Summer of Building the Truck

 Well, it took a few months for the rain to stop here (as usual) and it wasnt really till June that I was able to really get to work on the truck habitation build/rebuild.

Soooo many things to do... Here is what Ive done so far:

Installed the overhead cabinets that I built in the spring at either end of the bed.

Put a big decal on the rear wall of a Leunig cartoon that felt appropriate for people following the truck to read  :)

Tore out all the wooden framing and redid it with aluminium for the bed and the bench seats and then reinstalled all the solar power/battery system and three large water tanks in the sub-floor.

Designed and bent and welded an aluminium center console with a lock for the cab.

Rebuilt the framing for the kitchen cabinet in aluminium.

Fitted it with sink, stove, water kegs, and drawers.

Cut a huge hole in the side of the truck and turned it into an access door with latch and gas-lifts for under the bed (the "garage")... Still need to build the large slide-out tray for it.

3D printed a mounting case and extended the wiring from the solar charger/inverter control panel so its our from under the seat where it can be seen and used easily

Built the basic framing for the pantry cabinet 

Installed the water tank/heater... still have to do all the plumbing tho)

Installed the false-floor framing for the shower/toilet stall.

Glued in the side wall and floor for the shower stall.

Installed a solar heated water tank and the traction boards on the cab roof.

Thats what Ive got done so far... Soo much more to do... It will take me the rest of the summer just to get it roughly back to where it was last year... But then I have a week long trip around BC to take at the start of October... First "shake-down run with the new interior... Looking forward to it... b ut have to get the plumbing all installed for that trip so very busy for now.

A Winter of Accumulation

 It feels like its time for an update.

Well, of course, the world has gone all topsy turvy with the new administration in America taking a wrecking ball to the status quo on all fronts internal and international alike... And Canada seems to be one of their particular international targets at present, so things are pretty interesting here at the moment.

Ill leave the political stuff out of it though and get down to my world...

On the work front, things have continued to not go well for my employer now that the covid-demand peak has gone and its stayed bad so long now that the company couldnt hide from taking action any longer and they did a "reduction in force"and fired about 10% of the employees... but it didnt include me!.

Im not quite sure how I feel about that though, Id certainly have been happy taking a package (though it would have been small), working on my truck project here in Canada for the summer and then heading off on another big tour for the winter for a year or so and then deciding if I was fully retired at that point or wanted to get another job again. But, as described above, times are vey uncertain and now is probably not the right time to walk away from a well paying job.

So, it is what it is and Im still employed and being payed, so Ill take it as it is and Ill work through to the end of the summer at least and work on my truck project on the weekends... I still may head off at the end of the year to the south (if America is still letting us Canadians across the boarder by then??)

How about the truck status?

Well its been a typical Vancouver winter here with fairly mild temperatures, not much snow, but lots of rain most of the time. As such, Ive bee virtually unable to do anything on the truck for months.

So, Ive spent the past six months internet shopping and accumulating vast amounts of bits and pieces for the truck and pilling them up throughout my house while I wait for better weather.

Pictures of all the boxes of stuff:

I did manage to get a couple of big jobs done on the outside of the truck though... It now has a large 4.5m x 2.5m awning, and its also got proper heavy duty aluminium rear mug guards which Im glad to have gotten done.

So, whats next... as soon as it stops raining and I can do shop work in the driveway, Im going to uninstall the 2x4 wooden framed interior and convert it from temporary to final form with aluminium extrusion framing and nice panel work.

I did what I planned last summer and tried various things out in various places on the inside (I moved the batteries and inverter three times and the fridge twice)... so Ive got all the bits and I know mostly where I want to put it all and by the end of this summer it should be mostly complete :)

The current "rough installation".

Lets see what it looks like in six months.

Struggles with Truck Registration

Truck with old small wheels

Truck with new bigger off-road wheels (37" diameter)... They still seem pretty small, but thats because the truck is quite big... I cant put bigger wheels on because of the clearance to the steering and cab on the front wheels.

 When I bought the truck, it was registered and insured as a "commercial vehicle" which pretty much all vehicles with a GVW over 5000Kg are here in British Columbia... But I was not going to use it as a commercial vehicle and the insurance rates and safety inspection requirements for that category are rather prohibitive. 

So, when I bought it I got the seller to do the annual inspection, and I immediately had it changed to a "private vehicle" but to do so i had to de-rate it to a max weight of 5000Kg... done, no problem.

