Batteries

I had always planned to fit my leisure batteries under both of the seats. Obviously, this reduced the size of battery I could have. So after a lot of research and measurements, I decided on 4 x 100ah Numax leisure batteries. These are by no means the best battery in the world but for the money they are pretty decent. If you keep them maintained, they should last a good while.

When it came to installing them, I had a couple of problems. The first being that, the LT35 cab floor isn't flat. There is a gradually slant and unfortunately, batteries are supposed to be installed as level as possible (obviously this changes depending on where the van is but overall they should be level to the van). I therefore had to come up with a solution of how to install them. I created a level platform for each battery to sit on, being careful not to make it too high, so the terminals wouldn't come into contact with the chair.
Here's the installation:

This is how the batteries sat before I installed the base. As you can see they are fairly slanted!

I installed to batten wedges into the floor

 Ply Screwed into the battens

Straight batteries!

Although the batteries can barely move in the seat base, I needed to make sure they aren't going anywhere at all. So I bought some ratchet straps and used the raised platform and the seat to clamp the batteries in.

The next task was to wire them all as I had set out in my electrics diagram. This was more of a pain than it should have been because I didn't have a lot of cable! The pos and neg cable needs to be equal length, so it was a pain. However, I got there in the end:

I may add some rubber tops to the terminals on each battery. Just as a precaution, should it come into contact with the seat.

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Electrics!

Here is a complete diagram of my electric system, I have copied this from somebody else but with a couple of amendments:

I'm not going to go into great detail about it all because I can't be bothered! The two CTEK units basically run everything. The solar, alternator and battery charger, all go through these. This means my leisure batteries are constantly being charged, one way or another.
I decided to put my main electrical board behind my drivers seat, out of the way. I started work on the layout of the board.

Had to move a few things around as I had forgotten about the battery monitor shunt.

Fitted everything in place and began wiring it all in

Closer look at the wiring

I still need to connect the solar cable and the van battery. Although the cables have been routed.

Here's what's behind the wall:

 This is a view from the floor at the back of the fridge/cupboard. You can see all the wiring and shut off switch. It's also been done like this for ventilation for the fridge.

Finally, I added the front of the cupboard and test fitted my guitar:

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Gas!!

I was most concerned about the gas installation out of everything. It's the one thing that, if something were to go wrong, you'd seriously know about it! That being said, I managed to find somebody to lend me a helping hand. Phil, neighbour to my friends, Jay and Loys, has used LPG for a while and therefore knows the ins and outs. So I took the van round to the farm and he worked on piping up the gas stuff for me. The pipe was a bit of a nightmare to route through the cupboards etc but we got there in the end.

This left me with the job of securing everything and also figuring out what I was going to do about the fill point. The gas bottle I have is a special refillable gas bottle, so unlike the Calor type, you don't ever exchange it. Instead, it is designed to be refilled at LPG filling stations, using the pump, like you would a car. It has an auto cut off when it reaches 80% full. The problem is, most stations including those in Europe, don't like you filling up from either inside the vehicle or directly to the bottle. Therefore, an external fill point is needed.
I had originally planned to have a bracket type fill point which would bolt onto the sill at the side of the van. After reading a lot, and also looking at the location, I changed my mind and bought a recessed fill point, which goes into the van body.
This has taken me most of the day to fit, as it was a right pain to get the holes correct.

Cut the hole.. (nervous times!)

Hole in rear, with everything fitted

Secure fill pipe and route through drop vent

Happy with that!!

I then went and finished securing all the internal stuff, starting with the brace for the bottle and then securing all the piping with rubber P clips. I needed to add extra wood as the pipe sat off the wall slightly.

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