Ford Transit high top extended conversion in Portugal
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Update time! Flooring and some storage.
Flooring: I decided to use vinyl flooring because its affordable, easy to replace, easy to clean and easy to lay. I looked at laminate but i found it too problematic if there's any moisture or extreme heat changes. A few people i spoke to who have it, said they regret it.
The step into the van is bare. I decided to build a false piece of extended flooring over this area, before placing the flooring.
After the extended flooring, I laid the vinyl flooring. Pretty easy to do. Good prep work before like sanding the floor and smoothing out join pieces helped a lot. Its too easy to pretend they aren't noticeable but the vinyl flooring REALLY doesn't hide any height differences in layers.
I'm pretty happy with the flooring. It turned out to be super easy to clean. I would say that i experienced more expansion and contraction than i was expecting. On sunny days, I've left the van side door open. 35C degree sun quickly melts the glue and causes expansion. Large hills formed. I may change it at a later date but for now, I put a soft mat to cover that area. It dissipates the easily and stops the direct sun light. The edges of flooring still get the sun light directly but the conduction to the rest dissipates it easily enough.
Contraction on cold days creates little gaps between the panels, which dust and dirt gets into. Sticks to the glue, which is then annoying to clean out :D Its a minor problem so i don't care about it. Most of the dust is building debris from cutting wood/insulation/flooring.
Storage: Tall storage. I want a tall storage unit so that i can hang clothes or store some taller items like my climbing bag which is quite large. I have some aluminum profile left from the roof rack so i decided to use that. I would STRONGLY suggest to others to NOT do this in the future. Ill explain in a future update but essentially, there are problems that are easily avoided using wood.
Above is the basic frame of the unit. I want a design that allows me access to the back of the shower/toilet room for easy maintenance. I make the effort to build maintenance options into most components. As this is my first build, I like to make sure i can go back to improve things whenever i learn.
Next i had to build drawers. I never did this before so i learned some new skills like always. It was my first time ever using a router which makes it quite easy to make drawers. I have limited equipment so it took a very long time to actually build a drawer. Drawer 1 took me 12 hours straight. Drawer 2 took 7 hours. Proper equipment would greatly speed things up.
This is 22mm birch i believe. It is too heavy and too strong for its needs. I had it on hand because there was a GREAT deal for large pieces at 20 euros for 2400mm * 600m. I bought a few sheets as i'll always need more wood. Its easy to see the technique i used. It all slots together, and is glued. Its super strong and easy enough to do. ... after learning all the mistakes :D
Below you can see the slot for the bottom to be placed in. The upper part at the back was a mistake. I was off by 1cm in cut.. but it doesn't matter because its at the back and serves barely any purpose.
I built this drawer front and learned about using a router to also shape the edges into something pretty. This part was fun and easy. It's just an attachment with built in shape. It stops you from making mistakes pretty well.
Attaching the sliders below was straight forward but time consuming/precise. I had to alter the hole size to fit the aluminum profile slots. It's fine but another disadvantage to using it.
Below here is my protective floor mat :D. I was very happy at the time for these drawers. The bottom door is literally just a door. Nothing behind it. I wanted to practice making a door, and i wanted a place to store my bag. The irony is that the side is completely exposed but the door looks great! :D
Overall, I am super happy with the quality of the drawers and workmanship. It was all new to me. However, It was absolutely a mistake to use such a heavy wood and there are better options available which ill show in the near future. It was a great price for wood. The skills i learned are already being used on other components. The frame took 1 day to get right. The 2 drawers/fronts/sliders and bottom door/hinges etc took 4 days in total. That's 2 weekends for me.
That's it for this update. The flooring is working great and its been nice to have some storage to put food and condiments! Even nice to have place to put some tools after picking them up before driving. Ill post another very soon as i have the photos ready and there's a good piece added that interesting to document.
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Hey Folks
Another update to share! This time its the air and water heating system.
I'm using a set of products sold by BobilVans. I am very pleased with the product. It meets my needs very well. The product is a diesel heater that heats the air. This hot air is optionally passed through a heat exchanger. A small water pump circulates water from my hot water tank through this heat exchanger to steal the heat from the hot air passing through it. The water is heated and returned to the hot water tank, mixes with the rest, and the process continues until the hot water tank has reached a desired temperature.
