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.

Moving Forward Again at Last.

 Its been about 6 months since my last post... Not much has happened in that time other than life progressing as it usually does. But Ive been basically unable to do any useful work on my overland truck project in all that time and Ive found that to be very frustrating... a whole winter and spring and half of a summer with nothing to work on... That's not good for me :)

I was planning to go on my European moto tour this year as I recall, but I decided to postpone for another year for a couple of reasons...

1) I didn't really have a good plan for a motorbike in Europe yet... So I wasn't really ready.

2) I had committed to meet my sister and her husband in Hawaii in July this year... which is kinda in the middle of the touring season in Europe and I didn't want to be flying all over the globe for multiple objectives... way too expensive, but I also hadn't seen my sister for several years and didn't feel like declining the opportunity to meet up.

3) The money coming in from my working is pretty good right now, and with this truck project costing so much, I think it would be pretty stupid to turn down the money for the present... Im sure the company profit margins will decline soon enough, and then so will the employee bonuses, and seems like a better time to "take my leave" :)

So, Im still in Vancouver and still working , and still tinkering with the truck.

But the impasse is finally resolved.  The problem was that I needed to sell the dump box off the truck before I could do any prep work on the chassis or install any other stuff (like a sub-frame or the habitation box). I did get the suspension upgraded with longer travel parabolic springs, and I did get a set of rims for it for larger tires but that was about all. And I advertised the dump box on Craigslist here for the past six months but it just wasn't getting much interest. So, a couple of months back I fired up my old Facebook account (which had been inactive for about a decade!) and put it on Marketplace there, and that helped and after a couple of months I finally got a buyer... I got less money than I had hoped for ( a lot less than it would cost to get a new one thats for sure)..

Now it has no box on it, I can clean up all the rust and re-wrap the wiring harness.

But now the box is sold, so I can move forward.  First thing was to clean up the chassis and get rid of 15 years of rust and grime.  So a few sessions of working with a compressor and a needle scaler and its looking a lot better... There was a decent amount of surface rust but nothing structural. So so far so good. Now I paint on a rust converter to neutralize the remaining minor rust and turn the Iron-Oxide into Iron-Phosphate, and then coat that with an encapsulator (flexible paint).

And in the mean-time, Ive decided what to do about the sub-frame... which is a bit of a technical challenge.  There are a couple of different approaches to this... Many people go with a subframe that mounts to the chassis with a dozen or so spring tensioned floating bolts, and this would be the easiest way to go if I were to build it myself or through a local welding shop. But its not the best option in my opinion as it does still transfer tortional loads to the sub-frame and it leaves the subframe/habitation "floating" when things get rough or windy or unstable. The alternative is a pivot mounted sub-frame. Its a lot more complicated in some ways but it transfers zero torsion from the chassis to the sub-frame ands is a truly solid mounting base. I would prefer to go this way but its more complex and would take a lot of time and effort to build with a local fabrication shop... But there is a company in Oregon (near-by relatively speaking) that is producing these types of sub-frames en-mass... Its still very expensive, but thats the way Ive decided to go, so Ive committed to the spend and have placed my order :)

So, now I have a couple of months to complete my cleanup work on the chassis till I get the sub-frame. then I will likely need a month or so to fit the subframe on ... I just don't think it will be as easy as they seem to think it will be... (call me a pessimist :)  Then after thats on, I will place an order for the habitation box. There are two companies I could work with on this and I'm not sure which one I will choose, but I have some time to decide.  Ive already decided the dimensions of the box but I wont know where to put the door quite till Ive got the sub-frame mounted and can see where I can fit the slide out stairs... But, all in all, I should have the habitation box on the truck by about Christmas this year I think... and its also extremely expensive! 

So, the truck project is moving forward again and the big spending phase is well and truly in progress... OMG this project will be expensive... Its costing me way more than the up-side of staying at work during these "good times" is bringing in.  Im no doubt kidding myself here but Im hoping I will get some of the money back out of it when I decide to sell it, and the rest of the value is in the projecting and traveling... and Id have to pay for that portion in my retirement anyway... its already factored in to my rough financial plans... sorta... I hope?...      Ouch, the spending!

And I also did some crappy paving in my back yard to "secure" the steep slope in front of the parking area for the truck... Its so steep I need to use the 4WD mode of the truck to get it in there and even then it tends to churn the wheels and tear up the soil... so now its paved and should be good to go.  We shall see.

On to the next Project... and its a Doozey!

 

Here I am ... Still hanging around in Vancouver working for a silicon chip mega-corp... pining for other things but apparently too afraid to pull the pin and just go.

Yep, I still feel dependent on the income, but I give myself a bit of a break on that front because thats exactly how we are all supposed to feel in order to keep us all being productive members of the economy for as long as possible. So Im being a good little worker I guess.

And at least its being a fairly lucrative enslavement to the man...  compared to times past anyway. Im currently being paid more than ever before and the company is also doing very well for its self with very high demand for its range of products resulting in consecutive quarters of record revenue and profits... And the company has been sharing some of those profits with their employees more than they have ever done before in the form of some bonusses. So things are better than they have ever been on that front.

