Bed frame
A bit premature, this one, but because I'm going to be dealing with the aluminium profile for the roof rack I'm getting it out the way.
Not much in the way of progress pics, as it's just bolting aluminium profile together, but here's the plan: 45mm aluminium profile bolted together using core screws and brackets for maximum strength, with a corner on each side at the back to make room for the rear pillars.
The corners on cut profile are surprisingly sharp, so in order to protect the paint of the van, and other things, I designed and printed some end caps.
Unfortunately what you see above was assembled before the core screws went in as I was still waiting on the correct tool to fit them.
The core screws go in to the centre of the profile then slide down in the channel of the adjacent profile so in order to tighten them up you need to drill through the adjacent profile to access the screw head. To do this reliably and without having to measure I printed a drilling jig.
After that everything was re-assembled.
Roof rack and solar panels
Another one with few progress pics. One hurdle to making your own roof rack is how you effectively mount the thing. Thankfully there's little T shaped mounting points on the roof, which saves me drilling more holes in the van. To utilise these mounts I bought two Thule 3031 fitting kits, as they come in packs of 4 and I needed 8 (there are 10 mount points on my roof). They do require drilling the profile to attach them.
These have a slight rake to them, so needed adjusting to a 90 degree angle. To achieve this I simply squashed them in a vice.
I then mounted them to the roof, lined up a piece of profile, and marked where I wanted to drill the holes in the profile. I then printed another drilling jig to help hold the drill bit in the correct place and also hold it straight. Getting the hole straight is crucial because there are 4 "walls" to drill through in the 45mm profile and if it's off even by a little bit it won't line up enough to be bolted to the feet.
All fixings are stainless steel. And I used nylock nuts to make sure everything stays put.
Then came time to get the solar panels on. A big thanks to Laurence for helping me get these on.
Once everything was measured and lined up I then mounted the panels using some of the profile brackets. This required drilling in to the panel frame.
I wanted a bar at the front and back going across the van to mount stuff, but I didn't want an ugly exposed profile edge, so I printed some corner pieces.
This may be a little far forward for my liking, but I left it too long on purpose to give me options. I'm likely to cut it down later.
Unfortunately, due to a cutting error when making the bed, I don't have a long enough bar to do across the back. In the mean time I'm going to use some smaller off-cuts.
After all this was done I could then get the wiring for the panels in the van via a wire gland
I printed another roof filling, this time one long piece with a tapered end, to go under the gland. I then covered it in sealant because 3D prints are porous.
Before I connected the wires I made sure to cover the ends with electrical tape. I also taped the positive wire with red tape at various points so it's easily identified.
The final touch was the lights. A large light bar on the front, which will be wired up to the high beam, and some smaller auxiliary lights at the back to help me see when manoeuvering the van at night.
One problem with the light bar is that the supplied feet didn't accommodate being mounted facing backwards. The curve of the bar meant that the feet were toed inwards and wouldn't sit flush against the roof rack. So I tried to bend them.
So now I didn't have enough feet to even mount it on top of the rack. I decided to give a go at modeling a replacement to print.
The feet have been a success. After the above prototype verified everything would work I printed it again with stronger settings (horizontal, so the layers were strongest orientation, 5 perimeters, 50% infil). These stronger feet are enough to flex the roof rack so I'm confident they'll be OK to hold the light bar.
