so Brian is intent on keeping us busy!

As a further aside, we've also had a problem with the insurance.  I would recommend that everyone checks their insurance status on askmid.co.uk, as we had the grumpy letter this week telling us we weren't insured even though we have been since August.  It's dealt with now, but would have proved difficult if we'd have been stopped for anything.... like not having any brake lights for example!

Cup of tea anyone?

Oh yes. It has finally happened! Last Saturday we had our first Brian brew.

Brian's cooker has long been a source of debate. It is an original dormobile one, found under the front passenger seat.



As you can see, the seat pulls up towards the windscreen and flattens itself out of the way and the cooker comes up. (I'll do a whole post on his cooker when I am home in daylight to take pictures! It's really rather excellent!)

The chap who had had Brian before us had never used the cooker, so we replaced the gas pipe with standard orange rubber hose, approved to kite mark standards for gas, and slid the metal housing back over the top again. It can be sort of seen here.





The red is my new seat belt, the white is the side of the hob top, and the hose is in between. The only problem that we have is this one....





The gas bottle doesn't fit in the cupboard designed for it! However, as we will be fitting a new interior that J is going to make himself, he will make the door wide enough. It's not a massive trauma, by any standards.

As you can see, it all works beautifully, and tea was made! The first of many......

Wonderbag? Wondertea!

So like I said the other day, at the Caravan and Camping (or whatever it was called) show, we bought a Wonderbag.
The woman we got it from was very chatty, very helpful, and very clear about how good these are. They are made of material and some are filled with polystyrene, and some aren't. Ours isn't. It's full of foam chips, which are recycled.  There's more technical details on their website, here.












So first I had to find a suitable sized pot.
Then I made casserole the way I usually would.



It needs to be made in a pot with a tight fitting lid.
Then it goes into the Wonderbag.  I put mine in on a teatowel.  I'm very good at spilling things sometimes, and I do not want to mark this!






The 'lid' goes on top of the pot, and then the drawstring is drawn up tight.
Then it's just left on the kitchen side.  For real.  Just left.  This is the slightly difficult bit for me, because I want to poke what I'm cooking.  If I was to open the bag, then it wouldn't work, because the whole point is that it is a massive insulating bag.
This isn't a new idea - hayboxes and the like have been made for centuries, but this is great.  Not only does it match the colour of the glorious Brian, (although it is reversible, should we every get a grey camper....)
Obviously the big question is "Does it work?"  Well, I'll let you know in about 4 hours.....


update!

It was six o'clock in the end before we got around to eating tea. It had been in the Wonderbag for just under 5 hours. It was gorgeous! It was fairly hot, everything was cooked through nicely (although the carrots could have done with a bit longer according to the man) and even the meat was tender and juicy.

Now, the man tells me that this is Not a cooking blog, and so I'm Not to talk lots about cooking. So I won't. Probably.

Anyway, the upshot of the wonderbag is that it was great! Loved it! (An Wonderbag don't know I'm writing about them, so I don't have to say that!)

Now to stick cartoon pieces on the fridge!

Fridge-tastic!

Over the last few weeks we have tracked fridges on eBay. We've watched them, bid on them, and seen them go at the last second when someone had had a bidbot to bid for them.

But this time .......... We WON!!!



It's very tidy, and works well. Chap had it running when we got there to pick it up, and it was still really cold when we got home 3hours later. That means the seals are good!

It's a Dometic rm2262, (and if anyone had a manual in English, that would be great - we downloaded one in Norwegian....) and it is bigger than your average campervan fridge, but that suits us. It has meant some changes in the way that we had thought about having our interior.

We have now gone back to the plan that we both liked in the first place! We're not going to put a hob in, because one of the coolest points (for me) about Brian has always been the cooker under the front seat. It's there - so we are going to use it. That just means installing a sink an the fridge. Obviously we'll have to change the gas piping because we don't know how old it is, and you can't muck about with gas. Bad things happen when you take risks with gas!

We ended up going over to Norwich for a few bits, and went to Drayton Caravans and the chap there was really helpful, tried our gas fittings to check they were the right kind, and was very reasonably priced. It's a fair way for us, but we'd go there again!

So that was this weekend! And it's half term this week, so I promise I'll get that Caravan and Camping Spending Spree post done!

