Hi everyone, I hope you are all keeping well, just a quick update from us. I have a bunch of posts to upload documenting progress on the van hopefully these will go live shortly. I’ve been busy in the background preparing some new sections for the site that will become available later, in particular a hugely detailed section explaining and documenting our exciting electrical system complete with two Tesla batteries is to come.

As for now, I know there have been no updates for a while, and with the global pandemic our leaving date is now a bit up in the air. We are still hopeful that we can get the van finished and get the trip underway at some point in the near future!

March

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Lockdown has produced it’s own fun and games with the van. Mid March both Ben and I had to self isolate due to being ill and having symptoms of the virus, It was not a great two weeks and I did not start to feel better until the 14 days were up. Once we were both mended and allowed out we wanted to try and finish some of the plumbing work we’d been doing (post still to come), prior to becoming ill.

Upon heading out the the van I discovered that I could not unlock it with the fob, assuming the battery was flat with our new lock system installed, I proceeded to try to open the van with the manual key that’s inside the fob. Rather alarmingly the key would not unlock the van either, worried I headed inside and told Ben of the predicament. We spent a little while chatting and decided to get a locksmith out, before we could look into it the Lockdown came into effect.

We ultimately decided to hold off on calling anyone out, with the new rules in place we were unsure if the service would be available and we felt that it was unfair to call someone out, as this was not an emergency. The van is not our only vehicle and we did not need access immediately, given that we were now confined indoors unable to work on anything.

In anticipation of regaining access to the van we decided to look into and purchase a jump starter, something we needed to purchase prior to our trip anyhow. Our research found a great piece of kit called the NOCO, Which can be charged from 12V or USB, handy for when we are on the road, it also has quite a bright emergency light and USB out in one small package. It is apparently rated very highly and comes pre-charged and ready to use. Now all we can do is wait for the NOCO to arrive and for the world to hopefully emerge from the virus.