Since then, Ive done a number of changes to it and when Ive needed to drive it somewhere for whatever reason, I have to go get a day driving insurance permit for it at about $30 per day. But it is now at a usable level of completion, so I wanted to use it more often and the day permits get expensive quickly... So next step was to change its registration one more time to the "motorhome" category... which would mean far cheaper insurance and minimal restrictions on other technical factors as its not used for passengers or commercial purposes in general.

BUT... To do that, according to the rules in BC, it needs another safety inspection, and a weight certificate from a weighbridge.

So, I looked around for a local auto shop with the appropriate inspection license to do that for me... But, all the local places for cars dont do large vehicles, and all the places that do larger vehicles only do commercial vehicle inspections which are much more stringent and more expensive too.

Oh well, I signed up for the couple of hundred dollars extra and took the truck in... But its a bit of a scam on costs, since to use your truck you NEED this inspection certificate annually... and the truck mechanics know it, so they always find sudrie minor defects that they can charge exorbitantly to fix on the spot for you so you can get the damn inspection certificate... and in my case they claimed that in order to inspect the brakes properly they would have to take the wheels off to see (valid requirement), BUT, they claim the wheel removal and replacement would take upto 6 hours to complete! at about $150 per hour charge-out rate!!!   BULLSHIT!!!

I canceled the inspection but that left me no closer to being insured.

Sooo, I figured I would try to get around this issue by replacing the tires (which dont need to be replaced yet but will be within a year or so, so now is not a bad time)... Theory being that the tire shop would change the wheels quickly and cheaply, and if I went to a larger tire shop they would have the safety inspection license as well and could do their inspection while the wheels were off. (and they could make their profit on the tires rather than having to gouge me for minor little "invented" issues.

This seemed to be working out and the phone calls were made and appointments set up and all in all it would cost me a bit more than just the inspection but Id get nice new big wheels :)

So, I took the truck in on the appointed day and the tire team were good to go and the new tire were there ... and then I met the inspector... The GERMAN inspector!

Oh dear... he was a piece of work and as soon as he saw that I had drilled the chassis rails to mount the box on the truck he said... No, you need a authorized mechanical engineer to inspect that and approve it before Ill sign off on it!... So, Im screwed again! but this time Ive paid out a couple of thousand extra dollars for new tires that I cant really use without the valid inspection.

What to do??

Well, actually, the German inspector helped me out... He said he didnt think I needed the safety inspection to do the registration as a motorhome because he knew a guy who converted vans like this quite often and he never needed the safety inspection...

Anyway, after about a half a day of waiting and phone calls to other insurance agents, I connected with a particular insurance agent who said he could do what I needed and that it would cost no more than normal.

So, I went in to him and we filled in the forms, and it all went through OK with the BC insurance corporation, and I paid for 3 months insurance and the truck is no a "MotorHome"... No drama at all... though I have this form that clearly states I should have needed a signed safety inspection?  though Im sure the truck is safe anyway, Im not going to ask questions at this point :)

So, the truck now has its new wheels... and the spare tire rack is on and the interior lights are wired up and working, and the TPMS monitor and reversing camera all now work too... ongoing tinkering.

Welded up rear rack

Rear rack, storage box, and spare wheel mounted.

Next big project is to modify and fit the cab-habitat passthrough... means i need to cut very large holes in both the cab and the habitat box and get it all waterproofed and sealed up before the rains start up here in Vancouver... probably in a couple of weeks time.

Truck is now usable... sorta

 Im continuing to tinker away on the truck project whenever I have time and the weather is good... Its actually been a very rainy end of March this year so its slowed me down quite a bit.

Here is the progress so far.

Ive put in counter-tops and added a sink and plumbed water in a temporary form... a pressurized 19 liter  beer keg does the trick for now, and likewise, the sink drains into a 20 liter jerry can for now.

Slide-out table, counter-top, and floor covering

Then I added a two burner induction stove at the other end of the kitchen counter, and a small fridge freezer unit (purchased on Amazon, like most of the stuff Im fitting) next to that.

I then wired the stove and several 120V electrical outlets up and took the wires forward to the electrical cabinet...

Sink (with cover) and stove and countertop.

Water and drainage system that will work fine for weekend trips.

And as luck would have it, I received the shipment of all the solar equipment, so I spent a couple of days fitting all that stuff into the habitat.

The crated solar panels, batteries, and inverter.

Its a 3000W inverter with a built in solar charger. It takes the power from the 4x 375W solar panels on the roof and feeds the 2x 100AHrx 50V LiFePO battery packs... and they are pretty heavy at about 40Kg each.

Anyway, I got that all mounted in the box and then I got up on the roof and mounted the 4x big solar panels up there and hey presto, Ive got a functional 120V power system.

