Small Cabinets Passenger Side

Climbing! Took the camper up to Vedauwoo 

Finished up the cabinet doors for the passenger side and installed them in the camper.  One of these is the electrical panel... super nice to close that out!

Front.  Turns out the cheap switches I got have the little key tab that keeps them oriented slightly inconsistently clocked... which is super lame.  So if you look close the three switches are not totally aligned.  Screen cover plastic to be removed once installed in vehicle.

One again... hardest part was poly finish... Athena is doing a lot of the work on this while I do electrical and other stuff.  Definitely getting better but we both don't quite know how to get a super nice finish.

Back.  Chain will keep it at 90deg when open on the electrical panel only.

I used female wire disconnect things on the meters, will add male ones on the other side. The inline switch for each should save a fraction of a Watt per meter.  I'm assuming that I'll want them all on initially, then as we get more comfortable with the system start turning them off more.  Also I have hopes of building a custom controller to telemeter and control all of this... but not really enough time now so that will need to wait.

Plywood edge with veneer stuff... looks good for a first try.

Since the doors are all plywood, we tried some veneer stripping for the visible edges to make it stain a bit nicer and look better.  Turned out way better than expected - only issue with the edges now is we need to figure out how to get the top coat smooth over the corner. Some painters tape along the under edge did a good job removing most drips but the side is still not as good a finish as it could be.

For all of these we just put top coat on the outer face and the edges, but not the inner face.  Made it easier, and also seems odd to semi-gloss the inside of a cabinet.

Electrical cabinet.

The electrical panel fit was a bit tight - I wanted this.. but did not account for extra height when you open the door due to angle.  It rubs some when opening.  I'm sort of OK with this as we don't plan to open this almost ever.  The other door fits wonderfully... so that is nice.

Still need to fill in screw holes and do some finishing touches.  End of cabinet is open... since the large storage area will close it out when we add that.  

Also hooked up the USB charger on the back benches - seems to work?  Final stuff to do in this area... the inverter remote button came with like a 15  foot cord or something.  I'm running it about 1 foot.  The extra is super lame.  Will want to order a shorter cable for this at some point (probably cheapest since I don't have the crimpers or terminals at home for RJ type connectors.)

And finally... gave another top coat to the gear cabinets, and mounted them to the truck.  While they were out took another picture of the upholstery since I didn't grab one before.

Cabinet backs.

We took the camper up to Vedauwoo for the weekend. Power system worked well, seemed like we didn't get under 90% or more with the fridge running the whole weekend.  We did set the fire alarm off while cooking inside since it was raining... so that was interesting.  Fan should be showing up soon I hope.

Athena cushing

Electrical, Start of First Benches

Lots of stuff in progress since last time... nothing finished but some stuff close I hope.

Taped out the floor-plan to check how stuff would look... Apollo came to check it out!  

We re-painted the internal steps.  Top part that used to be under carpet was just bare plywood.

Paint paint paint.

Electricals!

12V woot.  Getting some electrical stuff done so we have a fridge and some lights and such for some early trips.  Also... batteries are so expensive.  I had no idea.

 

Everything arrived!  Mostly.  Some 4AWG missing, plus a bunch of ring terminals and such.

The back of the camper (near the cab) is split into two sections... one for the fridge and one for the batteries.  Above the batteries is a small dry stuff storage area as well.  We built out this back section first so that I could orient the batteries and electricals.

Batteries and battery-to-battery charger lives here... under a small storage cubby under the back row of seats.

Door pops up! 2x 100Wh batteries.  30A charger.  Little left black panel also pops off if needed to take the batteries out.

There is a little cutout to pass cables hidden under the cabinet floor/door, passing to the main electrical area under one of the side benches.

Main electrical stuff... bus bars, fuses, inverter (right of image) and a larger fuse not connected yet that will feed power to the kitchen area.

There is the inverter!

Most of the electrical stuff went fairly smooth.  8AWG ring terminals are annoying to buy since they always seem out of of stock.  The little shunts that came with my meters had no mounting provisions... other than that... sort of OK.  Just a lot of stripping and crimping and trying to figure out where to put stuff. 

Installing into the fuse/inverter area.  This will all be nicely hidden by a bench later.

We have tree meters at the moment... 1 for battery charging, 1 for all the 12V stuff, and 1 for the inverter.  They meter V/A/W/E separately, and will be individually turn-off-able eventually.

It's alive!  Ran the fridge for a bit... works fine.  Tested charging from the truck... also works fine.  Woot.

All the meters will live on an electrical panel thing that is really just another cabinet door.  So three meters, three enable switches for them, and the inverter control pad on the door face.

Start of the electrical panel.

First cut of the electrical panel door was slightly too large.  Without a table saw its sort of difficult to trim off 1/8th inch from a long edge... so rigging some guides here.  Worked out fine in the end.

Since its the same height, I also cut the door for the under bench cabinet that will live right of the electrical cabinet.  Tried out some birch veneer for the edges of the plywood... it looks so amazing.  For open/close of these we are just going with a finger hole that you can pull.  They will be under the seats so I didn't want a handle that would be annoying on the back of a leg or something. 

Electrical Panel and the other cabinet door of this side getting some stain.

Cabinets and Benches

The cabinets got some upholstered backing. 1/2 inch foam cut to internal size, over a 1/4 ply cut to a larger size (1/2 inch around the edge) routed out on the back of the cabinets. Then spray adhesive canvas contoured to the edges. Gives a nice soft back so cams and gear won't bang around too much while driving. The padded back is removable for now. Why is this paragraph formatted differently?  Only blogger knows...

Cabinet backing stackup for #2, and finished #1

We also started to attached the benches on the right side.  These sort of had to be done early, since the electrical control panel lives under them and I need them finished to mount to meters and such.  These benches were our first time trying to apply a brush on polyurethane top coat.  Very hard to get it to look nice... seems there is a learning curve here.

Benches getting attached.

Up Next

Next up... finish top coat on the electrical panel and other door, install both, wire up the electrical panel... and that side should be mostly done! Then I need to figure out what to do about doors over the fridge and the storage above the batteries... some difficult geometry and want to be able to open these up while the kitchen table is there.

Old picture since we didn't travel last weekend... but look at that camper!