Zoe & Razz have been enjoying their winter coats during the recent cold spell here. All things relative of course so that has been temperatures down to as low as 2C/36F at night and not getting much above 10C/50F in the daytime. But it is always sunny here so that makes it pretty easy to take and feels much warmer as long as you stay in the sun. However with Christine’s return they are now just back from their day at the Puppy Spa so thought you’d enjoy these before and after pics. As for this week’s update I’m going to bring you up to present time with the latest project I’ve just completed; installing the new Fiama awning! I’ll get back to catching up with all the progress on Lance since we got back from our summer maiden voyage out to the East Coast and back but I thought you’d enjoy seeing the latest project. To be honest I’m doing this in part because it will be a bit shorter update as I’ve been taken down a peg or two with my first experience with Shingles. Ouch! As those of you who have had them will know this is eXtremely painful and not something I’ wish on my worst enemy. However I’m recovering well and not looking quite so much like an escapee from a Leper Colony but fighting this off has definitely zapped my energy a bit for the past two weeks and hence this shorter blog post today. When the weather is nice we like to spend most of our days camping enjoying the sunny outdoors, such as this spot in Dinosaur Provincial Park just east of Calgary in Alberta this past July. But we’re heading for Baja in a few weeks and we do like the hotter weather when some shelter from the sun and at times the rain allows us to stay outside longer. So we’ve been researching what retractable awning would be the Goldilocks, just right, just for us. We wanted an awning that would extend out from the Passenger Side PS as that’s where we tend to set up our table and chairs when camping and one that would be very quick and easy to extend and retract so that we’d use it frequently. After some research we settled on the Italian made Fiama 14’ F45S awning with a “Titanium” colour housing. It took a few weeks to get to us but I was able to get a good price with free shipping from Vanlife Outfitters and I picked it up from a freight terminal in Las Vegas which is less than an hour’s drive from our place here on Road Runner Ranch. The box it shipped in was just a bit over 14’/4.3M long so that roll down rear window in Totu (our 2006 Toyota Tundra) comes in very handy for extending the length of items I pick up without sticking out the rear too much. It was very well packaged for shipping with lots of very tough angled cardboard corners on all sides so it arrived in perfect condition. The awning comes with three of these extruded Aluminium brackets which hook into the extruded Aluminium on the back of the awning body itself so I just needed to come up with a way of securely fastening these brackets to the top PS roof corner on Lance’s Hab. (Habitat/Box)
The awning housing needed to clear the top of the doors on the PS which extend almost all the way to the top of Lance’s Hab so I set out to design some strong brackets that would be eXtremely strong and secure to mount the awning housing at the front, middle and rear. I keep all the cut offs from the XAL or eXtruded Aluminium that I used to build all the cabinet framing inside Lance and just love working with this stuff so I was particularly delighted to find that the T-slot in the 10 Series 1 inch square XAL wedged itself perfectly into the L shaped aluminium gutter rails that runs down the top sides of Lance’s Hab. Sometimes you luck out!
This is the design I came up with. Solid and Simple; four small lengths of XAL with four corner gussets to bolt them all together. You’ll see that I’ve built these such that the top edge of these XAL brackets ends up at the same height as the top of the steel Super Strut rails you saw me affix to Lance’s rooftop for mounting the solar panels. This allowed me to bolt a short length of 2” wide 3/16” AL bar stock to the top of the XAL squares and then bolt through the Super Strut into the captured nuts that slide into these rails. These captured nuts twist lock in place using the blue plastic flanges to hold them right where you want them before tightening the 1/4” through bolt. In the middle bracket you see here as well as the rear one, the flat bar supports fit nicely into the 40mm/1.5” space I left between the bottom of the solar panel frames and the Super Strut. Here is what the finished installation looks like with the Fiama bracket now bolted into the top T-slot of the XAL bracket. This closeup shows how perfectly the bottom T-slot fits into the L shaped AL rain gutter that is part of the top corner extrusions on Lance’s roof. After I had them all dry fitted and checked that the three brackets were where Fiama wants them, I put in a bead of that same 8X Loctite industrial adhesive I used to affix the Super Strut to the roof top so these brackets are definitely on there for good! Being all aluminium construction whole awning only weighs 27Kg/60lbs so it wasn’t too much of a lift for Christine and I on two ladders to lift it up and slide the awning into the brackets. Once the awning is in place the final step is to drill through these holes you see on the bottom lip of the Fiama brackets and bolt the awning securely to the brackets. We like to keep things simple whenever we can so we went with the fully manual style that uses the little crank you see here to roll the awning in and out. If we ever wanted to Fiama makes an electric motor that bolts to the end and let’s you roll the awning in/out with the touch of a switch but we think this simple crank method will suit us best.
To help secure the outer edge of the awning these two extendable legs clip into brackets I mounted on the bottom edge of Lance’s Hab.
I have Lance parked too close to the 40 foot shipping container that is my workshop and on the far left here so I couldn’t get a picture for you of the awning fully extended to the 2.5M/8.2 ft that it goes but I’ll be sure to grab a photo when we hit the road down to Baja in a few weeks. And that’s the wrap for this week and likely this year folks! We leave in Lance next week to drive down to spend Xmas week with our Granddaughters in the LA area and then we’ll hit the road and point ourselves South to spend the first few months of the new year exploring the beautiful Baha peninsula.
My sincere thanks to YOU for taking the time to join us on these adventures and send us your questions and comments. Adds SO much to our experiences to have so many others to share it all with. Hope you too have a fabulous holiday and I’ll be back early in the New Year with more updates on both our travels and the ongoing work to transform our beloved Lance into the XRV of our dreams!
As we all head to the exit of 2025 I will continue to summarize the progress in various key systems and areas on Lance over the past few months.
This week I’ll bring you up to date on where the Galley is at so far.
Easily one of the most used and most important areas for our day to day live in Lance and our 10,000 + mile “maiden voyage” this past summer proved that our design worked well as we used it during that two month test drive. We prioritized large areas of open countertop, dual deep sink, induction cooktop and large fridge and freezer and you can see the basic layout from the 3D model screengrab here.
GALLEY COUNTERTOPS:
Here is what it looked like as of the beginning of June, just before we hit the road to the East Coast of the US. This is looking forward so Drivers Side DS on the Left and Passenger Side PS on the Right. Entry door into the Hab (Habitat/box) is on the upper Right with the large vertical door 10 cubic foot Fridge/Freezer on your Right as you enter.
Deep double sink being undermounted to the 25mm/1” solid surface acrylic countertop.
Lots of options for water at the sink; hot/cold adjustment at the base of the faucet with both a large flexible rinsing hose with its own nozzle & lever and then an independently controlled rotating spigot. To the Right of the main faucet is an ultra purified drinking water nozzle that has water that has been put through a full Acuva UV treatment to remove any possible remaining particles after ……….
……… it comes out of the main filtration which is handled by this triple set of progressive main filtration that all our potable water goes through.
We have eXcellent water pressure running about 65PSI thanks to this Kohree 7GPM pump. All the water system equipment is located in the externally accessed compartment that is midway along the DS.
On the PS of the Galley there is more countertop and our 2 burner induction cooktop that is eXtremely efficient and a joy to cook on. This cooktop fits snugly in the countertop cutout so it can be easily lifted out and plugged in outside when we want to cook out there.
The vertical extruded aluminium XAL on the Right here is the linear actuator for the PS Front corner of the Queen Bed lift system. Underneath both countertops it is all drawers as we find these much more efficient to use than cupboards and overall we have more than 20 drawers inside of Lance.
