Ok, today had some proper time to spend on NormanII, so decided to get the plywood sheets that have been in the shed for ohhh about 7-8 years :). It had gotten damp at some stage, but dried out, so should be ok. Anyway, starting from scratch on lining out the back of a van is hard ! But got there, started of by measuring a rough size without any curves or cutouts, for anyone that is doing the same thing, I started on the OS back panel, and the size I cut was 51" high by 42" wide. I then placed this against the wheel arch to mark out the width of the arch, making sure I had it in line with the back of the van, I then stood the wood up and marked out the height of the arch and drew a rough arch out in pencil, I then cut the arch out and stood the wood up again over the arch, at this point I had cut too much away from for the arch, (using a jigsaw), but that was ok as this piece was going to be my template for the proper pieces and I could adjust for this later. I now marked out where the curve at the back top would be, the left hand side I didnt need to worry about as I was leaving that straight. Once I got it fitted ok, I made a note of where I had been over aggressive with my cutting and laid it across a new sheet of wood, 3mm plywood, marked out the modified panel, and then using the jigsaw, cut out the new panel, fitted this against the van and made sure it was definately ok, it was :), so used this new panel to mark out another one as the NS rear panel is exactly the same, that was the rear covered, as my sliding door and rear door were already lined, the onlyother panel was the one below the OS window, which was a standard 47" wide by 27" high, no curves. As time was getting on, I realised I didnt have a drill bit for the job, so spent a while in the loft finding some old ones, 2 of the 3 broke fairly quickly, note to self pick up a pack of 3mm HSS drills from screwfx, preferably Dewalt ! Got the panels fixed up, but need to finish off. Makes sure when drilling you only drill through the box metal that has a cavity, you dont want to be drilling straight through the outer body ! This is how it looks now, still some finishing off, and when funds are available, it will all be taken back off, and the space behind the wood will be fitted with insulation, I have decided to go ahead and use Kingspan as suggested by Martin, the guy from ebay that I bought the conversion guide from, have been down to B&Q and the have both the 25mm (for the top half) and 50mm (for the bottom half), 25mm x 4ft x 8ft is £17.99, and the 50mm x 4ft x 8ft is £27.99, one sheet of each will do the job. Then get the carpet :). This is how I left it tonight ...
Once I had hit a brick wall with the drill bits, I turned my attention to the remote central locking kit I had bought from ebay, Norman II has got a kit fitted, by the original owner, but it wasnt remote and would only work on the key from the passenger side, so started pulling door panels off and seeing what I was dealing with. The kit I bought from ebay consisted of 4 actuators, these push the locking rod up and down, rods to connect to existing locking rods, clamps, screws and the "brain" box. As I pulled the panels off I realised that all three doors, excluding the rear door, but including the sliding side door, already had actuators fitted to each of the 3 doors, which got me to thinking if I could get those working properly, I wouldnt actually have to fit the actuators from my kit, could keep them as spares, and just rewire the loom at the "brainbox" end to fit the new "brain" that was in my kit. So followed the wiring to the box which was down by the fuse box, unplugged it to see what the plug looked like, it was different to mine, same colour wires but in a different order, so cut the plug off of my new wiring loom, discarded the loom, and then cut the plug off of the fitted one, took a bit of fiddling, but managed to wire it so that the drivers door opened on the remote, the passenger side and sliding door werent working all the time, so sprayed the mechanical parts of the sliding door lock, and had to re-adjust the locking rods and clamps in the passenger side door, after some more fiddling, I now have remote central locking that works on all 3 front doors, the rear door still works on a key, and I will leave that as it is, I only really needed the 2 front doors to be remote locking anyway. Will make things so much easier doing the chinese now :) Bit of a pain having to stop and lock the van up with the key, and then make sure the passenger side hadnt opened at some stage, all is working as it should now, so im pretty pleased :), the kit came with 2 remotes.
Thats all for now, next thing is to grab some drill bits !
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