I spent a lot of time today reworking things I had done. I started out the day with sanding the puddy in the joints in the window frame. I think that it looked very good. Then I applied some Minwax paste to treat the bare wood. I had done this on other pieces of wood and liked the finish I was getting. However, the Minwax paste had more of a darkening effect on the puddy than the wood. So, it ended up showing the puddy more than if I hadn’t used the Minwax at all. So, I went to Ace and bought some stain. I had planned to stain the slats for the ceiling when I got to making them, so I just bought that stain a little early. I applied one coat of stain, and it helped a little. I’ll apply a second coat tomorrow and see if that helps more. Bottom line is that the window frame was not installed into the van today.
It was a very hot day today, so I did some of my tasks inside. One of them was to prepare everything to install the solar panels on the roof of the van. So, I unpackaged the solar panels and laid them out on the dining room table. I installed the brackets that I will use to mount them to the roof rack. Then, I measured the distance between the holes in the brackets and pulled out my ladders to move the roof rack rails to the correct position. After trying to obtain the correct distance between the rails, I realized that the solar panels would have to be mounted 90 degrees from what I had assumed. So, I went back inside and moved all the brackets to the other sides of the solar panels, re-measured the distance between the bolt holes in the brackets, and re-moved the roof rack rails into the new correct positions. Now everything is ready to mount the solar panels onto the van, I just need some extra hands to get it done. Here is a picture of the bracket and four of them in the wrong location on the solar panel.
Also for the solar panels and the Starlink antenna there is a wire gland that had to be prepared to go into the roof of the van. The wire gland will allow the solar wires and Starlink wire to pass through the roof of the van without leaking (in theory). I had watched some YouTube videos on using this wire gland, so I knew what had to be done. But, none of the YouTubers had done a good job of describing how much trouble it is to pass the wires through the gland. I struggled with it for about an hour before I finally got it done, Then I put a cable loom on the inside cables to protect them when they are installed. Here is a picture of the three wires finally through the black gland, and what the wire harness looked like at the end.
In the afternoon, I received the large 11mm drill bit that I needed to make holes in the ceiling of the van to insert M8 rivnuts for the unistrut in the ceiling. I punched, drilled, and painted all the holes (eight of them). Earlier in the day, I had measured the refrigerator (which was the biggest component for the galley) and determined where the ceiling unistrut had to be on the passenger’s side. So, I was glad to start work on those last two pieces of unistrut. Once they are installed, I can put up the furring strips on the ceiling and install all the wiring harnesses that I made last week.