GALLEY DRAWERS:
I have always preferred dovetail joints for all drawers given their superior strength that stands up for decades of use and I think they look great too and so that’s what we went with for Lance. I was going to do this all myself but with almost a hundred dovetailed corners to do and SO many other jobs demanding my time and attention I decided to job this out. I found a fabulous company to work with called Barker Doors who offer a service using CNC (Computer Numeric Control) machines to custom cut all your drawers. I had all the drawers fully modeled in Fusion 360 so it was easy for me to send them these files with all the exact measurements I needed and they cut all the 5/8” Baltic Birch plywood to size for all the sides and the bottoms and then CNC cut all the dovetails. In the end this all worked out to cost less than I would have paid for just the Baltic Birch plywood and drawer slides so I was super happy with how this all worked out and I can recommend Barker Doors to anyone VERY strongly. They shipped all the pre-cut drawers to me as flatpacks like this so the whole shipment of all the drawers was not too large and they were all very well shrink wrapped and carefully boxed up so they arrived with no damage at all. They also offered a great prices on the the top quality Blum undermount ball bearing drawer slides I wanted so it all came as a single order which made my life easier.
Mounting more than 40 drawer slides to the XAL framework was very straightforward but time consuming to get them all exactly parallel and lined up. and some required a bit of Houdini moves to hold in place and tighten up. Next, I set up a little workbench on top of the PS Galley counter to assemble each drawer. Each set of dovetails only required a few drops of wood glue and they went together very well with two bar clamps and some taps with my little hammer to get the joints to fit together all the way. The dovetails were so precise that every drawer went together perfectly square and were solid as a rock. The Blum drawer slides required two slots in the bottom of each rear drawer side so I cut those out next and then I mounted to the Orange locking hardware to the bottom of the front corners. These are where the drawer slides clip into the drawer and make it very easy to lift out a drawer at any time. It’s a great system! Installing each drawer was now a simple process of pulling out each drawer slide………. ………… setting the pins in the rear of each drawer slide into the corresponding holes I had previously drilled and pushing them closed till they clicked in place. Et Voila! We’ve got drawers! Sad to say that I wasn’t able to get this done before we left on our big summer adventure so we REALLY appreciate having these now! I wanted all surfaces of these drawers to have a tough durable finish and decided to go with this two part Rubi Monocoat finish that you put on by hand with cloths rather than brush or spray. Hand rubbed finishes have always been my favorite and while this was a new one for me I was eXtremely pleased with the end result and the whole process of applying it. It was a bit laborious and a good workout but a very satisfying process for me. Difficult to see in photos but the Baltic Birch plywood came out with a glowing warm colour and a very tough finish that is also very easy to reapply in the future. To reduce the loss of usable space under the sinks I used these low profile P-traps which have turned out to work very well. and only required a small cut out on the rear of the two under sink drawers to clear nicely.
GALLEY CEILING & COB LED LIGHTING
Onwards and upwards I turned my attention to the ceiling of the Galley. It took a LOT of research to find the Goldilocks material for the ceiling but I finally found this White wood textured PVC trim molding material that checked all the boxes of light, easy to clean and attractive. It comes in 6” wide 8ft long planks and was very easy to work with. For lighting, I decided to use COB (Circuit on Board) LED strip lights which I set inside lengths of 20mm wide black aluminium U channel which I ran in between each of the White PVC ceiling planks. I like these newer COB strips for two reasons; they provide an uninterrupted line of light rather than individual points of light in the regular LED strips and they can be adjusted from about 2200K (very warm amber) up to 6500K (daylight white). In the past, SMD LED strips you have to chose a specific colour temp and they often have 60–120 LEDs per meter (≈1.5–3 LEDs per inch) whereas these COB lights have hundreds of micro‑LEDs tightly together, giving continuous light with no visible dots of light. Once I had the layout done and the strips of PVC and AL channel cut to length, the process went quite quickly. I could apply the construction adhesive to each plank and AL channel and press them up into place and then use my super handy cargo jacks and some scrap lengths of XAL to press these all up against the ceiling so they ended up flat and aligned. You can buy the COB LED lights in 20 meter rolls which you then cut to the lengths you want and solder three wires to the copper strips underlying the Yellow COB light strips. Takes a bit of practice to get these tight solder joints without any cross connections but all went pretty well after a few practice solders. Then I twist the wires to help reduce any electrical interference and slide a clear tube of heat shrink tubing over the joints and shrink them in place for a nice clean and protected connection.
Each of the LED strips have self adhesive on the back so you just peel off the protective wax layer and press these into the AL channel. I purchased the Black AL channel with frosted clip in covers so once I had the COB LED light strips glued in place and wired up ………… ……………. I could now press these clear covers in place. Here’s the result at about 6000k. These LED light strips are also fully dimmable so you can adjust both the colour temp from warm to cold white and from off to full almost daylight brightness.
We are very pleased with the end result.
Yet to come is the making of all the fronts to these drawers where I will get to use the fabulous 125 year old Cherry that my dear friends Colin, Rick and Sherry gifted us with but that probably won’t be until we get back here next year from our trip down to Baja so due stay tuned for all of THAT!
My sincere thanks for taking your valuable time to read these updates and join us on our adventures. Please leave your questions and comments in the Join the Discussion box below and hope to see you here again next week.
We had a fabulous week in Portland Maine for my niece Julia’s wedding on June 21st and several days catching up with family and friends who were in attendance, which is where I left off in last week’s update which if you have not read yet is here; “Life is what happens while making other plans!”.
From there we started our trek back to our place on Saturna Island BC for the rest of the summer and then most recently back down to our place near Searchlight down in the southern tip of Nevada and that’s what I’m going to do my best to summarize in this week’s update. As you can see in this map of all our travels (click to enlarge any photo), that’s a LOT of miles or clicks 17,250 km/10,720 miles to be exact, so it will be a bit of a whirlwind marathon.
So Get comfy and here we go ………………………..
Here’s the map of our travels after we left Portland and made our way back to Saturna Island.
On June 24th, after saying goodbye to the bride and groom and all our friends and family gathered in Portland ME, the four of us (Christine, Zoe, Razz + I) got back on the road heading north up the coast of Maine and crossed into Canada and the province of New Brunswick. While Lance was far from finished and a bit “Spartan” for living in shall we say, he served us very well the whole trip and I continued to work on the eXtremely long To Do list as time allowed on our travels. In next week’s update I’ll get back to covering the work I’ve done over the past months on Lance so stay tuned for that. This photo is taken looking aft with the two Galley countertops in the lower left and right and the L shaped Settee behind. The Queen bed is up in the ceiling thanks to the four linear actuators on each corner that lifts it up there each morning with the push of a button. More on all of this to come in future posts.
