Thread: Coming to Australia - Bluey's Rebuild

Hi everyone,
well a lot has happened since my last post - its been a very busy time. Bluey is now back on the road MoT'd, taxed and insured. It's taken me about 20 months working on weekends ( my garages are 20 miles from where I live) to totally rebuild Bluey from the ground up and transform him from a beaten up farm pickup to an expedition ( not quite ready) camper.

After my last post the van sides and roof were bolted on and the front doors were refurbished and then painted and bolted on. They even lined up pretty well with the minimum of "adjustment". The back door went on with the minimum of fuss leaving the wiring in of all of the lights, I've had to fit extra rear light clusters as the originals are obscured by the spare wheels. I've also had to fit another rear number plate over the back door to clear the spares. My rewiring has worked first time apart from the fuel gauge ( a little worrying!) and the reverse light so I was pretty happy.

Bluey passed his MoT test without any faults - the tester was very impressed with my efforts!!

So I've so far been impressed with the ride quality considering the 2" suspension lift and heavy duty spring rates and you certainly have a commanding driving position. There was minimal body roll in the corners, that was until I fitted the Maggiolina roof tent which has still only added a little bit of roll.

Work is still very much in progress, still to do :-
fit centre child seat
fit roof rack
wire up front spot lights
bolt in rear storage boxes
fit rear flood lights and internal lights
fit numerous 12V power outlets

Still to buy :-
Engel 45lt fridge
solar panel
tank guard
roof console and stereo
simple GPS unit

So there's still alot of work to do and unfortunately money to spend ( in very short supply at the moment !) before Bluey is ready for his first big trip. We're going to start off with local camping trips to make sure everything works as it should!

Andt, Rosy and Abby

Hi everyone,

well I'm in such a good mood it's unreal. Today my 8 month old daughter started to crawl for the first time and I fixed the worrying electrical faults with Bluey!

The faults were a fuel gauge reading full all the time ( suspected short to earth) and the reverse light not working. Well the dodgy fuel gauge caused me to almost to run out of fuel, I went round a large roundabout and the engine died. So after two or three days of probing with my digital voltmeter I couldn't find anything obviously wrong. Rosy had removed the loom, cleaned it and rebound it so a short to earth was a bit mystifying. Anyway as I had another look at the connector between the loom and the fuel level sender I noticed that the wire had a different tracer colour to the one plugged into the dash board connector. Yes you've guessed it, I had labelled the wires up wrongly when taking them apart and had mixed up the reverse and fuel guage wires!

So after days of worrying and trying to figure out what was wrong it was a very simple fault, I now have a working reverse light and fuel gauge.

Well tomorrow I'm off to the Series One 60th at Chepstow which is a nightmare 5 hrs drive away - British traffic is terrible on this crowded island! I'll post some photos when I get back.

Andy