Slider door done and dusted!

So this is 4 nights work. 2 hours to stick cartoons in the right places. (Should we get out more? Nope. This is for Brian!)



We finished it tonight. The PVA on the back was dry and so.......




...... Yep. We fitted it at 10:45 at night. I mean, why not!




It took two of us to fit it as the door card needed supporting whilst the screws were put in. The door handle was remove to make the job easier, and then put back.




It's up! Looking good!




It also slides, which is important in a sliding door.




A quick pic showing the passenger and sliding door cards. You can also see the very red seat belt that has been fitted to the drivers side. The passenger side is still waiting.....

But now it's bedtime.

Night night world.

Night night Brian!

Motorhome and Camping show.

Sooooooo tired.

Six hours of walking around the Motorhome and Caravan Show at the NEC Birmingham.

Six hours.

But at the same time, it was easy to get tickets to, easy to get to, easy to park at, easy to walk into, incredibly expensive to eat and drink at (so we took sandwiches this year) and had some good stuff.

There will be a proper post about Good Stuff tomorrow. We spent a fair bit, but I want to be able to get the web links to everyone's pages.

Top part of the day was watching the discovery of just how cool QR codes are by the child. He's had a tough week, but he loved today because he could point the phone at a square of black and white spots and it would go straight to a website! How exciting is that!

Obviously there are no photos of the joy of this discovery, as he had the phone to do the reader thing.

Anyway Brian has loads of new stuff. Photos tomorrow. I'm KNACKERED!


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More cutting

There is more cutting out being done.




Why?




Because now we're on the slider door. This one is hardboard and was already in place, but uncovered.

And it's massive.......

Finally finished the door cards! (Well sort of....)

Right, the epic door card post!

We started off with blanks, bought from the Vanfest, for £25 a pair.  They are predrilled MDF.

This is a blank, with the clips from the old door card already clipped in.  They were a bit of a nightmare, to be honest.  The clips were fairly new, showing that Brian has had some work done before.  His original door cards were a beige vinyl, and are fine, just Not For Us.

So anyway, back to the "What We Did."

We put the clips in, then covered each clip with a square of folded over masking tape.  This was to stop the papers sticking to the clips.  The second time we didn't do it, and I'm pretty sure we regret that now!

We then went over the masking tape with fabric tape.  On the second one, we went over the clips with just a strip of masking tape.  The jury is still out on which one is the best.

Then the cutting began.  We had sourced a whole load of comics from eBay, all Dandy or Beano, and the whole family got involved with cutting out the individual cells from the comic strips.  We weren't fussed on size or shape, for obvious reasons - they were all getting over laid anyway!

We laid them all out to see if we had enough.  We didn't bother doing this with the second one as we could tell we had enough.  With the first one though, we just wanted to be sure, so that we didn't get halfway across the board, and just not have enough!

We stuck them all down.  We used 2/3 PVA to 1/3 water, and then dolloped a little bit more glue in, just to make sure.

Once we'd stuck them all down, we put 2 coats of PVA over the top to seal them and to put a bit of shine over the top.  Same proportions as before.

Then we fitted them to the door.  Immediately, we knew we'd done the right thing!

Obviously, we then had to repeat almost everything, in order to put one on both sides!   This side is the drivers side.

And here it is finished!  Each one takes about 3 nights, we've decided.

We have had to do some trimming, because the window winders wouldn't slip straight on.  Unfortunately, we had to Dremel Dennis the Menace's head a bit, but he won't mind.  However, the window winder for this side wouldn't just slip on, so is at a mates house to be reamed out a millimetre or so.

One of the favourite sections for the boy!

The passenger side winder hole also needed Dremelling out a bit, and then fitted straight on without any hassle.

Now there's just the sliding door card to go.  The Man is already cutting out, and I must join him.  Laters people!

Window winders

Over the last couple of days, the world has been all about these.


Brian's new window winders for the front doors.



The winders themselves came from C&C when we went to Vanfest 2012. We bashed the black knobs off with a hammer and fitted skateboard wheels and bearings.

It sounds easy like that, but there was a bit of fiddle finding the right bolts, washers and nuts, and then getting them cut to the right length. All that remains is to mount them on the door card!