Roadtripper's Caravelle tinkering

[roadtripper]

Also a quick report of our roadtrip to Loch Tay.



Basically 5 members of the group were disappointed that we didn't find extensive snow, 1 member (me) was rather glad as I'd want to have the van in a snowy carpark first. So we didn't explore quite as far as I would have done in the XC70 (with CC2 and AWD and a decade of knowing what it can and can't do)

We did get up to the snowy area around the Lawers Dam though and found a kindred spirit (or at least the van - anyone on here?)



We also got out to Rannoch Moor, one of my favourite places in the country. Wasn't quite as peaceful as normal as the railway was tipping great truckloads of fridge sized boulders into the yard at the station to transport down the line for engineering works. The weather cleared for our hike though and I did get to see a vehicle I'd love to use - I'm a long term fan of the proper Defender and as may now be apparent I'm quite keen on railways...



We also visited Aviemore and, unexpectedly, the Strathspey Railway was running so we took a trip. There seemed to be quite a lot of the T5/T6 crew stocking up at the Aviemore Lidl too!



All in all a great roadtrip. The Caravelle did what we got it for and prepped it for very well, a camper we don't happen to sleep in.

The new red low level cabin lighting running off the Beaudens power pack worked very well.

The bungee cord additions to our tailgate rain shields really helped.

We didn't get a chance to try out our attempt at a stub side awning, though once MrsRT had finished sewing and assembling it it didn't have quite the magnet holding strength we had hoped for.

 

[doodahoops]

A day of tinkering with the van today.

First job was fitting a switch to disable the power tailgate so it doesn't close on the kitchen:

Disabling Electric Tailgate Auto\Pressure Sensitive close

This has been a concern of mine for some time and rather than continue to accidentally hijack this thread I thought I'd start a new one. The problem The short summary is that I have an electric powered tailgate on my T6.1 and, as can be seen in my avatar, I also have a rear kitchen and rig...

www.t6forum.com

I also trialled a bungee from the base of the tailgate ram to the locating peg on the tailgate, this allows me to wrap the rear of the rain guards around it and secure with a couple of small clamps. It might help in wind.

View attachment 228393

Also trialling some designs of rain guards for having the side door open in on off drizzle. Last time we tried the door card got far wetter than I expected so MrsRT is making a panel with magnets to go between the open door and roof.

I'm toying with battens and magnets to see if we can make a stub awning over the doorway

View attachment 228394

Are the rain guards completely homemade? Brilliant idea. If so what fabric is it? Am looking at doing something similar.

 

[roadtripper]

Are the rain guards completely homemade? Brilliant idea. If so what fabric is it? Am looking at doing something similar.

Advantage of having a Wardrobe Mistress in the house

It's just normal ripstop nylon and 25mm magnets. Make a template up with some newspaper. They have about an inch seam and the magnets are in that, half the trick is not letting them stick to the sewing machine apparently.

Just be aware if the wind really gets up the magnets slide and they could mark the paint, so I only ever put them on the inside surfaces. I may add some helicopter tape at some point.

 

[doodahoops]

Thats excellent - will try something similar. And now I know about helicopter tape - well...

 

[roadtripper]

Thats excellent - will try something similar. And now I know about helicopter tape - well...

I also intend to put some on the curve of the roof the side of the awning rail if we start using the sun awning more as the fabric and straps may rub there.

 

[roadtripper]

The new red low level cabin lighting running off the Beaudens power pack worked very well.

I realise I never added this to my tinkering thread so...

A kind of Mark II from my previous attempt. Still powered off the small Beaudens power pack tucked into the kitchen pod rather than hard wired.

Cheapish "fibre optic" car lighting kit with the fibre optic runs down the outside edge of the outer rails.

Then as I'd only used 2 out of the three lighting heads I fashioned a housing for 2 of them out of some scrap conduit and a small L bracket to tuck under the front of the bench between the storage bay flaps. The third sits down by the kitchen pod pointing out the tailgate - I pretty much just left it there but it turns out to be really useful to check if the pack is on or off as well as a bit of light around the rear when the normal lights time out.

It's not quite as bright as the photo makes it seem, though usefully this draws enough power the power pack never shuts down, which it did with the first attempt solution. Or at least it didn't in 3 days away!

Not sure if I will keep the extension heads, wanted to get it done for the next roadtrip.

I'd put more fibre runs up the mid rails but we have mats across the back so it would be wasted. I may end up hardware hacking the two lighting heads direct to power as I'm not using the control box for other colours or doing any dimming.