But that doesnt stop me from realizing that money isnt the same as time and at some point, as I get older and have less and less remaining time available, I will decide that my time is more valuable than the money they are offering. And that point is in the near future Im sure.

At this stage, the initial disengagement from work will be July next year when Im taking a few months off as a "sabbatical" and I may or may not do some more work for mega-corp after that at my discretion rather than theirs.

And in the mean-time I've been planning a moto trip to Western Europ next year and started making contacts to buy a moto over in Ireland. And on the home front, Ive been kitting out my Tenere 700 ready for another long ride in the Americas when I get back to that... But therein lies a problem, because Ive basically completed that build over the past summer and Ive little left to do on the bike other than ride it ... which I did do all summer around Vancouver, and it was indeed enjoyable, though not like a big trip. The bike is all set-up with panniers and protection and large fuel-tanks (500Km range at least), and steering damper and improved suspension etc... Just gotta go ride it now.

So Im in need of a new project while I wait for next summers planned big trip and am still stuck in Vancouver working for the man. (Looking for "The Next Big Thing" for me to work on). And like lots of people I go exploring for ideas on Youtube and have come up with "a good one!". 

And I did this about a year ago actually but didnt act on it any sooner because I didnt have a solid plan wrt work and travels, and I also had just bought the Tenere as a project at that point, but mostly because the base unit that I would need for this other project was unavailable. Its not that it was too expensive or an impossible dream, its just that these things are very uncommon over here in Canada and none were available for sale... But a couple of months ago one showed up on the local second-hand web site and I enquired and started working through negotiations etc.  And this past weekend I closed the deal and Im now the owner of a 2008 Mitsubishi Fuso FG 4x4 truck!

It looks pretty mundane now but its going to be the base of an Expedition vehicle that Im going to "build".

These things are quite common in Australia for overlanding, but as I said they are pretty rare over here in North America and in fact Mitsubishi is pulling completely out of the NA market this year so buying used is the only way to go now anyway. The reason they are pulling out is that they just cant compete with the domestic truck market (things like the Ford F550, and Ram 5500 etc). But that competition is a different beast and does not do what I want. The main drawback of those vehicles is that while they are 4x4 and have big diesel V8 engines etc, they are very long. The little truck Ive just bought is very short because of the "cab-over-engine" format and that makes them great for tight and rough terrain.

Anyway, I now have a 5 tone 4x4 Turbo diesel, and it cost me more than any other vehicle I have ever owned... more in fact than anything Ive bought other than my house! At present it has an aluminium tipper box and a couple of large winches and snow-chains and a bunch of sundry items that Ill be selling off as I convert to a 4-season expedition camper.

Why am I doing this?  Because I have learned that I like going on long slow "walkabouts" and that as I get older, solo moto-touring is really quite hard on the body and more than a little inconvenient and uncomfortable for a lot of the time. This "expedition truck" thing seems to me to be a lot more comfortable and similarly able to go to the places I want to... tho it costs significantly more to do it this way (but it also accommodates 2 people pretty well too for when I want company on my travels.)

But this project will be nowhere near as quick to complete as the motorbike (which is a good thing and largely why I chose it) and will also cost a whole lot more too (that is a bad thing, but Im hoping to mitigate that by the potential resale value).

 There is a lot of stuff to design and build for this...

 1) Wheel and suspension conversion.

2) Camper body design and shell installation.

3) Camper interior fitout.

4) Solar/Battery/Power design/fitout.

5) Water/plumbing design/fitout

6) Heating and Airconditioning fitout

All in all I expect the full build to cost about $130,000 to $160,000   ... Thats a huge amount of money but it would cost probably twice that to try to buy one or haver someone else make it for me to the same spec. And it will not be a single build effort either, where I cant use it at all till its fully done... Im planning to build it in stages and use it in the meantime while I figure out the next build stage. Ultimately, I want it to be a full 4-season camper (That means from fully arctic conditions to full desert to full jungle etc) and I want the truck and camper body to be able to fit in a 40' container for international shipping (way better than shipping as supercargo).

So, Ive now committed to the project and done the first big spend. More spending will ensue and Ill post updates as I progress. First upgrades should be the wheels and suspension, and then the most expensive other single item which will be the camper body... but first I have to carefully figure out what the interior layout will be (much thinking and sketching).

Thats my update for this installment.

Cheers

Situational Update

 Well, I may have messed up a bit... or maybe not?...

Last post I was describing the situation with my employer and their lack of responsiveness to a "rapidly changing compensation environment" for their engineering employees.

That situation has continued with little change Im afraid... a steady decline in the number of engineers employed there due initially to significantly higher salaries elsewhere, and now due also to a pervasive lack of belief in the company any more.