Back to our travels after the wedding, as many of you might know, I’m a Canadian Army Brat as my Dad served over forty years as a chef in the Service Corps and we moved to a new posting every 2-3 years. We were posted to northern Germany from 1957-59 and returned from there to Camp Gagetown near Oromocto in New Brunswick where we lived in the house you see behind me here in the PMQ’s (Permanent Married Quarters) on the Base. Other than the new siding covering up the original red brick I was absolutely blown away to find that everything was exactly how I had remembered it when we left in 1961. Unless they close down, things on Canadian military bases don’t change much. So it was great fun to go back there for the first time in all those years since and be able to regale Christine in all the misadventures I had as a young boy. This was also the home that my brother Bruce had come home to when he was born so there were a lot of memories here. I had gone on to be a shop teacher at the High School on the Canadian jet fighter base in Baden Baden Germany from 1980-84 and I have retained very close friendships with many of the awemazing teachers who were there during these years. Christine had also done here share of traveling both growing up and in her adult years and as a result we both had a lot of friends all across the US and Canada, many of whom we visited on this latest trip and our routing was largely driven by all those the “mooch docking” we did as we drove Lance from one set of dear friends to the next. You’d have thought this would be high season and very busy but for most of our trip it often seemed like we were the only ones on the roads and places we camped out in Lance. Like the one you see on the left looking out the side door of Lance one on our way from Gagetown over to the province of Prince Edward Island or PEI.
I had been in touch with one set of dear friends from my days in Germany, Tony & Anna, and they had said that Tony was giving a talk at a Poet’s Conference at the University of Charlottetown on PEI, another spot I had not been back to since the 50’s. Since then they had put in the Confederation Bridge from the East end of New Brunswick over to PEI so that was a whole new experience for all of us driving over to PEI rather than on a ferry.
After meeting up with Anna and Tony at the University, we spent a few more days camping at the PEI National Park and exploring more of the island. One stop was here at Richards, a famous local spot for VERY fresh fish & chips. ……………….. and a beer with a view for my thirsty Bride while we waited for our fish & chips to arrive. For a change of pace and a different experience, we decided to take the ferry off of PEI and over to our next province on the itinerary; Nova Scotia.
More Moochdocking (parking in the driveways of your friends) with teaching friends from Germany, Blaine & Jill MacDonald, one of the three sets of friends we had in different spots in Nova Scotia. And you can’t be in Nova Scotia and not have a good lobster feed right? And BOY, did Mike and Cindy ever treat us to a feast with the lobster we picked up with them earlier that day. By now it was the July 1st Canada Day holiday which we were fortunate enough to have another great moochdocking spot with Christine’s sailing friends Dick & Deb who were both retired Canada Coast Guard Captains. On to yet another horribly crowed camp spot on our way back through the north side of New Brunswick as we made our way over to Quebec City. Along the way tried out lots of different ways of finding great spots to live out of Lance and one of these was by using Harvest Hosts. As their web site puts it “Harvest Hosts is a network of farms, wineries, breweries & distilleries, golf courses, community hosts and more that invite RVers to stay overnight, giving Members safe, convenient, and unique places to stay during their travels”. Having paid our $100 annual membership fee we were able to find spots like this little out of the way winery in Ontario. Harvest Host sites only allow one or two RVs per night and no facilities which is a Goldilocks combo for Christine and I.
At the other end of the spectrum, sometimes you do just need to be a tourist and how could we pass by Niagara Falls for a quick visit as we travelled westward across Ontario.
Christine had never been so it was even move special for the both of us and well worth the stop. Onward to the west side of Ontario in Kingsville on the north side of Lake Erie with Detroit just across the river to the west, where we stopped in for an extended stay with our longtime friends who are more like family, the Alonso Clan. I am honoured to be the godfather of their four children and Christine knows them eXtremely well too so it was a very special stop after not seeing several of them for some time. John’s Dad Juan is an eXtremely skilled craftsman of many trades with an eXtremely good selection of every tool and machine known to man which he kindly shared with me and helped me finally build this prototype table top for the settee in Lance. It was a much appreciated replacement to the temporary loose piece of plywood we had been using for a table up to that point and has its own electric pedestal so just like the bed it too goes up and down from dining table to coffee table height or all the way down to create a lower bed for infrequent guests. More on all this in upcoming posts so back on the road again for now…… We both love to live for eXperiences an this was our next one. After a quick dip down across the border to Valparaiso Indiana for a quick visit with Christine’s brother Steve & Susan, we decided to backtrack east a bit for an experience that Christine had found taking a ferry across the middle of Lake Michigan. Click to enlarge and read that this is not just any ole ferry, this is the last remaining coal fired steam driven public ferry in existence. And my oh my was it ever an experience. One part of which was that in the photo above that is NOT us driving Lance OFF the ferry, this is one of the ferry crew members BACKING Lance onto the ferry, which was their requirement for EVERY vehicle going on that ferry! I could go on with more stories about that ferry ride but we need to keep driving onward …………. Off the ferry we headed due North and crossed the border back into Canada at the very south western corner of Ontario and headed West across Manitoba, Saskatchewan and into Alberta.
Another one of our Harvest Hosts stops was in the back of this great little out of the way restaurant where we had a great meal and evening before moving on. There is no fee for your stays at a Harvest Host site and instead you are encouraged to partake of whatever that host is selling from meals to wine. A fabulous deal in our opinion and we thoroughly enjoyed them all. As we made our way across Alberta we wanted to see more of the HUGE Dinosaur National Park. Several years earlier on one of our many cross country drives, we had visited a part of this park further west near Drumheller that had the truly awemazing Royal Tyrell Museum which we would consider a must see for anyone any where near the area. This time we wanted to explore more of the wilderness side of this sprawling National Park. Truly an other worldly type of place as you can see.
Middle of July and so once again the campsite were eXtremely overcrowded!! Of course this might have kept a few people away, but we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and will be back for more on another trip. Growing up I had spent many summers at my Uncle Roland’s farm just east of Calgary which my cousin Dale now runs and is always extremely generous with his time and knowledge every time we stop in on one of our trips. It is just SO fascinating having a modern day farmer take you on tours of his farm answering the litany of questions we always have for him and being in awe of the advanced tech that has become the norm for running a family farm these days.
Making our way across the Rockies through Banff and into BC, we dipped South a bit to take the ferry that is part of the Trans Canada Highway to Ainsworth. On one of our first cross country tours not long after we had met, we had been snowed in there for three days after a record snow fall. Much warmer weather this time and we also stopped in for a dip in the Ainsworth Hot Springs. However this was all easily upstaged by our overnight free camping spot just a few miles north of Ainsworth at Fletcher Creek Falls.
Just stunning to see.
Oh, and the falls weren’t bad either! We had several stops ahead to see friends in Vernon and Salmon Arm but the night before we stopped in at a brand new Harvest Host that was a working ranch. In spite of being very new and still a work in progress they treated us to an evening BBQ with their family. With these views out over the valley for our early morning coffee. And the leader of the pack and our new BFF donkey “Mitch”. Inching ever closer to our far western destination on Saturna Island, we were invited in for an overnight visit by our dear friends Rick, Sherry and son Colin at their family property on Gambier Island just north of Vancouver. How could we say no?!!! During our conversations Colin wanted to show me what he had done with a 125 year old Cherry tree that had fallen down in a big storm several years ago. Colin is an eXtremely talented and self sufficient young man and he had a fashioned his own mill and used it to cut this enormous Cherry tree into these 2+ inch thick slabs. Very impressive!