The reasons i chose this product are:
- It produces very dry hot air with no moisture added (true of any diesel heater)
- Uses an extremely readily available fuel (straight from my van tank)
- The sunny days i have solar, allows the water tank to heat using the free sun power without heating my van further.
- The darker/cold days i have no solar, i'd likely be using the diesel heater anyways.
- I was a bit scared of gas because ive no experience. (i'm sure its fine if used right)
- I was definitely going to use a diesel heater anyways, so getting hot water is a great synergy
The process is well documented better elsewhere but ill explain my steps and little tips/gotchas i wish i knew sooner. I first spent a lot of time marking where all the boundaries are underneath the van. Since i had a hole for my water pipes already, I had a reference point on the right side, and a chassis column on the left i could orientate by. The tape is where the steel structure exists and defines the no cut zones for a big hole!
I bought a 127mm hole saw for metal off amazon. It was a great tool.. Exactly the size required. Except i wrecked it because i didn't know you were suppose to use lubrication oil, and go slow... I went fast and dry! Always a terrible decision! I fixed it by going underneath and using a metal bit on my jigsaw. It made quick enough work. Definitely important to be super sure so plan a lot.
A 'Turret mount' is used in the hole and attached to the diesel heater. My flooring is 6cm thick. 2 cm too big for the turret mount. It took some hours to overcome this problem. I eventually found a fire stove chimney attachment that joins two pipes together. Its 125mm. 2mm smaller. I attached it to the turret which extended my turret depth. I have no metal working skills like welding etc, but they are not needed. I just put a couple holes into both pieces and used some bolts with anti slip nuts. Worked great.
You can see above how it bolts to the floor. 4 new long holes were added. I was a bit nervous about keeping them straight over a 6cm distance.. eventually i got there :D. I highly advise to put the diesel heater into the turret and then put the whole lot into the hole. Attaching pipes to the heater from underneath the van, adding metal straps etc is just making things difficult for no reason. You can see above the intake is just a plastic pipe with plastic silencer. The exhaust (gets incredibly hot..proper warning.. melts near-by plastic) has insulation to protect the plastic intake and fuel line.
The electrics are very straight forward, all plug n play. The fuel pump, glow plug + heater power, and the controller. Thats it. All plug n play.
Here is my fuel pump installation. It is directly across from my van's fuel tank as i plan to take the fuel from that. There's a lot of talk about angles when installing the fuel pump. The kit (came with product) has a big rubber wrapping around the fuel pump to help eliminate noise. This thick rubber is what i attached to the van with a bolt. I put a rivnut in, and bolted it with a washer. Its easy to then orientate the fuel pump and tighten the bolt. It takes time to run the fuel line through a safe series of holes n such under van. Its all straight forward though. The left hand side in the photo leads to the heater. The right hand side leads to a jerry can full of diesel for testing. It took 3 restarts to prime the fuel line (self priming). That's about 5 meters of length. The manual says 4-5 on the heater side. 1 on the fuel side. That gave me a meter wiggle room.
I was super happy to feel heat being generated. At the very least, I knew i could always place a jerry can outside to stay warm until i get the courage to tap into my main fuel tank (or get someone else to do it). Its a job that makes me SUPER nervous to think about.
Here is my exhaust silencer. I found an existing hole on the chassis. A bolt and a nut on a provided bracket was all that it took. The blue pipe above is my water intake line. Even at this distance, I noticed the exhaust pipe was affecting the plastic so i moved it later.
I'm going out of order for the next part of the installation but its very related it makes sense to explain it now. I set up my water heater next, but right now ill describe the job after that which was tapping the main fuel tank.
I held up my fuel tank (near empty) with some plastic boxes, and other smaller plastic boxes. I don't have a jack for something like this. It was a giant PITA. Borrow or buy a jack, but if money is tight.. its doable just fine without it. It took 2 metal straps held on with 4 large bolts. They came off ok. A bit of WD40 helped. I used two wood clamps with soft plastic to clamp down the fuel intake pipe (where you fill at the station). Its just a big rubber hose. Super flexible. Clamp it and just elevate it a little. You'll have next to no spillage, easy enough.
