Day #62 Van Build – 8/22/25

It was a cooler and dry day, which made it very comfortable to be working on the van. High temps in the low 80’s were a nice relief. Today, I continued to work on the electrical cabinet and finished all the items that I could do with the materials I had.

I started out by wiring up the 12V DC outlets in the rear of the van. They went on the same circuit as the 12V outlet in the front of the van on the driver’s side. It took a lot of short wires to connect everything, but at least I didn’t have to add any connectors. I just had to cut and splice the wires.

That was the last circuit for the driver’s side, so then I moved on to the passenger side circuits. I started by wiring up the three 12V DC circuits, since I was already working in the 12V fuse box. The first circuit was for the fan above the galley in the kitchen, which also has a 12V outlet in it. The second circuit was for the LED lights in the galley. The final circuit was for a water pump for the faucet. I’m going to start out with a manual foot pump for the sink, but if I want to switch to an electric pump, I’ll have the wires run already. Elizabeth took an action photo of me doing this work. This is basically the position I’ve been in for three days.

I wired a 120V outlet on the rear of the electrical box into the breaker box, and mounted & connected the 7″ system display screen to the Cerbo GX. I also spent some time thinking about the light switch for the rear LED lights that I had planned to put in the rear of the electrical box. I think I’m going to wire that up at a later date and keep it the way it is right now..with one dimmer switch inside the van by the lower bunk. When I have the power working, I will revisit this switch and how to best wire it.

After a meeting, lunch, and a trip to visit my friends at Ace Hardware to pick up a few items, I was back at it. I wired up the four circuits that went into the 120V breaker box. That involved cutting, stripping, and crimping ferrules onto several wires. Unfortunately, I was short a twin 20A fuse (I needed two, but Ace only had one), so I couldn’t complete that work. But, it will only take a minute to complete it when I pick up one next time I go to the hardware store.

I also connected the circuit for the refrigerator. That circuit is 24V DC, so it is connected to the bus bar at the top of the electrical cabinet.

That was as much as I could do on the electrical box, for now. The open items are the 20A tandem breaker, the cables from the Cerbo GX (which are on order), and the plywood for mounting the batteries. I don’t know when I’ll have the plywood. Once I have it, there is quite a bit of electrical work to connect the batteries together and into the system.

Here are a couple pictures of the electrical cabinet now.

This van build seems to be a series of incomplete tasks. Usually due to parts issues. Reminds me of when I was an operations manager in a factory. Anyway, I was able to actually complete a task on the van next. Yesterday, the last section of stair nosing arrived (it took two weeks, because it was damaged in transit and had to be resent after processing the return). I used the chop saw to make the 45 degree cuts on this section and the jigsaw to cut out a little piece to go around the B pillar of the van. Here are a before and after picture of the floor near the sliding door where this last section of stair nosing went.

On the two pieces of stair nosing on the left side, I secured them with screws in the side instead of the top. I did this, because the kitchen extrusion will sit on top of these pieces of stair nosing and I wanted it to sit flush with the floor. With that last section done, I completed the stair nosing task.

The last thing I did today was to adjust the stops on the lower cushion of the lower bunk. I wasn’t happy with how tight it was to fit the back cushion next to the lower cushion when I converted that bench to a bed. So, I gave it some more space by moving the stops. It helped a lot. It was also much easier to move these stops before I install the safe under the bench.

I was running out of time for the day and didn’t want to start anything else, so I called it a day. Tomorrow is supposed to be another cool day, so I’m thinking that I will install the Thunderbolt locks in the driver’s door. That is the last door to do and will complete that task.