I got most of the final jobs done today. We’re camping the week after next so the pressure is on! I also need to fit my new Reimo rail but that’s another story...
The first job of the day was to finish fixing the vertical luggage rails to the cabinet ends. These have been simple to make but quite time-consuming.
I fixed them from inside the cabinet so that the outside appearance remains screw-free. I used my usual screw of choice, Spax T-Star, which self-tap into the wood and bite very strongly, so I’m confident of fixing the rails without glue. The combined thickness was 24mm so I used 25mm screws with a brass cup washer.
The left hand narrow cabinet was fitted with rails and coat hooks.
This is the front face of the same cabinet, with just a set of four coat hooks still to be made and added.
The wider right hand cabinet was fitted with another set of rails and four hooks on the front face - I did the rear face last time.
Next, the two fixings near the tops of the cabinets that secured them to the van were supplemented by two lower fixings. On my first test run I found that the cabinets, when stuffed full of heavy contents, were forced away from the van side near the unsecured bottom. As before, I used angle brackets, M6 threaded inserts and M6 allen-headed bolts. The existing softwood frame (used previously for my full-width bed deck) made this task easy.
Left front:
Left rear:
Right front:
Right rear:
I’ve been thinking lately about crashproofness of the whole set-up. As in “What would happen to it in event of a collision?”
I feel confident that these four-point fixings are substantial enough to stop the whole thing being ripped off the van, as it's very solid now. In any case, the double rear seat would stop the big cabinet if it did come unstuck.
Anyway, back to the final job of the day, fixing the stays to the top door of the narrow cabinet, which becomes my fold-down worktop for cooking and preparing food etc.
The steel stays are lightweight but very strong. To be sure the table top will take a bit of abuse, I decided to bolt through the door end of the stays rather than just use screws. I used M4 bolts with locknuts.
It was an absolute bugger of a job, for two reasons. One, the manufacturer’s instructions had the geometry dimensions wrong, so I ended up having to use trial and error to (eventually) get the right locations for each end. And two, some idiot (me) had put the shelf right in the way of the desired location of the fixing point of the stay. Because the shelf and the support were glued in place, it was a bastard of a job to do without wrecking the cabinet and I had to make various cut-outs in the corner of the shelf for the stay and the heads of the nuts that protruded from the door fixing.
Several hours later I had a very sturdy table top opening perfectly to exactly 90 degrees so I was well pleased despite the cursing and wasted time.
I’m pretty much at the finish line now with the job, and ready to rock and roll.
I’m not sure I need to bother with the planned carpet lining to the shelves as it will just make them harder to keep clean. I think I’ll use them for a bit and see how I get on.
A planned future development is to cut away the top 120mm of the front face of the wide cabinet. This is the bit that protrudes above the top shelf. Removing it will allow me to carry a couple of windsurfing sails, a mast and a boom in the long thin space above the cabinet and along the top right hand side of the van to the driver’s headrest.