In ensuing conversations I had mentioned that I was on the hunt for some nice hardwood I could use as both solid edging and veneer on all the doors and drawer fronts in Lance and Colin thought, quite rightly, that this Cherry would be ideal for the job and that I just HAD to take it with me! Everyone pitched in and we managed to move these planks down to the dock and onto Rick’s boat as this is the only way on/off Gambier. Back over on the mainland Rick helped me load it into Lance and in some future posts I’ll take you through what has happened to this magnificent wood since. For now I just want to say THANK YOU! to Colin and Rick for their incredible generosity. The next day, August 2nd, we were back on the road, onto some more ferries and just like that, Lance (and us) were back where we had started months earlier at our little sanctuary “Ravens Ridge” on Saturna Island. While there, Christine had heard that a local couple had started up a business renting some very capable eBikes which they delivered to you wherever you wanted. So they dropped off these two in the morning and we spent the rest of the day exploring spots on Saturna such as this favorite at the top of Mount Warburton, one of the highest spots in all the Gulf Islands and literally in our back yard. After making the VERY steep climb up the mountain we wanted to push the bikes harder and see what they were capable of so we headed down and back up another even steeper set of climbs over to the Feral Goat Bistro at Sage Hayward Winery and enjoyed THIS delicious spread along with some flights of wine. We both love eggs Benedict and had many of them for breakfasts on this trip but still enjoyed making my own version once we were back home. Christine was happy to be reunited with one of the green frogs that seems to have adopted us. We were going to stay on Saturna to enjoy the warmer weather of summer there before heading back down to Nevada when things cooled down and so a few days after we got back I flew down to Vegas to go pick up “Totu” our 2006 Toyota Tundra truck and drive him back up to Saturna so that we had more than Lance for transportation for the next few months. I had a fabulous drive making my way over to Pacific Coast Highway on roads I’d not tried before and
1520 miles, 2446km later I was back on Saturna. This is already getting long so I’ll condense the rest of our travels since then and just say that we had a wonderful few months on Saturna.
Having friends ……… …….. and more friends ……
….. and family over and just enjoying this magical spot on the planet.
But soon enough it did start getting chillier and some members of the family had to break out their Canadiana winter weather clothes and it was time for us to pack up and start our migration south for the winter. We needed to get both vehicles down to Nevada so Christine drove Totu and I drove Lance and we found some more new ways to get from Saturna to Searchlight. This time we took the ferry out of Victoria over to Port Angeles, down the PCH and then west along the north or California on fabulous Hwy 36 that I had found on my drive up with Totu a few months previous. It was a truly wonderful Summer and Fall for all of us and we are now settling back into life here on our winter base at Road Runner Ranch, out in the BLM lands just north of Searchlight NV. Christine has just come back from a very eXciting writers conference in Las Vegas all this past week and she will soon be flying off to Ft. Lauderdale to enjoy American Thanksgiving getting in some much needed Gramma time with our Grandson Liam who just turned TEN a few days ago!!
Meanwhile, I’m busy working away at getting Lance’s transformation more and more complete and ready for our retreat to warmer weather down in Baja Mexico for the winter months in the new year. We’re delighted to be spending the Xmas week down in the LA area with equally fast growing Granddaughters Brynn and Blair and so I’ve got my work cut out for me to get Lance MUCH more completed and ready for our next “test drives”.
I’ll leave it at that for today and next week I’ll get back to covering the work I’ve done on Lance since the last of those kinds of updates back in May.
My sympathies and thanks to those of you who have endured and made it this far and please do add any questions or comments in the “Join the Discussion” box below.
Thanks and hope you’ll be back for more next week!
It has been one of the busiest months yet for both Christine and me as we put our noses to our respective grindstones and pedal to the metal for making maximum progress on our projects. Driving this in part is our decision to turn our attending our niece Julia’s wedding on June 21st in Portland Maine, into Lance’s maiden voyage. Just a quick test run so we will leave Road Runner Ranch here in Searchlight Nevada in the first week of June and drive over to Portland Main, perhaps along Route 66 to start and then after the wedding head up the East Coast and travel back across Canada to our serene getaway “Northern Home Base” aka “Ravens Ridge” on Saturna Island in BC for the remainder of the summer. Oh, and did I mention that never content with small goals, to spice it up a wee bit Christine also has a deadline to submit her newest book’s manuscript by the 5th of June. So wish us both luck !!
WAYNE WARNING: Given that it’s been more than a month since the last update and the amount of work on so many different aspects of XRV (eXtreme RV) Lance’s interior and systems, this is going to be a longer post so you’d be wise to get a comfy seat and a large portion of your favorite beverage before continuing. Don’t say you weren’t warned!
To help make this a bit more digestible and let you skip parts you may not be interested in, I’ll break this up into sections with a sub-title header for each of the projects I’ve tackled this past month within the larger project of transforming Lance from his roots as a 2017 Kenworth T270 Medium Duty Horton ambulance into an XRV.
I’ll wait till you get comfy and fill up your mug/glass ………………………………………………
Finishing XAL Cabinetry Framing:
I have now pretty much finished all the framing using eXtruded Aluminium T-slot extrusions, often referred to as “80/20”, by framing the upper cabinets above both Galley countertops, Passenger PS and Driver Side.
This is the one above the Passenger Side PS Galley countertop. and this is the overhead cabinet above the DS Galley countertop.
with the ever present Fusion 360 3D model on my laptop. You can see a bit of the detail of the way I am connecting all the various lengths of XAL which are all 1 inch square with either 2, 3 or 4 T slots. You can also see some additional XAL framing above the Entry Door into Lance’s “Happy tat” which I’ll explain a bit more in a few minutes. Peering into the Fusion 360 3D model of the Happytat might help to give you some perspective of the overall layout. L-shaped Settee in the Rear (far left) with the Queen Bed (not shown) raised up into the ceiling and the two Galley countertops on the PS and DS in the middle and then the Fridge/Freezer PS front with the shower in between that and the Head/Bathroom on the DS front (upper Right here)
The last bit of XAL framing when pretty quick and easy to put the last piece of the L-shaped Settee into place for the seat that goes across the back in front of the two rear doors of the Happytat “box”. Not to get too far ahead of ourselves but thankfully my Beautiful Bride has been taking some time away from her writing to create these drawings for the Settee cushions with the help from some AI of course to create these sketches a bit faster. She is now working with a local upholstery guy up in Vegas as we simply don’t have the time to sew these ourselves. This is a sample swatch of the upholstery fabric that Christine has found and we both really love.
For those curious, this is “Outdura Raindrop Lapis” which is eXtremely tough, easy to clean, long wearing fabric. ….. and this is the beautiful (we think) glass and stone tile that she found and should be here in a few days.
More updates in the next installment once these start to go into Lance so do stay tuned for that.
GALLEY COUNTERTOPS:
With the Galley XAL framing all in place it was time to switch gears and get on with installing the countertops themselves.
After several months of research, phone calls and Emails to find full uncut lengths of the countertop material and colour we wanted and which we could get delivered to us, this bundle of joy finally arrived at the FedEx Freight Terminal in S. Las Vegas. We found this Blue Lagoon pure acrylic at Solid Surface.com (where else?!?) and got a great price at $639 for this 1/2 inch thick 144 inch x 30 inch slab. They did a great job of packaging it all up and it arrived in perfect condition. Would have been a bit of a challenge to bring this 12 foot slab the 75 miles back to RoadRunner Ranch but I needed two pieces that were just under 6ft each so I brought my handy cordless circular saw with me and cut it in half and loaded it into Totu our 2006 Toyota Tundra, and we were off. Well, I did make a quick stop while I was up in Henderson (south part of Vegas) at our favorite Home Depot to pick up four sheets of 1/4” and 1/2 thick Baltic Birch plywood and these two other boxes which you’ll just have to wait for a bit to discover what’s inside them. This 1/2” solid acrylic material was very nice to work with using my regular carbide tipped saw blades and router bits and after some careful “measure twice, cut once” checks between the model and the actual interior I quick had the larger DS Galley countertop cut out. With the cutouts to go around the intersecting XAL parts and the bed lift linear actuators on the far Left here, it was a nice close fit.
