megabus progress....

Hello, its been a busy week:

1)      Removed passenger twin bench seat and replaced with single (to make van a walkthrough)

2)      Fitted cruise control – essential for the European motorways

 

3)      Fitted new stereo and speakers – still work to do here to get the sounds good.  The standard speaker position is terrible (4”x6” ovals pointing at the floor, replaced with jbls) - I’ll be putting an additional set of speakers in the cab roof (after replacing the plastic shelf with wood) and a pair of speakers in the back.  Stereo is good, it’s a mechless one (that is, no CD player) with iPod direct control and a SD card slot.  CDs are dead and good riddance.  I have used an amount of Silent Coat sound deadening (like dynamat) in and around the cab with a view to quietening it down.  The noise situation will improve as the back is built out, especially once there is insulation and ply covering the whole rear end.

4)      Cleaned and prepped the floor.  All small rust spots removed back to clean metal with a dremel (dremels are awesome) and painted with nice primer.

5)      Painted the floor with Plastidip (www.plastidip.co.uk) – a rubberised floor covering, should protect and also dampen noise.  Not sure I’d use this again – its expensive, probably just use hammerite next time.

6)  Ordered an LPG kit (60l tank, about 25kg of gas, equivalent to 2 and a bit 11kg gas bottles) and a split water tank (106l fresh, 94l waste) - I'll expand on these more later, but the idea is that the van is self-sufficient without refills of gas or water for a good few days (hopefully more like in a week)

And that brings us to today, I visited Tommy at Howarths Timber in Wakefield and purchased 4 sheets of 4mm ply, 4 sheets of 12mm ply and also some 2”x1” battening.  The battening will be used on the floor to provide a frame for the celotex insulation. 

Loaded up at Howarth Timber.  Cheers Tommy.  Nice brown plastidip floor.

The floor is built thusly:

1)      Layer of 4mm ply (8’x4’ sheets, cut down to Van Width x4’, so 4 sheets required as load area is 4.5m (!) long)
2)      Layer of 25mm celotex insulation
3)      Layer of 12mm ply (same cut as 4mm)

The plan is then to cover the floor with some hard wearing vinyl type flooring (probably Tarket Spectrum).  Overall I’ll lose about 45mm of height, but that should be fine with around 1900mm available.

So, here is progress on the floor….

Little stacks of wood sikaflex’d in position where a lack of rib would leave a weak spot….

The ever present sikaflex gun…

Starting to take shape….the voids will be filled with celotex then covered with the 12mm ply….

And so it continues, hoping to fit the gas bottle, batten the walls in preparation for expanding foam insulation and complete as much of the floor as I can next week......wish me luck....