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.