Still not feeling at our best we prepared for the weekend work on the van with more help from family.

Keeping the Faith

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Friday started with a four hour round trip to collect our solar panels from Lewes, it was a bit of a struggle given how grim we both felt, the trip and lifting of the panels, 60kg in total wiped us both out for the day. We were pleased to get home and relax for the evening. Never ones to quit despite still not feeling our best we were up early Saturday morning and drove an hour to Ben’s parents’ house to carry on working on the van.

Almost all of the items we needed to make a start on the roof rails and solar panels had arrived and we set to, the rails were pretty straight forward to install. We had to drill a few extra holes in order to line them up with the fixing points on the van. Once this was done it was time to drill though the plastic caps that were in the factory made holes on the roof. Even though we’ve successfully put holes in the van for both the window and fan it’s still just as nerve-wracking as you have visions of the drill slipping and creating some gigantic unfixable hole.

Up to the roof we go!

All the fixing points were successfully drilled out and covered in a generous amount of Sikaflex, the rail was them lifted into place, ready for securing.

The next stage was to get the bolts in whilst a second person below on the inside of the van waited to receive and tighten them up. It took quite a long time as the van still has lots of insulating supplies inside so trying to get around both it and the solar panels required something of an acrobatic feat. We were lucky and had some assistance from a kind neighbor, Mark.

Securing the bolts

We were pleased with the progress for the day and headed off to the shops to find something suitable to connect the panels to the rail. This is where things became a tad tricky, we were unable to find much that would work, B&Q had some brackets but not enough for all the solar panels, we’d also learnt that one of the 50w panels for the front hadn’t arrived and neither had the last window.

Trials and Tribulations

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Over the course of the evening we discussed our options. Having had an unsuccessful trip to the shops, we decided to manufacture our own brackets. I had purchased some black aluminium angle, which was intended to go in the gap below the panels to help with the aerodynamics. In theory this should stop the wind from trying to lift the solar panels off the roof, particularly when driving at higher speeds on the motorway. No-one needs one of those final destination moments!

Sunday came, we were up early to make a start on putting the brackets together, which turned out to be difficult. After numerous tries and problem solving a variety of issues as we went along, we still felt like we hadn’t found an ideal solution. It took all day and it wasn’t really working, we all felt tired and disappointed. We trudged back indoors, thankfully to be greeted by Linda, who was her usual positive self and set about cheering us up and feeding the weary!

There are lots of videos on youtube and blogs on van builds that show a kind of glamorous easy build. There are thousands of videos showing a van magically coming to life and it’s made to seem as though many of the tasks can be completed in 15 minutes or even a couple of hours. In reality it’s not like that at all, throughout the build so far we’ve had our fair share of days where things just didn’t go to plan, took way longer than expected or just flat out didn’t work.

It comes as part of the van building territory and is something to accept and not to get too hung up on. Converting a van is extremely challenging and a lot of behind the scenes research, thinking and testing of ideas goes into it and there are no guarantees of an easy day! Despite not getting the solar panels fitted, we take comfort in the good things, we had fun spending time with good people, we got the rails on and we are one step closer to the finish line.

Rails, Ta Da!