Shakedown Truck Trip

 This Blog has been pretty boring over the last year or two I know... Mostly boring updates on my CamperTruck build process... which I admit has been taking quite a bit longer and costing quite a bit more than planned,   But you know thats how big projects go... ask any government... ever!

But, the time has come to get the truck back on the road for a shake-down and see if all the stuff Ive been building and adding to it works as planned, and holds up to road use.

Here is the state of the "build" prior to the trip:

The hot water tank and "plumbing closet"

The back end of the box... Bed and dinette areas.

The front end of the box... Kitchen and Bathroom areas.

And the "required" feature of the shower with hot water and good pressure... I leave it to the reader to decide where that "requirement" came from :)

On with the show...

Sooo, the plan was hatched between me and my SO, I-Fan, to take a week off work and go see some places that we had not been to in the lower half of British Columbia here... Its a biiig province, so a week is only really enough time to do a big loop through about half the province on the back roads with stops for various scenic destinations and hikes etc.

We started here in Vancouver, drove north through Squamish and Whistler and Pemberton, then up over the Duffey Lake Rd to Lillooet and across to Cache Creek, which is all paved highway though it is pretty wind through the mountains.

Then we hit the back roads heading west for a few hundred kilometers through a more arid landscape and through the middle of one of the large ranches (The Gang Ranch) and back up north to hit a paved highway for a short ways. 

then back on the dirt for a few hundred more Km to a very nice back-country lake (Chilco Lake).

Then back out to the highway and west for a couple hundred more and then that highway becomes dirt for a big descent down a mountain side to a biggish town on a deep inlet called BellaCoola.

We hung out there for a couple of days and then caught a ferry across to the far north end of Vancouver island at Port Hardy.fo

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.