Am I mad or might this work?

So, after a few days/nights hard at work and a week of visiting folks, I came home today and needed an hour or so of DIY Carry therapy.

I've ordered some insulation and carpet stuff that should come tomorrow.

Big project of weekend is wheels off and spraying, wheel arch treatment, stonechip coat.

Whilst surfing for suitable "Z bed", I thought of the inflatable bed I bought last autumn to use when visiting my flat in Scotland that was empty. I was doing some work and needed to crash there with the dogs. Went through one nasty inflatable double that lasted months then had to buy something more solid with a built in pump. It inflates in just over a minute from mains and is nearly as tall as divan! Pretty comfortable.

So I took out the carpet, rubber liner and wood. Released the false floor and folded it back. I cleaned it up with soapy water and a bit of paint renovater after this




Laid out in back of van it looks like this



Inflated it looks like this








Have a friend looking at TV and inverters. The 12v teles are really expensive and not great. Think the way forward is an inverter. Not as efficient but then I'll only be using it for short while at a time. Custom flip down bracket from the ceiling would be ideal


I'll keep taking photos. Cheers for any comments/suggestions

Lol that exhaust tip does look like a "stuck-on". This is what the dealer said when I took van back to him last sat to get airbag light investigated (they failed to solve problem).

It is the end of a custom-made stainless steel full system, built on the van to make a slightly throaty sound and allow the tiny 1.3 breath better.

£15 more than the cost of an off-the-shelf mild steel one!

Tony Banks in Leeds, recommended!

You'll need to watch your head when you wake up

Use a laptop on a 12v power adapter with a usb TV dongle thingie. You could fix it to the roof and open the screen downwards, set the display driver up to rotate the screen 180 degs, plus you could use a wireless keyboard with built in tracker pad to steer it. All your music collection and films could be on it and it could have a dvd drive. 5 year old laptops are ten a penny nowadays.

That isn't a bad idea. The friend I have tasked with looking into it owns a computer shop

you might want to install an isolated leisure battery, e.g. something with some switches to allow either battery or both so you can manage charging and discharging.

Maybe a netbook with an intel atom cpu as they are very good on power, light weight and often have solid state hard disk drives.

Thanks guys.

Leisure battery then of some kind.

Be a few weekends yet before i get round to it.

bwms wrote:Thanks guys.

Leisure battery then of some kind.

Be a few weekends yet before i get round to it.

Any decent sized car battery would do, just mean you won't flatten the one that you need to start your van the next morning. Then you can get on the road and charge the flat one.

Any battery would do but a leisure battery is better as it's designed to provide steady charge rather than that spike to start an engine. More importantly, the re-charging is better on leisure batteries and you can trickle charge off a solar panel when in camping mode and that should give you buckets of charge for most things like lights, radio, re-charging mobile phone, etc. Always worth having a look in sailing / yachting outlets for leisure batteries as well as caravan places. Some of the batteries for yachts are necessarily tiny and might be spot on for a Carry / Hijet.

I agree on the concept, but from being a naughty teenager who loved messing with batteries, breaking them open, burning holes in my clothes from the acid etc - I'd recommend reading this:-

http://www.canalworld.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=8041

Thanks for that.

Leisure battery was fitted weekend before last. Split charge relay not fitted yet.
I have a caravan control panel that needs fitted into a suitable "box" to act as a centre for feeding off the TV, lights and in time inverter circuits.

The TV works great but I need to design system for keeping it flipped up and out of the way when not in use. I've taken it away from time being.

I'll post pics over weekend.

Cheers