Drilled the first hole in the expensive white box... just a tiny little hole to let the wires in from the solar panels.

Fridge (red) above inverter/charger (yellow) and Batteries (black) with tape marking location of pass-through to cab on front wall of habitation box.

Batteries and solar disconnect switch.

First weekend camping trip... a shakedown to see how everything works.... Lots of things need to be added and adjusted.

Came home from the weekend trip and promptly cut a huge hole in the side of the box and added a new window... Much more light now... Ive got another one the same size for the opposite side of the seating area... Hopefully Ill get that installed over the next week, but I need to think a bit more about the next windows exact location because i cant very well move it somewhere else if I put it in the wrong place... and its a very expensive box to be cutting holes in :)

New window from outside view.

New window from inside view.

And the additions keep coming... will post more soon.

Finally got the box

 After 6 months of waiting, I finally got the habitation box onto the truck...

This is just a quick update to add a couple of pictures... The truck looks pretty odd at the moment though, as its still on its original wheels which are for a small urban delivery truck... Ill be changing those out soon for some significantly larger ones.  

Its also got minimal windows in at present... There are two other larger windows to be added ahead of the two small ones that are currently located in the sleeping area. I can fit them myself, so rather than paying for someone else's time to install them (which is pretty damn expensive by the way!), ill do it when Im ready.

At the moment, the interior is a completely blank space ready for me to do whatever I want... Its gonna take a while and Im going to do a trial fitting with everything roughed into place using framing lumber and ply-wood to figure out all the details. Ill give it a few trial runs to see if I like it and then when Im happy Ill convert the rough build into a higher quality finished version... Should take a year or so.

First pass framing things up... Ive got a bed platform, a couple of bench seats, and cabinetry outlines...

But for now, Im just happy to have all the major components of the truck, the sub-frame, and the box completed and paid for (well, mostly paid for).

More posts will follow as I do the rough fit-out :)

Another Step Forward with the Fuso

 Its been another couple of months and Ive taken another step forward with the truck project... I got a call from the company in Oregon saying the zero-torsion subframe I ordered was ready.

So, I got a one day temporary registration for the truck, took a day off work, fueled it up with a full tank of diesel and drove 500Km down to Portland Oregon. I had prepared earlier at home by building a wooden loading frame and bolting it to the bare chassis of the truck, so now all I had to do was load the subframe on (and the set of slide out stairs that I ordered with it), and then strap it down and drive it back home. 

I got there at about 3pm and they loaded it all up with their fork-lift (the whole thing weighs in at about 600KG or so) and lashed and bolted it three ways from sunday so it wouldnt move... The ride down from Vancouver was rather uncomfortable because without any load on the back the heavy suspension was as rigid as a steel beam and even a nice 6-8 lane highway isnt that smooth with a truck in this condition... So I lashed the load down pretty good.

Then, I drove back to Vancouver. The ride back was quite a bit better than on the way down due to the extra 600Kg, and round trip 1000Km took me about 11 hours total so I did OK.

Then I went back to work for the rest of the week and started doing the work to mount the frame to the chassis on the weekend. It took me about 3 full days to get it all bolted on securely, which was quite a bit faster than I thought it might be... It cost about twice as much as Id hoped it would, but Im pretty happy with it now and Im ready for the next step.

The "axial Pivots are on the forward section of the subframe and there is one on each side allowing the truck chassis rails to move independently up and down at the back end. 

And the "twinned" rear crossmember pivots that allow the rear end of those chassis rails to move in opposite directions without the torsion loads transferring to the sub-frame.

Support brackets for the rear crossmembers to attach to the chassis rails... I had to make a few spacer blocks and drill about two dozen half-inch holes in the chassis but it was not too bad on the difficulty level, though I did destroy several drill-bits doing it all by hand with a battery powered drill and no cutting fluid (cos Im drilling mostly horizontally rather than vertically with a drill press where its all much more controlled.

Stairs in "close quarters ladder mode"

Stirs in fully extended mode

And that next step was waiting for some more bits to arrive... Which was the new bullbar and roof-rack that I ordered and they showed up a month or two later and were duly fitted to the truck in a couple of weekends. 

Bullbar, roofrack and brush-guards added.

But Ive also placed an order for the foam/GRP habitat box too... Its also extremely expensive and takes a few months to get made, so Im not expecting that till about end of January, but here is a rough picture of it.

The windows and door will move around a bit, but they will be cut into the panels after assembly (the habitat gets shipped as a huge flat-pack and you either have to assemble it yourself or pay someone with the large work-space and the right tools etc to do it for you) so for now its still flexible, and Im back to waiting.

Thats all for this update.