Today I conscripted my mother to help make some blackout curtains, and by help I mean she did the work and I provided moral support. Many tea breaks saw us only manage one; but I think it came out pretty well.
I've had the cut up windscreen shade curtains for many years but they let in too much light, if you park near a streetlight they give off a dull glow inside the car which can be annoying. I picked up some blackout material (in black) recently and set about making some reversible curtains. The blackout material is phenomenal; even a LED Lenser at point blank is completely blocked by this stuff. The idea is this - the windscreen shade side is good for both reflecting light and having a decent thermal resistivity because of the foam; the black side is for stealth. If camping in a backstreet nobody is any the wiser we're in the car, it just looks like tinted windows.
I should be done making the set sometime in 2020 at this rate
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Well if nobody else is going to post in here I'll go again.
Today I installed the tap from my water tank in 'the kitchen'. First I had to alter the lower shelf in the gullwing cabinet, trimming and bending it so it now attaches to the shelf above to allow room for the pumping action of the tap (didn't take photos during but visible in picture 2). Then I had to make a bracket for the tap to mount to.
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After that all that was left is to drill a hole in the bottom of the cabinet and run the pipe to the tank. Pump handle at the top of its stroke in the following picture.
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I also ran a breather for the tank (with filter to stop ants et al. getting in), but I didn't take photos of that.
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The tap rotates to the side when closing the gullwing. I don't know if I've gone too far this time; it's a bit fancy - but having 43L tucked away securely beats having heavy, awkward jerry cans always getting in the way.
Dude that's cool as!
The last post seems to have attracted some interest so I'll continue - too hot to sleep anyway.
We sleep inside the Defender. Over the years I've had rather ramshackle platforms to support the mattress (both milk crates and coolant bottles are exactly the right height to level the platform), but now with the tank I wanted something more permanent. I made this.
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It's light weight but pretty strong, there's a spot for the fridge or a storage box I found at Bunnings (in the pictures). Lately we've tried to avoid taking the fridge as it's a big lump; instead taking a tiny esky with ice packs you can ask to leave in a takeaway shop’s ice cream freezer when necessary. We only tend to use it for milk, yoghurt and occasionally meat. Any extended isolated camping will basically mean temporarily going vegan (or just taking the fridge). We haven’t done a long trip without the fridge yet - it may drive us mad. I know I get pretty lethargic after about a week without meat, and a cold beer always goes down well - so we'll see. I'm still keen to give it a whirl.
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Here is the back of the car with everything out for a clean. The tank is in the middle there - it’s a great fit. Note the flyscreens, one stuck to the back of the gullwing cabinet for storage, one on the driver's side second row door holding the blackout material on, they're magnetic.
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On top goes the mattress.
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Then the bed is made. Extremely comfortable and quite versatile in terms of ventilation. The driver's side gullwing can even be opened if necessary (we have flyscreen material we can stuff into the trim around the opening).
Supercheap Auto from memory; they're just windscreen shades cut up to fit. I bought 3 and had enough left over to do double thickness on some of the smaller windows. I'm sure they were less than $10 each.
That doesn't include the one I actually use for the windscreen. That was out of my grandfather's (!) Ford Corsair, and has the unusual characteristic of fitting the Defender windscreen - anything modern is too large.
Space can be pretty tight in a 110......
Cooking on an open fire (coals) is a nice option and I was going to either make or purchase one of the BBQ/Grills that sit on the spare tyre but that no longer an option.
Purchased one of these Wolf and Grizzly , given it just the two of us I reckon it might just do the job.
Weekend away last weekend and I lost one solar panels on the drive to Stanthorpe.
I did have three flexibles on the roof rack,
- two cheapies that were lucky to put out 50% of the rated output so these were in series
- the other was an expensive scorpion panel which preformed better than rated output, yep this one didn’t make the trip.
Lesson learnt, cable ties break down in the sun.
I’ve purchased two 135W panels to replace the crappy remaining two. Comes with a mounting system, hopefully I can adapt it to my roof rack.
Premium Flexible Solar Panels with genuine SunPower cells on sale
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