Sunday 1st Dec - Replace Interior Campervan (ambulance) lights with LEDs

Last night I decided to take an interior light unit out of the roof and try to work out how to rewire it for LEDs.  I'd already brought a 5m stretch of LED strip which could be cut and rewired into lots of smaller sections.  So now I needed to quickly learn how to cut, rewire and solder LEDs.  Turns out it was not too difficult.

The single interior light I took out came apart quite easily. I then cutting out and unpicked most of the items not required from the original fluorescent strip unit and simply left the switches and the black / red wires.

Time to get the soldering iron out.

The LED strip I brought was ok to cut every 3 bulbs so I trimmed it to length and began soldering the new 12v wires onto the strip. It wasn't simple intially but worked ok. Wiring it to a battery charger I could see I had some success although my solder joints were poor. I re-soldered, then repeated again with a second strip to fill the box with light.  I connected the wires to the initial input wires and we had a light I could try in the ambulance.  To my surprise, it worked first time and as I'd hoped filled the van with way more light than the old 8w fluorescent strips!!!

So this morning I stripped and cut 12 more cables, got some more male and female connectors so I could remove the lamp holders faster in future and set about removing the other 4 holders from the van.

It didn't take long once I was in the swing.  My soldering was way better, my cables all ready, only one bank of LED's which had some diode issues.  An hour or so later I had a van with 5 working lights jam packed with LEDs = way more light and way less power than the ten fluorescent strips I removed.

So here is the end result (taken in the dead of night). And now I've got a place light enough to work in over the winter nights.

Next steps are bolting in the new seats, getting the old vents removed and filled and then putting in the mains hookup. So it's time to buy a mains RCD.

Saturday 31st Nov - Seat day. And the day I find out if my hopes for the layout will work

I collected some chairs this week from Southampton. Removed from a brand new transit minibus. So they'll be bolted in soon once the floor plan is completely set.

But I wanted to get them in situ so I could see if it was all going to feasibly work.  Getting 5 people in this van without using the kitchen area for sleeping is now our plan.

Passenger seats aside I decided to spend Saturday afternoon seeing if I could do something about the awful drivers seat.

So the passenger seat came out.  I tried my hardest to work out how to get that seat unit to fit the framework from the drivers seat unit but it was never going to happen without some serious cutting and welding.  So I started stripping the covering and the foam from the frame hoping it would then fit onto the drivers frame (cutting my knuckles to shreds in the process as the bottoms of these seats are sharp!).

I then did the same with the drivers seat hoping the passenger seat foam and covering would slip right on. It didn't initially, but a bit of persuasion and I've got a drivers seat again (with way more foam and way less gaffer tape).

A luxury leather job will have to be a future project.

Luckily the new double minibus seat will fit so I plonked it in place and removed a load of bolts and the original seat belt.

That all took way longer than it should!

But all in all it's positive thus far.