You’ll note that I now also have the combo mesh/blackout screens for the MasterCraft double pane glass windows now installed and secured to the walls. Repeating the same process and the PS Galley countertop went into place.
We like the look of thicker exposed edges around all the countertops so my next step was to cut 1” and 2” strips of the acrylic sheet and glue them along all the edges and overtop of where the countertop attaches to all of the XAL framing underneath. Pretty simple process using a purpose made epoxy glue and matching gun you can see in the middle Right and then clamping the two mating surfaces together. Now for the FUN part! Cleaning up all the now 1” thick edges where the two pieces had been glued together. The clamp on strait edge was a bit help to quickly have a straight guiding surface for me to hold the base of the router to and shave off the edges.
Just like on our boats we don’t want any sharp corners to bump into so I quickly put together this little jig using some scraps of XAL to guide the router around the corners. A short length of the 1” radius external corner XAL was the Goldilocks size for nice safe corners so this worked out great to guide my smaller cordless 1/4” router.
and you can see how the glue joint pretty much disappears when these edges are routed nice and flush. Final polishing of all the countertop surfaces will make this pretty much vanish and I’m very happy with these early results.
Using a 3/8” radius carbide round over router bit I put a nice smooth radius on the top edges……. …….. and then switched to a 1/4” radius bit for the bottom edge as we thought this combination looked and felt the best.
What do you think? T’was a wee bit messy I suppose but otherwise worked out very well and …….. …… provided Christine with some chuckles and entertainment courtesy of her very own Frosty the Snowman. Now on to the details starting with the cutout for the nice big and deep SS sink. Once I had the large opening cut out with the circular saw I cleaned up the inside edges same as I did with the outer edges using the router and a 1/2” radius round over bit to provide what we thought was the best look and feel for the undermount sink. Gee, actually starting to see a Galley in here! With the sink test fitted and approved, next detail was to use this flush bottom router bit to cut a shallow recess in the XAL where the edges of the SS sink would sit down flush with the rest of the XAL surfaces. This was necessary so that the countertop would sit perfectly flush on top of all the XAL and sink edges. The final result was well worth the eXtra effort to get this clean fit between the undermount sink and the countertop material. One more job checked off the list! Moving over to the PS Galley, next job was to fit this lovely 2 burner induction cooktop into the countertop using the same process as the sink…… ………. layout the opening with masking tape and pen, cut out the opening with the circular saw and Japanese flush cut hand saw……. ….. a little bit of filing to put in some small grooves for the screws in the side edges of the cooktop and it slid into place just right.
I will install an 120V outlet underneath to plug this into and won’t fasten this down permanently so it can be easily lifted out and put atop our outside table when we want to cook out there. If you peer through the mess you just might be able to see quite a large and lovely two sided Galley?! Final bit of kit to finish off the Galley for now was to install this marvelous dual kitchen faucet that we can’t wait to try out. Quick and simple install, just drill the 1 1/4” hole in the countertop, assemble the braided SS Hot & Cold hoses into the base of the faucet and insert through the hole. A brass nut then slides up from below and threads onto the base of the faucet with washers sealing both sides and it is ready to be connected to the hot and cold PEX hoses when they go in on the upcoming plumbing phase of Lance’s transformation. All the potable water we put into the two 170L/45 USG water tanks will go through a set of three filters but to clean it up to the next level I installed this Acuva UV water filter with its own faucet.
I can taste that fresh clean water already!
Water Fill Up @ RoadRunner Ranch!
Speaking of tasty fresh water, for those of you wondering, here is how we provide plenty of fresh water for our current totally Off Grid home here on RoadRunner Ranch.
First I load this empty 1270L/335 USG IBC Tote (International Bulk Container) into the back of Totu. Then make the 2 mile drive into the booming metropolis of Searchlight (pop 245) to this “secret” water tap carefully tucked away on this abandoned lot courtesy of one of our neighbors “Amber”. This is fresh out of the ground from the large wellhead that provides all the “city water” to the homes of residents of Searchlight and has incredible pressure and volume so only takes me less than 20 minutes to completely fill the IBC Tote. Then drive back home to RoadRunner Ranch, connect the hose to the large valve on the bottom of the IBC Tote which leads into ……. …… here and use an electric pump to transfer the water into our four IBC Totes stacked up inside the end of one of our two 40ft shipping containers.
BTW; All of this equipment and the containers came with the property!
With all four IBC Totes filled up, this provides us with over 5,000L / 1340 USG of sparkling fresh potable water which is more than a year’s worth for us.
Each tote takes me about 3 hours round trip so not bad for free fresh water!
OK, now back to Lance …….
Mini Split is Major!
Remember those two boxes you saw when I picked up the plywood and the solid surface countertop material in Henderson/Vegas?
Well, here’s what those were. Yup! This awemazing 9000 BTU Pioneer mini split ductless inverter heat pump.
While our primary source of heat in colder weather will be our heated floor which is provided by the Oasis diesel boiler heating up the Glycol flowing through the PEX lines embedded in the floor and through the two “cozy” heat exchangers for hot air, this mini split air conditioner uses a heat pump which we can run in “reverse” to rapidly heat up the Happytat in situations when we have left Lance sitting for several hours or days in extreme cold such as the Norther Territories of Canada, Alaska and the Arctic which we are already eXcited about eXploring in Lance. Of course the primary purpose and use for this Mini-Split will be at the opposite end of the temperature spectrum when we are in hot humid conditions on our upcoming travels throughout North and Central America. I’ve been quite blown away by how much these units have increased their efficiency in cooling/heating/dehumidifying and even more so with their power efficiency.
At full crank this unit will only use about 700 Watts so we will be able pretty much use this as much as we want when fully off grid and unplugged powering it from our 15.36kWh lithium house battery bank. (much more on that in the next update posts)
Do you recall me pointing out the additional XAL framing I installed above the Entry Door into Lance’s Happytat? Well here is what that was for. I put in two vertical XAL supports in the framing above the door and so all I needed to do was bolt in the mounting plate that Pioneer includes with all their Mini-Splits and then you simply lower the unit onto this plate and click it in place! One of the benefits of doing a custom build is that you get to make everything a Goldilocks (just right) fit and this is a good example.
Next steps for this installation will be to remove this once I have it property fitted and connect the control and 240AC power cords and the two copper lines for the refrigerant. Looks may be a bit deceiving here in terms of the headroom when going up/down the entry way stairs but we had calculated this all out and even our taller friends well over 6ft won’t have to duck or have any limitations getting in or out.
I waited till I had this inside unit of the Mini-Split installed to finalize the height of the fridge/freezer and I’ve now lowered it about 50mm/2inches so that there is a bit of clearance between the Fridge door when it is opened and the rotating louver on the bottom of the Mini-Split when it is in operation. Well that was pretty quick and easy but not so fast Wayne!!
Just where and how are you going to mount THIS piece of the puzzle; the exterior half of the Mini-Split??!!
Don’t want to put it on the aft bumper as it looks atrocious and you give up using one of the two rear doors and also blocks tail/brake lights.
