I had a full day to work on the van, and was planning to install the solar panels so that I could add that wire harness to the van. However, the weather didn’t cooperate. There was a 35% chance of rain basically throughout the day. Since I needed to cut a hole in the roof of the van to pass the solar cables, I didn’t want to do that if it was going to rain. So, I pivoted to other projects. Glad I did, because it did rain a couple of times during the day.
As I was laying in bed last night, and was thinking about having all but the solar panel wire harness installed in the van, I remembered that I had two other wire harnesses to connect. The one for the air conditioner and the one for the MaxAir fan. So, I started today by routing those two wire harnesses through the van. The AC one was bigger and tougher. Here is what it looked like.
The gray Anderson connector on the one end is what connects to the AC unit in the roof of the van. The rest of the harness needs to route through the van ceiling and walls. I had to disconnect the red wire from that big fuse box first, as that fuse box would not fit through the walls of the van. This harness is fairly thick and Velit put the wires in a thick loom to protect them. It took some effort, but I was able to snake the harness through the walls and back to where they will be connected. I then reconnected the fuse block to the red wire. I was very happy to see that this wire harness was long enough to reach to the back of the van, so I won’t have to splice extra wire onto it. Here is what the installed harness looked like from the AC unit.
The MaxAir fan wires were much easier. I used a zip tie to route the wire back and away from the fan itself. Then I routed the wire across the back of the van as far as it would reach. From there, I used WAGO connectors to connect the MaxAir wires to the wire harness that I had made to extend the wires to where they will be connected to the power supply. Here are a couple of pictures.
Now, I just have the solar panel and Starlink wire harness to add to the van and the wire runs will be done. Once I get a nice day and have some helping hands, I’ll get that done.
Next, I returned my focus to the rear columns. I had ordered new fabric to wrap the columns last night. So, today I match cut white Landau foam to fill in the gaps in the columns. I had to do this one piece at a time and then glue that piece to the column. It looked kind of patchy, but when the fabric is glues on top of it, no one will know. Here are some pictures.
I was glad to have the rear column work done, for now. Artie was available for a while and he had expressed interest in how I was going to wire outlets and lights in the van. So, I grabbed him and we worked together to wire a 120V electrical outlet and a 12V reading light. I basically talked him through how it is done and then let him do it with me coaching him. Here is a picture of Artie heat shrinking a fork connector on one of the wires for the outlet, and a picture of the finished outlet mounted to the furring strip near the driver’s seat.
We also wired up a 12V reading light, but had to remove it because it needed to be mounted on the wall panel which wasn’t ready yet. But at least Artie also had the experience of doing a 12V light as well.
After a lunch break, I returned to focus on the wall panels. Since I already had the white Landau foam out, I decided to glue foam onto the backs of each of the wall panels that I had made on June 29th before I left for my trip. The process was to trace out the curves of the wall panel onto the foam sheet. Then, I used scissors, or a knife, to cut out the foam about 1/4″ inside the line. Finally, I used spray adhesive to glue the foam to the wall board. If necessary, I trimmed the foam to fit before the glue set up completely. The pictures below are on the process on the wall panel that will go above the sliding door.
I did this for all nine of the wall boards that I had made before my vacation. The only thing left to do on these nine wall boards is to give them a couple of coats of Minwax paste and to drill or cut out any holes that are needed for electrical outlets, lights, or switches. I spent three hours completing these nine boards and decided to call it a day. It was a good rainy day activity.