 | Home > Expedition & Overland > An Anorak's Expedition Trailer |
 
|
|
|
| X4SKP Member Since: 29 Nov 2013 Location: Berkshire Posts: 2295   
|
Your welcome Darren,
Not so niche I would argue as these are 'transferrable skills'. You clearly have a wide skill set + have put the effort in to share... so for those inclined to give it a go, your threads can go a long way in providing confidence... Credit where credit is due... 
I'm hoping 'you keep plugging away' SKIP https://www.defender2.net/forum/topic83242.html |
||
1st Nov 2022 11:30am |
|
| LandRoverAnorak Member Since: 17 Jul 2011 Location: Surrey Posts: 11324
|
You're very kind
 Darren
110 USW BUILD THREAD - EXPEDITION TRAILER - 200tdi 90 BUILD THREAD - SANKEY TRAILER - IG@landroveranorak "You came in that thing? You're braver than I thought!" - Princess Leia |
||
|
1st Nov 2022 8:13pm |
|
| LandRoverAnorak Member Since: 17 Jul 2011 Location: Surrey Posts: 11324
|
Made a bit more progress today as I managed to get the inverter and batteries reinstalled, and also made more inroads to sorting out the wiring.
First job was to install the new anchor brackets for the inverter (shown above), which involved some careful measuring and taking out the fridge to gain access to the other side of the partition:  Click image to enlarge The brackets were made long enough so that the ends sat on the floor, and they've been fixed in position with the screws that originally secured the inverter itself. Those didn't feel substantial enough to me on their own and so these brackets allow it to be bolted in securely: Click image to enlarge I then spent a few minutes untangling wiring and pulling much of it back into the wardrobe for eventual re-routing before measuring for and fitting the new battery clamp brackets. These are bolted through the floor with spreader plates underneath: Click image to enlarge I also made a start on routing some of the cabling up to the control panel, although there's much more to do here: Click image to enlarge I made the battery clamp out of a couple of J hooks, a couple of connectors and some studding, all stainless, and a strip of metal strap that I had kicking around: Click image to enlarge I then finally got the batteries back in place: Click image to enlarge I expect that I'll revisit the strap as it's more flexible than I expected but as the batteries were originally just wedged in place, they're still much more secure than they ever were before. I've positioned the batteries further back than they were originally, partly to allow a bit of working space around them, which is helped enormously by removing all of the excess wiring. It also makes space for a mains socket and a 12v socket to be installed on the right-hand side of the front panel in due course. Darren 110 USW BUILD THREAD - EXPEDITION TRAILER - 200tdi 90 BUILD THREAD - SANKEY TRAILER - IG@landroveranorak "You came in that thing? You're braver than I thought!" - Princess Leia Last edited by LandRoverAnorak on 21st Nov 2022 9:38am. Edited 1 time in total |
||
|
4th Nov 2022 7:36pm |
|
| LandRoverAnorak Member Since: 17 Jul 2011 Location: Surrey Posts: 11324
|
Another few hours today saw more progress on cable routing. All very worthy stuff but not the most exciting. I did dismantle the wardrobe shelving, primarily to gain access to the service space beneath but it was on the cards anyway. They were constructed from the same material as the rest of the body but it's heavy. I'll replace it with something much more light weight and probably save 10kgs in the process. For now though, it just cleared the way for me to untangle more wiring and fit more weldmesh cable tray:
Click image to enlarge I added a bit more in the corner of the battery box too, as quite a lot of cables come together at this point, which will all need corralling in some way: Click image to enlarge Finally, today, I made a start on fabricating a more robust battery clamp strap, although a minor disaster stopped me from finishing when I broke my glasses whilst removing my safety specs 
Click image to enlarge I've gone a bit over the top with this as it's a length of 30 x 30 x 3mm stainless, but I'll drill some holes in it to add some lightness and never have to worry about it again! Darren 110 USW BUILD THREAD - EXPEDITION TRAILER - 200tdi 90 BUILD THREAD - SANKEY TRAILER - IG@landroveranorak "You came in that thing? You're braver than I thought!" - Princess Leia |