And in my last post I was also describing what I thought my own personal options were as a result of it all. Over the following several months, as I said, things have progressed along the same lines and Ive been feeling more and more internal pressure to take some sort of action... I did reach out to a couple of people I knew at other companies to see what was happening there, and I did in fact try interviewing with one of those companies, but it didnt seem like a good fit, so both sides decided to pass and move on... though I admit that if they had been more interested, it would have swayed my opinion to be more interested in turn... nothing to do with the actual inherent opportunity in a rational sense, just an emotional response... Im so "plastic" :/ 

But still my internal increasing pressure... So I decided it was time for an ultimatum to my existing employer ... It had become clear (not least through an in person visit and staff meeting at our Vancouver office of the CEO from way down in Arizona) that the company executive, while starting to make some compensation adjustments, were just not going to do enough to retain our experienced engineers. I decided that since I had been working with them for the past 20 years, Id be at least polite enough to give them the opportunity to retain me if they wanted... but I was not going to let them decide what that was worth, rather, Id tell them what I needed in order to stay.

So, I told my direct manager specifically what I needed to see within a month, or Id just leave and go ride my motorbike somewhere for the summer.  Ive known this guy for the full 20 years Ive been at the company and he is a great engineer and someone who I get along pretty well with as a manager... so it was uncomfortable for me to "hold his feet to the fire", but I felt it had to be done. And once done, I have to say that I immediately felt that "internal pressure" dissipate (because I had taken decisive action), but I also felt that I didnt really have a strong opinion about what I wanted the outcome to be of the three possible paths.

Now it was certainly not clear to me if my manager would want to keep me around that badly, or that he would have sufficient clout to get what I was asking for... I guessed Id find out within a few weeks. And in the intervening weeks I was planning my next actions...

If they simply denied my request, then Id have to leave (no point giving ultimatums unless you are willing to carry out the threat), and then Id either want to go ride the motorbike or I could look for a new job in earnest... And I did start feeling about for job openings again its true, but my main plan was another moto journey... Europe...

But Europe now is not the same as it was 6 months ago is it!... What with Russia invading Ukraine. And my original plan was of course to ride all the way through Europe and Russia from one coast to the other and back again... Well, I guess thats not going to be happening any time soon!... Bummer.

But it is getting late in the year to set that up and get it done before the weather gets bad... Seriously, I think Id need to start in March or April at the latest in order to fly over to Europe and buy a motorbike and get it set up correctly and then to ride from coast to coast and back... So that plan is off for now. So, the alternate plan would be to just ride around Western Europe for a few months, which is still definitely feasible though of course, Id be avoiding Ukraine and having to adjust plans as I go in case the situation changed suddenly.

Anyway, Id been pondering my options and starting to look into flights and motorbikes and visa requirements, as well as possible alternate employers and remote working options etc for a couple of weeks when my manager asked to have a chat (as I had of course been expecting at some point).

... And it turns out that I had read the situation about right... 

The company acceded to my "demands" and they have definitively met my compensation request as well as having a clear understanding that Im taking 6 months off next year starting in April to do my motorbike travel thing... The details of that are yet to be defined, but in short, if they want me back after my 6 month break, Ill do a couple more years of working with them before I really wrap things up, and if not, then Ill wrap things up early.

And with this result I have a couple of conclusions... One is that Im neither disappointed nor elated at the outcome... It seems I truly did not mind which path my life took at this point. Another is that my long stated goal of "wanting other people to leave the company first so that it increases the pressure on the company to the point that I dont have to leave to get appropriate compensation from them" seems to have worked just as stated... Though it did come with considerably more internal stressing and fretting than anticipated.

But now Im in a new situation that I had determinedly decided not to think through till now... And that is that I have now agreed to stay committed with my current employer while most of the other employees are still "in the wind" and are both steadily departing and certainly not feeling committed... I guess I will do the best I can to make them as happy with their current circumstances as possible to try to keep them with the company... its what I signed on to do.

And its going to be difficult for a few more months at least; although the company has been steadily increasing compensation over the past 3-4 months already... just not at the level that it needs to be... though its no where near as far from the "market rate" as it used to be.  But I have to say that having been in the industry for a few decades and seen the cycles first-hand, I feel there is a downturn coming within about a year or so... and it feels like a big one! We will have to see how things actually turn out of course, but if there is a downturn then I expect external job opportunities to seriously reduce and there would likely be a lot of industry lay-offs as well, which might mean those people who just changed employer for more $$$ are rather vulnerable... I guess I hope Im wrong, but time will tell.

And the final thought Ive been pondering here is that I had to push them really hard to get what I felt was right from them... There is no way they would have done it without my ultimatum... In a fair and just world it would have happened more or less by its self after a few months of the attrition we had been seeing, but it took 18 months and still they would not adjust things as far as I felt they needed too... But the world is not fair... and if you want something enough then you really have to push for it and be willing to take the consequences of failure as well if things dont work out how you want them to. How do I feel about it now that Ive got what I wanted but other employees have not (and likely wont unless they give their own ultimatums)... I guess Im mostly OK with it... I would certainly rather that the world was fairer, but given the Western Capitalist model that runs this part of the world, this result is exactly in line with how things work here. So yeah, its the way things are and I dont have the power to change them, but knowing the rules, I am able to play by them as well as the next guy.

Now lets see if I made "good choices" as we roll into the future :)

Cheers till next time.