Room underneath is very limited for such a large item that measures LxWxH at 73cm x 56cm x 30cm / 29” x 22”x 12”
Hmmmmmm, what to do, what to do ?????????? I spent a LOT of time under Lance measuring every bit of available space, trying out every orientation I could come up with and for awhile I thought the best solution was going to be to dismantle the unit cut out the compressor and all the copper refrigerant lines and compressor so that I could mount the fan and conder unit horizontally. The compressor MUST remain in the “normal” upright/vertical orientation or else it won’t work but the condenser/fan unit works fine at any angle. So for a good while that was my plan; cut the compressor/condenser unit in the photo above into two separate pieces, mount the compressor unit in its required vertical position in a space underneath and then mount the condenser/fan unit sideways or horizonal underneath. It was still going to be a close fit to clear everything and not reduce ground clearance but I was pretty confident it would work and found one person on YouTube who had done something similar and it had been working well for him for several years already.
However, in one of those “Wait, what if …….???” moments in the middle of the night, I wondered if I just might be able to leave this condenser/compressor unit as is and mount the whole thing vertically underneath?? I did a LOT more measuring back and forth between the space under and behind the stairs into Lance and the Pioneer unit itself and convinced myself that while it would be a VERY close and tight fit, it WOULD/COULD work. The original Horton ambulance box had its own AirCon unit and its condenser/compressor was mounted under the steps but it was a special short and long unit made for this purpose and my Pioneer Mini-Split was MUCH larger.
I disconnected, unbolted and removed that original Horton unit which I needed to do in any case, and did more measuring and plotting with lots of consultations with my partner in life, and here’s what we came up with …….. I made a this plywood mock up that might give you a clue as to the plan?
Yup, turns out that with literally 1mm / .03inch clearance I could just squeeze this into the space between the first step and the rear wheel well.
I laid out the lines, measured a few more times, got out my trusty mini circular saw, took a deep breath and started to cut out part of the aluminium diamond plate on the rear of the steps. Whatta ya think?Is it going to fit? Well I did say this was going to be a shoe horn fit, and for a change this was NOT hyperbole as you can see! With a little help from my friends; Misters Crowbar, floor jack and ……….. ……… tie down ratchet strap, guess what?
It fit!!!!!
For those concerned and in spite of appearances in these photos to the contrary, this was all done very “gently” and the unit does fit without bending or damaging anything. Part of the challenge with this solution was with the orientation of the unit because I could not block or impede the flow of air in/out of this unit and had to also have the location of where the copper refrigerant lines hooked up. Amazingly, it all worked out in the end. Once I knew for sure it would actually fit, however closely, my next challenge was how to hold this 24kg/52lb unit solidly in place?
My pack rat tendencies came to the rescue yet again and I was able to repurpose some of these rectangular extruded aluminium channels and bolt them into the AL frame of the Horton box in the just right locations for the compressor/condenser unit to fit snuggly into.
It was going to require that I install two of these AFTER Christine and I wrestled the unit into position on the ground underneath Lance, but it would work. Here is how it was looking underneath around this time. See that spot at the rear between the Pioneer unit and that black leaf spring holder on the frame of the Kenworth chassis?
There is 2mm of clearance there, BUT it clears and nothing rubs!! In the end, this actually had MORE ground clearance than the original Horton compressor/condenser unit but I wanted to improve on it a wee bit more so I fabricated this “skid plate” out of AL diamond plate that I had cut out of the Horton box when modifying it for the transformation. I bolted two horizontal lengths of that same rectangular AL channel I used for the vertical mounts and then threaded up through the bottom of the diamond plate into these to securely attach this all together. Should be able to protect the unit from any rocks or debris that might fly up and hit it. OK, so it was now all mounted and bolted very solidly in place, now I needed to fabricate a new stair riser to replace what I’d cut out and cover this corner of the Mini-Split. I built a frame out of some of the 10 Series 1” XAL left over from the cabinetry framing and bolted that to the AL diamond plate of the steps to create a solid frame that could be stood on. Added 2” of PolyIso rigid foam insulation for acoustic and thermal isolation and then started to fabricate rectangles of AL diamond plate that slid just perfectly into the slots in the XAL framing. This simple little new step turned out to be quite the challenge of its own as I always consider future access for maintenance and repair into my designs and knew what I’d need to be able to access the forward side of the Pioneer unit for connecting the electrical cables and copper lines for this initial install and any future work that might be required. I used to love making little wooden puzzle boxes that had a specific pattern of sliding intricate pieces to open it up and this experience came in eXtremely handy here as this step box turned into an origami puzzle of its own. That side facing plate you see above slides down, then the top frame and its encapsulated plate slide out ……… …….. and now you can slide the front facing plate up and out…….. …. to reach the end goal of accessing the electrical panel. I fabricated this new cover plate and glued the wiring diagram from the original cover to the inside. Connected the 240VAC power in wires ….. ….. and screwed the new cover plate in place. Lastly I reversed the puzzle box “secret” sequence est Voila! The new step was done and the new Pioneer Mini-Split
was fully mounted and ready for installing the copper line set and control wiring. When I am all done, I will be sliding lengths of this rubber channel into the exposed slots of the XAL for a nice finishing touch and a bit of aesthetics.
Oh, and just one more thing ……..
One of the more eXciting things to happen this past week was that my Captain Christine brought back these three boxes and these two boxes, back home from one of her most recent drives up to Henderson for her fitness workouts and shopping’ Holy 3Dimensions Batwoman, boys and girls,
Wayne finally has his own 3D printer!!!!
Not that I am going to have much time to unbox and start learning how to use this Bamboo P1S 3D printer with the “combo” option of the four spool AMS Automatic Material System on top, but BOY is this going to be fun, eXtremely eXciting AND very useful for printing up so many new tools, fixtures, containers and whatever else I can design and model in Fusion 360. Even Christine shares much of my eXcitment with things she has already got in mind for me to print. Stay tuned for much more once I get some time to start using this awemazing new bit of kit.
In closing (FINALLY WAYNE!!) I’d be remis if I didn’t include kudos to our intrepid helpers who are ALWAYS on the job and without whom none of this would be possible!
A BIG congratulations if you’ve made it this far in this marathon monster mashup and please do be encouraged with any remaining strength and perseverance to put your comments and questions in the “join the Discussion“ box below. We are back at it in the morning and will do my best to get out another update before we start on our newest adventure heading to the East Coast and back.
Wow! Another month races into the history books and the progress on Lance continues. We continue to enjoy the almost always sunny weather here in the deep south of Nevada though being at just over 3800 feet elevation it was still cool temperatures for much of March but warming up more and more each day now as April approaches. This is pretty much “Wayne’s World” these days with my table saw, drill press and chop saw set up alongside Lance in between the two 40’ shipping containers. As you might notice, I share this space with my buddies Zoe & Razz who enjoy their “grassy patch” and outdoor play pen supervising my work most days.
This is about where things were at the end of February and my last update, with the XAL (eXtruded Aluminium) framing in place at the front end of Lance’s Happytat where the Head/Bathroom and Shower areas will live. The cabinet on the far Right here alongside the side door and entryway will be where the fridge/freezer unit goes. To max out volume of storage areas I framed in the space above the Joolca “Gotta Go” separating toilet to create an overhead cabinet. I’ll divide this cupboard into two areas with storage in the front area and have a smaller second area behind it where I’ll mount the thermostatic shower control, hose and showerhead. As you may have noticed I am working my way counterclockwise around the interior spaces and the last part of the main framing for the primary cabinetry is the currently empty area on the far Left you see here, which will be the Drivers Side Galley. I continue to enjoy building all the cabinet framing with 10 Series or 1 inch square eXtruded Aluminium (XAL) and it all goes together relatively quickly having done all the design work as I built the 3D model, hence the ever present laptop running Fusion 360.