||
|
12th Nov 2022 5:02pm |
|
| LandRoverAnorak Member Since: 17 Jul 2011 Location: Surrey Posts: 11324
|
I'm not sure how much lightness I've added but it looks pretty. Drilling multiple holes in 3mm stainless is bloomin' time consuming. More importantly though, the batteries are now rock solid, which is nice:
Click image to enlarge I spent a bit of time today winterising the trailer - putting it on axle stands and draining the hot and cold water systems. I also discovered that there's a bit of water ingress in both front corners and I suspect the joints between the corner pieces and top rails of the aluminium framing. I've had a go at it with Capt. Tolleys and will keep an eye on it
Click image to enlarge Next jobs include cable containment at roof level in the wardrobe and gas lockers and then I can finally start reinstating the wiring in a sensible manner. Darren 110 USW BUILD THREAD - EXPEDITION TRAILER - 200tdi 90 BUILD THREAD - SANKEY TRAILER - IG@landroveranorak "You came in that thing? You're braver than I thought!" - Princess Leia |
||
|
13th Nov 2022 5:38pm |
|
| LandRoverAnorak Member Since: 17 Jul 2011 Location: Surrey Posts: 11324
|
More progress this weekend with the completion of the cable containment. Yay. This consists of lengths of 38 x 16mm trunking across the tops of the outer walls of the gas locker and wardrobe before diving inboard to access the control panel enclosure:
Click image to enlarge Click image to enlarge Click image to enlarge Click image to enlarge As ever, nothing was straightforward as the trunking position clashed with a line of rivets and so each piece had to be drilled to clear them. Also, the gas locker was a challenge because of both its size and the location of an existing 12v socket. Still, done now and I've even started to route some of the existing cabling. Eventually, this trunking will carry the cabling for all of the external lights, most of the internal lights, some external 12v power and the control wiring for the heater, so it was worth persevering with! Talking of the latter, this terminates in a marine quality 'deck' connector on the offside, just below the tent, into which a lead for a small control panel is plugged so that it can be operated from inside. This connector was missing its catch, which was a bloomin' nuisance as they're not available separately and the whole thing is rather expensive. Still, it's only money and I'm happier with the catch in place: Click image to enlarge The final task on this part of the project this weekend was to remove the front of the control panel enclosure. This is partly just to free up some space whilst I wrangle all of the cabling into position, and partly so I could drill some ventilation holes across the top of the panel: Click image to enlarge Having the control panel on the bench will also make it easier to do some circuit testing that I need to finalise my wiring plan. Darren 110 USW BUILD THREAD - EXPEDITION TRAILER - 200tdi 90 BUILD THREAD - SANKEY TRAILER - IG@landroveranorak "You came in that thing? You're braver than I thought!" - Princess Leia |
||
|
21st Nov 2022 9:54pm |
|
| stew 46 Member Since: 26 Jan 2012 Location: Wadebridge ,cornwall . Posts: 561  
|
Nice work , you must have a lot of patience
|
||
|
26th Nov 2022 3:09pm |
|
| LandRoverAnorak Member Since: 17 Jul 2011 Location: Surrey Posts: 11324
|
Thanks, Stew. It has become a bit of a marathon, unfortunately, and I've ended up doing a lot more to it than I'd expected, if I'm honest. It'll all be worth it though, for both reliability and the extra functionality that I'm building in as I go.
There's likely to be a bit of a lull now, partly because of less time in the run-up to Christmas and partly because I need to do some testing and planning before reinstating a lot of the wiring. Darren 110 USW BUILD THREAD - EXPEDITION TRAILER - 200tdi 90 BUILD THREAD - SANKEY TRAILER - IG@landroveranorak "You came in that thing? You're braver than I thought!" - Princess Leia |
||
|
28th Nov 2022 9:12am |
|
| LandRoverAnorak Member Since: 17 Jul 2011 Location: Surrey Posts: 11324
|
So, the 'lull' is finally over! Rain and cold has generally stopped play over the last five months but warmer weather and the desire to actually use the bloomin' thing means it's time to get my finger out again.