Before drilling into a plastic tank fuel of fuel, I wanted to practice on a plastic box i had. I used a cone shaped drill bit. I think its called a step drill bit which just makes a bigger hole the more you push down. I wanted to find out the best technique to eliminate plastic shavings falling into the fuel tank. The best technique is very fast speed, very short push and pull movements, with a vacuum sucking the debris continuously. The number of plastic bits that fell into the plastic box (fuel tank) was about 5% with this technique. Slow movements let more fall in. Fast movements pulled the debris out more in small pieces so the air could lift them away. I put a mark on the drill bit for the correct depth also once i found out what that was.
With this mystical knowledge, I made my hole. My fuel pipe is a large metal straw. The interesting part of it i don't have a picture of handy. It has a 'longer than the hole' sized rectangle flat piece. You put it on the straw, put the straw in, and the long piece only fits in the hole at an angle, so that when a nut is tightened, the long piece is horizontal and too big to come out. This provides the under side of the compression.
This terrifying job was really straight forward, especially after practicing on the plastic box. I practiced fitting the pipe like 10 times on that plastic box so i knew exactly what to do on the fuel tank. The only difference was the fuel tank plastic was thicker so i had to drill ever so slightly more. I was going to place some sealant around it but its incredibly well fitted so i didn't feel a need to.
Attaching to the pump was just another piece of the fuel line added between the too. Bye Bye Jerry can. You were a great help.
Water Heating
Here is the set up for the water heating system. The big tank holds the water. The black box (heat exchanger) is made of metal with a fine grill in the middle allowing easy air flow. It steals the heat from the hot air coming from the diesel heater. The water is pumped between the tank the exchanger. The heat exchanger has chambers for water inside it too. It simply conducts heat from the hot air into the colder water. The little black pump on the bottom right pumps water slowly but super quietly between the two. The water tank is a pressured tank up to 70psi. My system is 20psi. The bobilvans youtube channel has a great video of Sam putting it all together you can just copy easily. Its a walk through and everything is explained.
I don't feel i have much value to add outside of the BobilVans instructions. Its a straight forward system. Took maybe 2 hours to install it. That includes learning how to connect it all, and all the usual delays you find when doing anything in a van :D (i had to power the pump which i forgot to run a cable for :D).
The heat exchanger gets connected to the heater by a 90mm piece of ducting not included in the photo.
The programming of the controller (bottom right) for the hot water is included in the manual. It essentially means this: "If the water in the tank is below target temp, and the hot air temperature is high, start circulating the water between the tank and exchanger"
The red numbers are my current air temp in Celcius (measured at the heat exchanger by a provided probe), and the blue is my hot water tank temperature. The 4KW heater is super powerful. I really like it. I use full power to heat up my van very quickly. I use 10% - 20% continuously on evenings. During the coldest nights, ive used it on 30%. This is with active ventilation running on low setting.
I've used this set up many many times now. Its great. It takes maybe 30 minutes to heat my water (10 liters) which gets me a hot shower. If i leave it running while you shower, which you would.. it heats more water as you are using it. Not as quickly as i can use it, but plenty for a hot shower which ends luke warm. If i turned on the electric element too (240v 800w) AND have the heater running, I have infinite hot water at 54C. I cant use it fast enough before i run out of water (80+10Liters). That's enough hot showers for 2 people with some left over. You can of course make that go further. Behaviorally, I tend to fill up, shower for a long time, then fill up before driving off again.
Here is the link to the product i used: It contains the 4kw autoterm heater, turret, fuel pump, lines, 800W hot water tank, little pump and heat exchanger, the controllers, and all the pipes to set it up and fittings etc. Just to be clear. I don't know these people. I've just been very pleased with the product.
https://www.bobilvans.co.uk/product-page/bobil-air-hybrid-autoterm-diesel-heater-package
If anyone has any questions or comments, feel free to ask. Im happy to pass on any experience. Any feedback is welcome too. I've quite often implemented feedback from here after the posts. :)
Thanks folks
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Yeah the T off is a good option too. I seen one good kit and youtube video that had a good example of it too. If your tank cap also has that spare nipple for a secondary tap, that's a great option too. The kit for that wasn't available for quite a while (see 'Self Build Stories' on YT for a great video of that).
Yeah i've also read a lot about the noise of the pump. Personally I cant hear my pump at all. It's probably because only the rubber connects to the van. In order to hear the click of the pump, i must enter the bathroom to hear it. I find the noise of the heater fan (which is a comfortable db level) to be far louder than the pump. I certainly cant hear the pump at all within the living area.
This is the same as the rubber mounting:
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