Good time to also check the fit and placement of the deep double sink with its great views out the window when washing dishes. The model gives me the precise length of each piece I need to cut on the cut off saw and how each joint goes together. Each of those four vertical spaces will be filled with drawers of different heights and the vertical XAL front and rear provide very strong attachment points for all the undermount drawer slide hardware that I’m about to order. Speaking of windows, we have our always alert security guards keeping a close eye on the comings and goings of the various others we share this fabulous area. No need for any worry about our safety with these two vicious watch dogs on the job! While we don’t see too many people, which is just the way we like it, there is lots of life to see out our windows including the real life versions of Wile E. Coyote & Roadrunner, rabbits large and small, lots of mice and squirrels on the ground and ravens overhead.
Very much a work in progress as you can see but the interior spaces are starting to take shape now. This is taken with me standing in the shower area at the front with the main entry on the far Left, the now completed Drivers Side Galley countertop on the far Right that is 175 cm / 5’ 9” long and a matching countertop opposite that will be 98 cm / 3’ 2” long. Now my attention turns to building the lifting bed platform which is atop the L shaped settee that occupies the area aft of the two countertops. Most of the time the bed platform and mattress will rest as you see here, gently squeezing the mattress up tight against the ceiling with plenty of headroom for sitting underneath in the settee.
Here is a skeleton view of the XAL bed frame in Blue which will then have a plywood panel spanning across the support bars with the mattress tucked firmly inside the outer XAL bed frame. For sleeping, the full size Queen bed lowers down, along with the Settee table, to this easily accessed position. This setup makes it easy to make up the bed every morning and then have it retract fully out of the way with just the push of a button.
No magic tricks required for this! Instead I’m going to install four of these PA-18 Linear Actuators I’ve had built by a Canadian firm in Vancouver; Progressive Automation.
If you look closely (click to enlarge any photo) at the renders above you can see these located at each corner of the bed frame and you can see here how the one on the PS Front is bolted to the two vertical lengths of XAL at the end of the PS Galley countertop. All four actuators plug into this FLTCON-4 central control box which provides the 24 volts for each motor. Inside the long aluminium body of each PA-18 linear actuator is a threaded stainless steel rod which is driven by the black motor at the top which in turn causes the black “Car” below it to move up or down the full length of the AL track.
Last piece of this automated lifting bed system is this small set of buttons that is also plugged into the control box. Once the interior panels are all installed this will be the only part you will see and will likely be mounted somewhere out of the way but easily reached when we want to move the bed Down to Sleep or Up to eat. The Up/Down buttons allow you to move the bed Up/Down to any position you want and then you can save this position into memory of button 1, 2, 3 or 4.
Now anytime you press that number, the bed automagically moves to that position. I will likely program #1 to move the XAL bed frame to the max UP position without the mattress in place whenever I’m working on the bed system and want the platform completely up out of the way. Then #2 can be the regular UP position with the mattress in place for whenever we are using the settee, #3 can be the Goldilocks position for best views out the window when in bed and 4 can be the lowest position for ease of getting in/out of the bed. To ensure that the positions of all four actuators are synchronized there is a Hall Effect sensor inside each actuator which communicates the position of each sliding Car to the control box. Here I have all four actuators plugged in so I could test the “synchro” feature which causes all four cars to go to their Home position with all Cars in their max Up position and then I could also test out the memory setting feature before I installed each actuator.
My next challenge was to figure out a way to connect the sides of the XAL bed frame to the four sliding Cars on the linear actuators such that they would move the bed frame would move Up and Down.
Hmmmmm ……..
I work hard to maintain my well deserved reputation as a pack rat and so I had kept ALL the wires, materials, nuts, bolts and hardware when I fully gutted the original Horton ambulance box and took it down to the bare AL frame. One of the pieces of aluminium I kept was this C-channel and it turned out to be my just right Goldilocks solution for building the saddle blocks I would bolt to the cars on the actuators. I cut the C-channel into four short pieces that were the same length as the Black Cars on the actuators. The width of these Black Nylon Cars was just a wee bit larger than the inside width of the AL C-channel so I carefully guided each actuator through my table saw and trimmed off about 2mm from each side. Which allowed them to be a slight press fit onto the Car. The inside corners of the C-channel have a radius to them but it was easy to file the corners of the Nylon Cars to match and Voila! A perfect fit. Progressive Automation manufactures the thick Black Nylon Cars with three threaded mounting holes on each side which go all the way through the body of these Black Cars; a large M10 in the middle with two M6 on either side, so I drilled out matching holes in the sides of the AL C-channel saddles so I could very securely attach each saddle its Black Car mate.
Next question was how to attach the XAL bed frame to these Nylon & AL saddles? This would need to strong enough to safely transfer the full combined weight of Christine, Zoe, Razz and me as well as weight of the bed XAL frame, cross member, panels and mattress but could not be a solid unmoving connection. It needed to be allow for a bit of rotation for any slight changes in orientation as the bed frame travelled up and down the full stroke length of about 110 cm / 44 inches.
Hmmmmmm ……
I decided to use what are called Heim Joints which as pictured here are typically used to join the ends of connecting rods on things like steering links on vehicles and industrial machinery. These are made for eXtreme loads made of heat treated steel plated with hard chrome and readily available from Amazon. I’ve used these with great success in projects for probably 50 years and they’ll be a good fit here as well. I ordered four of these 3/8” Heim joints which are rated for a load capacity of 4,400 Kg/9,544 lbs.
and come with their matching SS threaded inserts and jam nuts. I used the same scrap of C-Channel to cut four more pieces and cut each of those in half ……….. …….. to make these matching L-bar mounting brackets ……….. ………. which I then bolted to the C-Channel saddles with the Heim Joint sandwiched between the two “ears” of the brackets and through bolted. Worked very well and I could then bolt each Heim Joint Saddle to its matching Nylon Car. I then bolted each linear actuator to the vertical XAL support posts using some AL bar stock that I cut to be thick enough to keep the inner surface of the AL saddles spaced clear of the inside of the XAL posts and they moved up and down.
Final part of this puzzle was to mount the SS threaded inserts for each Heim joint you can see here, to the sides of the bed frame. The sides of the bed frame are made from lengths I cut from 3” x 1” XAL and carefully clamped each one in place so I could precisely mark the center of each SS insert and then I drilled undersize holes through the XAL. As you can see in the photos above these SS inserts are tapered so I used my handy dandy Dremel tool with a rotary carbide cutter to enlarge these holes and carefully hand fit the SS inserts to be a slight press fit into the XAL. I will likely build different corner brackets to join the four sides of the bed frame but for now these 90 degree corner brackets will work to lock the frame square and true while I finish mounting the frame to the four Heim joints. I allowed about 5mm / .2” clearance between the moving bed frame sides and the XAL posts so it is a very close fit that was relatively straight forward to adjust by turning the threaded SS inserts with a wrench on the flats I ground on each one (see photos above). The power/comm cables on each actuator need to be extended but I was able to just plug each cable into the control box and hang it in the center which allowed me to test out the whole assembly.
Best of all ………………… IT WORKED first time!! I was able to raise and lower the bed and set four memory positions to the numbered buttons and it all moves up and down smoothly and quietly. We are eXtremely happy with this design as it gives us have a full Queen sized memory foam bed without giving up any space for seating or eating. And also eliminates the need to set up and make up the bed every night and repeat it all every morning. Last update to show you today is that we were able to temporarily slide the fridge/freezer into its home!