First up is fitting a roof ladder, mostly because the one I've bought has been cluttering up the garage for far too long. When we bought the trailer, it was possible to clamber up onto the roof via the A frame and a substantial box mounted on the front panel. The box is long gone though and the front panel is now mostly filled with a solar panel and so a more cunning plan was required. Easy access to the roof has proved to be incredibly handy but a variety of separate steps and ladders tried so far haven't really worked out. The change to a smaller tent had left a section of the rear roof exposed and I hit upon the idea of having a roof ladder that folded away into this space. I managed to pick up an unused aluminium loft ladder for a bargain price and set about making it fit. The easy bit was cutting the length down slightly, as the trailer roof isn't as high as a typical room height. Getting the geometry right has proved to be quite tricky, though. Unlike a loft hatch, I needed the ladder to be mounted inboard of the edge and not overhang the side. This has necessitated a slightly convoluted mounting comprising two lengths of 40 x 40mm aluminium box section to which the ladder brackets have been bolted: Click image to enlarge They are bolted down through the roof with the underside of the lower section covered in neoprene foam to provide a seal: Click image to enlarge Inside, the mounting points are reinforced with channel brackets that are designed to resist the turning motion that's applied by weight on the top of the ladder: Click image to enlarge (Ran out of suitable screws). Reducing the overhang required a lot of fiddly adjustments. In normal use, a loft ladder deliberately projects out across the loft hatch opening to provide enough leverage to pull it down into position. For my application though, I didn't need that leverage and it couldn't project out from the side of the trailer for obvious reasons. By carefully trimming down the sliding brackets, end stops and feet, I managed to reduce the projection to a bare minimum and keep it within the over all trailer width: Click image to enlarge A loft ladder, almost by definition, lives inside and so doesn't need to be protected from the elements, very much unlike this application. Most of it is either aluminium or plastic and will be absolutely fine but the supplied bar that the ladder pivots on was chromed steel. I replaced this with a length of 8mm stainless bar and drilled each end to receive R clips to hold it in place: Click image to enlarge With all of that done, the ladder fits neatly across the roof: Click image to enlarge Extending it is an easy almost one-handed operation comprising a sprung catch near to one of the feet, pulling out the lower section horizontally until it locks and then pivoting down: Click image to enlarge All that remains now is to fabricate some sort of receiver bracket for the end of the ladder when it's stowed, to secure it in position. I need some materials for that, though. Darren 110 USW BUILD THREAD - EXPEDITION TRAILER - 200tdi 90 BUILD THREAD - SANKEY TRAILER - IG@landroveranorak "You came in that thing? You're braver than I thought!" - Princess Leia Last edited by LandRoverAnorak on 19th Aug 2024 6:31pm. Edited 4 times in total |
||
|
30th Apr 2023 4:05pm |
|
| LandRoverAnorak Member Since: 17 Jul 2011 Location: Surrey Posts: 11324
|
After much mulling and discounting of overly complicated solutions involving springs and catches, I hit upon a simple way to secure the ladder. I made these two blocks from some engineering nylon that I had lying around and stuck them to the roof with Sikaflex:
Click image to enlarge They're positioned so that the top rung of the ladder hooks over them when it's fully retracted and they're shaped so that if pushed across the roof, the ladder will rise up over them without snagging. The smaller block is just for support and isn't subject to any sideways loading. The larger L-shaped block though, also serves to stop the end of the ladder from swinging backwards and the 'L' part is to add a bit of strength and resist it being pulled over sideways: Click image to enlarge Finally, the whole thing is retained for travelling by a bungee cord threaded through the hollow top rung and hooked onto an otherwise redundant fixture on the back of the trailer: Click image to enlarge I'll probably revisit the actual bungee to come up with something that only needs one hook but it proves the concept of being able to secure and release the ladder from the ground. Darren 110 USW BUILD THREAD - EXPEDITION TRAILER - 200tdi 90 BUILD THREAD - SANKEY TRAILER - IG@landroveranorak "You came in that thing? You're braver than I thought!" - Princess Leia Last edited by LandRoverAnorak on 19th Aug 2024 7:02pm. Edited 2 times in total |
||
|
1st May 2023 8:41pm |
|
| LandRoverAnorak Member Since: 17 Jul 2011 Location: Surrey Posts: 11324
|
Work has now started in earnest on putting the wiring back together. This is time consuming and dull stuff, not helped by having to dodge the showers this weekend.
Behind the control panel is where everything comes together and there will be a lot of connections, so I've opted to install a DIN rail and a series of WAGO-like connectors. This will make it easier to terminate everything as some circuits need to be grouped before they reach the control panel. I've also relocated the earth busbar and added a ring terminal to the earth cable to neaten it up: Click image to enlarge On the right of the rail is a double pole relay that will, hopefully, be part of a cunning plan to simplify the mains and inverter wiring. Most of the cables have now been re-routed, labelled and brought together ready to be terminated and this is the current state of play: Click image to enlarge Still lots to do! Darren 110 USW BUILD THREAD - EXPEDITION TRAILER - 200tdi 90 BUILD THREAD - SANKEY TRAILER - IG@landroveranorak "You came in that thing? You're braver than I thought!" - Princess Leia |
||
|
8th May 2023 3:52pm |
|
| LandRoverAnorak Member Since: 17 Jul 2011 Location: Surrey Posts: 11324
|
So, quite a lot of progress has been made over the last couple of weeks. Pretty much all of the cabling is now back in place and connected, the only exceptions being some external sockets and the solar panel, both of which need new containment installing.
