We took a ride yesterday to visit Don and Marti (and Liesl and Ollie) to test out our drawer catches. Despite the bumpy and twisty road, nothing opened. I’m sure there will still be specific situations that cause drawers to open, but at least we appear to have fixed the issue under normal circumstances.
We continue working on other projects to fix issues or just to generally improve the van. It is certainly not complete and we have plenty more work to do, but it is nice to be at the stage where it is functional for camping/adventure.
Ongoing improvements include securing the heater exhaust. When we left a couple weeks ago it was just hanging down under the rear of the van. That was obviously not ideal. I was comfortable that it would not damage anything if it bounced around, but it needed to be vented off the side. I just repurposed a couple brackets that came with the heater to secure the exhaust pipe.
I also fixed up our ceiling fan. The fan was functional, but the opening was not cut to size and it was not cleaned up. I cut the roof planks wider to fit the trim piece and added some additional planks at the rear of the fan.
In addition the drawers opening, the fridge opened on our trip and had to be secured with tape. I didn’t understand why it didn’t have a secure closing mechanism. Well, I went to install the handle – I had reversed the door hinge and never bother to reinstall the handle because we were going to put a new front on the fridge – and lo and behold the handle has the latch mechanism! Of course, in the process of reversing the way the door swings something had gone askew and the latch did not line up with the top of the fridge to create a secure closure. We needed to lift the door on the pin on which it swings by about 1/4″. I went to Ace and picked up a split collar that I hoped would work, because then I would not have to remove the door, but no dice as it was too big. I also bought some nylon washers so we started to pull the fridge to remove the door.
Nope. When we installed the nice wood trim around the fridge we very slightly closed the gaps and now the bottom of the fridge won’t slide easily free. It’s always something! Fortunately, before I got out the sander and started sanding down the trim Sara suggested I try to cut the nylon washer and slide it around the hinge pin. It worked and we did not have to remove the fridge at all. Now we have an actual handle to open the fridge and the door latches!
Another project we hoped to tackle this week was to get the garage/basement drawer installed. In the summer this will be the bike drawer, but in the winter it can hold gear and snowboards. The drawer is held in with 48″ slides that are rated to 450 lbs. so it should be easily good for our gear. The slides themselves probably weigh 20 lbs. so they are tough to finesse into place for installation. With the drawer already built and the side supports previously finished it was just a matter of mathing it all up so it fit correctly. We managed to get it right the first time and the drawer will be super handy to have installed.
We have made a lot of progress in a week so I think we are on track to get on the road Tuesday if we can get just a few more things finished up tomorrow.