The batteries are both now reconnected, having had their cables shortened and re-terminated. All that now remains before I refit the control panel is to modify the fridge power circuit to include a relay to switch between on-board and towing vehicle power, and another much larger relay to isolate the Anderson connector charging socket when not in use. The latter is really just for peace of mind as otherwise there's a large, constantly live and easily accessible direct battery connection just hanging on the A frame. The current state of play in the battery locker looks like this and whilst it's not hugely different from the picture above at first glance, there's best part of two days work between the two 
Click image to enlarge Darren 110 USW BUILD THREAD - EXPEDITION TRAILER - 200tdi 90 BUILD THREAD - SANKEY TRAILER - IG@landroveranorak "You came in that thing? You're braver than I thought!" - Princess Leia Last edited by LandRoverAnorak on 6th Aug 2024 12:33pm. Edited 1 time in total |
||
|
23rd May 2023 9:08pm |
|
| LandRoverAnorak Member Since: 17 Jul 2011 Location: Surrey Posts: 11324
|
Some of the extra functionality that this mammoth re-wiring exercise has allowed me to include are improvements to the external lighting. The move to a smaller tent has freed up some space to fit a couple of additional scene lights on that side of the trailer:
Click image to enlarge These are the same Britalitez MSL.01 flood lights that I used on the kitchen side (details HERE) and are mounted in the same manner: Click image to enlarge They provide a good amount of light and their positions mean that they'll serve either side of the tent annex: Click image to enlarge Both these and the three lights installed on the rear and kitchen side have been wired via a two channel remote relay that means that they can be independently switched on and off. The receiver is tucked up above the rear door, out of harms way: Click image to enlarge The kit comes with two fobs with large buttons for each channel. The lights have been wired such that channel A activates the rear light and two on the kitchen side, whilst channel B activates the two on the tent side: Click image to enlarge This will be great for when returning to the trailer at night as it means that light will be available without having to unlock anything first! Darren 110 USW BUILD THREAD - EXPEDITION TRAILER - 200tdi 90 BUILD THREAD - SANKEY TRAILER - IG@landroveranorak "You came in that thing? You're braver than I thought!" - Princess Leia |
||
|
23rd May 2023 9:28pm |
|
| LandRoverAnorak Member Since: 17 Jul 2011 Location: Surrey Posts: 11324
|
Another area that I've been able to improve on is the internal lighting. As built, the kitchen, wardrobe and battery locker were all fitted with LED strip lights. These all worked fine but were all switched on the same circuit from either the main control panel in the battery locker or the slave panel in the kitchen, which was less than ideal.
Firstly, I've added an additional light to the gas locker, which is a ridiculously cheap and very bright unit from eBay: Click image to enlarge This gives a fantastic amount of light within the confines of the locker and I may well replace the existing ones with similar in due course: Click image to enlarge I then re-wired the circuit so that the light in each locker is independently controlled via a door switch. They, again, came from eBay and I made up some little aluminium brackets with which to mount them: Click image to enlarge Each one is mounted on the top edge of its respective door frame with a countersunk bolt, concealed by the door seal: Click image to enlarge The only exception to this arrangement is the kitchen, which will get a manual switch to enable us to kill that light whilst sitting around of an evening, if required. The main central store will also get an internal light but that'll be a slightly larger unit and requires some mounts fabricating, which I haven't had chance to do yet Darren
110 USW BUILD THREAD - EXPEDITION TRAILER - 200tdi 90 BUILD THREAD - SANKEY TRAILER - IG@landroveranorak "You came in that thing? You're braver than I thought!" - Princess Leia |
||
|
23rd May 2023 9:45pm |
|
|
|
| All times are GMT |
< Previous Topic | Next Topic > |
Posting Rules
|
Site Copyright © 2006-2025 Futuranet Ltd & Martin Lewis