This is an Isotherm Cruise 200 that runs off both 12VDC and 120VAC
Total of 7 cubic feet with a 5.3 cubic feet refrigerator and 1.78 cubic feet freezer – each with their own separate side by side doors.
Will go a long way towards enabling us to have plenty of food to go a long way and stay out there a long time. Can’t wait to start using it.
That’s a wrap for this update and my sincere thanks to all of you brave souls who have persevered and made it this far! Probably waaaaaaay too much detail for many of you but hopefully easy enough to scroll through at whatever pace you like.
I’ll leave you with these photos that Christine is so good at taking of the views out our dining room window most evenings here on Road Runner Ranch.
It is difficult to make out in these photos but the Colorado River is running just in front of the mountains you see off in the distance here.
The light at this time of day as the sun is just setting below the mountains behind us makes for some truly spectacular ends to our days we are so fortunate to enjoy most every day. Hope you enjoy and will look forward to answering any questions or comments you leave in the “Join the discussion” box below.
I always liked the John Lennon line from his Beautiful Boy song in 1980 that “Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans” and that’s a good summary since my last update here. It has been a very busy and fun six weeks with no shortage of projects, trips and milestones but not so much time for updates so thanks for your patience. Two birthdays in January, one for me on the 23rd and daughter Lia on the 14th. So we decided to make the relatively quick drive, less than 4 hours, over to the LA area to surprise Lia on her milestone Four Oh!birthday by delivering some some B’day flowers, champagne and hugs in person. As a bonus we went back for a week to see Brynn’s Talent Show at her school and then got to be full time Gramma and Grampa for the weekend while Brian & Lia had a fully unsupervised weekend away for Valentine’s Day. We continue to work away at getting things setup here on “Road Runner Ranch” and this arial shot from Christine’s drone video that you might have seen in the previous post, shows how we are setup so far. The 40’ shipping container above on the left is what I’m setting up for my workshop with Lance parked right beside. The matching container on the Right is what we’re using for storage and is close to our 25’ travel trailer that continues to provide a very comfy home for us and the two pups for now.
We recently got a good deal what they refer to as a “garage fridge” so we’ve now got that set up inside this container to expand the fridge and freezer space that is built into the trailer and keeps us well stocked in food supplies. This panorama shot (click to enlarge any photo) will help you get a sense of the setting we’ve got for our little sanctuary here and might help some of you make a bit more sense of why this is such a Goldilocks location for us.
Best news for me and many of you who I know have been waiting, is that I’m back to working on converting “Lance” our 2017 Kenworth ex medium duty ambulance into our eXploration RV. I’ve picked up where I left off building all the cabinetry framing using lengths of eXtruded ALuminium which I’ll abbreviate as XAL. Looking forward from about mid way inside Lance’s “Happitat” the blank wall on the left is the front wall with the cab on the other side and the main entry door that is on the passenger side PS in the right corner. I’ve put in a scrap of 3/4”/20mm plywood to create a desk for myself on what will eventually become one of the two galley countertops with a larger one yet to be framed on the opposite left or driver side DS. The XAL you see on the ceiling is where the forward side of the lifting Queen bed will go with a large L shaped settee below. Here is a sample of a length of the XAL with several different corner brackets that bolt into the T track grooves in the XAL which turn this into a giant adult version of the Erector sets I used to love playing with as a young boy, long before many of you were born! I’m working my way somewhat counter clockwise around the Happitat walls so my next focus was the XAL framing you see now in the front right PS corner. The Blue poles you see ratcheting cargo support bars that have proved indispensable to me for holding things in place as I build. This full height cabinet will have our fridge/freezer mounted inside the large opening you see here with lots of storage in the spaces above and below.
Shower will be in the middle on the left here and the head/toile over in the far left DS corner that I’ll move onto next. This front DS front corner is a bit more complex as the large vertical exterior access cabinet is also in this corner and it is where I’ll be installing Lance’s whole electrical system with three large lithium batteries on the very bottom and then all the other components such as 12VDC to 120/240VAC inverters, battery chargers, and much more mounted this exterior locker.
Here on the inside is where I now need to finish the XAL framework above the battery frames I’ve built to support the three big batteries. This will give you a sense of the size and shape of the server rack style lithium LiFePO4 batteries that will provide all the 12VDC and 120/240VAC electrical power in Lance. For those interested in the details, this shot the label on one of the three batteries will give you all the numbers.
While 45Kg/90 lbs might sound like a lot when you consider that each one of these provides 5120 WattHours (400Ah @ 12.8VDC) the power density is pretty amazing. Having three of these connected in parallel will provide a total of 15.36Kwh (1200Ah @ 12.8VDC) which will will be more than enough to give us all the power we need for our all electric cooking appliances such as induction cooktop, coffee makers, toaster oven, microwave as well as powering our mini split Air Conditioner. As with all of this build, I had created very accurate 3D models using Fusion 360 of all the XAL framing and each of the components such as this Joolca separating toilet and the EG4 batteries and these have served me very well throughout the build.
I knew that the batteries were going to be a very close fit and I had built the framing for them back when we were in Klamath falls but now was the moment of truth to see if they actually fit?!! The “ears” of the server rack batteries were a few millimeters wider than the opening of the door frame so it took a bit of wiggling them in at an angle and some gentle persuasion, ……..
……. but they fit in snug as a bug in a rug as you can see here and put a big grin on my face.
These server rack style of battery are very safe and easy to work with as they have both an On/Off switch (silver circle upper right) that turns the BMS (Battery Management System) on/off as well as the high amp double pole high amp circuit breaker (White/Blue on bottom left) so I could keep bot of those turned Off and ensure that there was never any danger of a short to the terminals while I was wrestling them in place. Locating the batteries in this front DS location was ideal as it kept the weight down low, centered and on the opposite side from the fuel tank and also enables me to keep all the electrical system components in this one externally accessible locker.
However it did require me to raise the floor and design around them on the inside as you can see here. After playing around with the 3D model for some time, I ended up making this raised area inside be just the right height for the floor under the Joolca Gotta Go separating toilet. With the shower area in the center area the whole bathroom space becomes feels very large and open both when using it as a shower and when seated on the throne. I had my Beautiful Bride check it all out in person this morning and got the two thumbs up so the framing progress can now continue. I also checked in with these two scallywags, Razz on the left, Zoe on the right, and got their approval as well so I’m all systems GO now.
So I will continue to work my way around the DS corner as I move onto framing out the Galley/Kitchen area that runs down the rest of the Drivers Side and you’ll see that in the next update. We continue to get sunsets like this almost every evening and sunrises are pretty spectacular as well so we continue to enjoy our new location a bit more each day. That’s a wrap for this update and I’ll do my best to post the next one much sooner and try to get back to doing one every Sunday as long as “life” doesn’t interfere!
Hope you enjoyed the update and thanks to all who persevered to this point. Be sure to add all your questions and comments in the “Join the discussion” box below and hope you’ll be back for more in the next update.
However with Christine’s return they are now just back from their day at the Puppy Spa so thought you’d enjoy these before and after pics. 
When the weather is nice we like to spend most of our days camping enjoying the sunny outdoors, such as this spot in Dinosaur Provincial Park just east of Calgary in Alberta this past July. But we’re heading for Baja in a few weeks and we do like the hotter weather when some shelter from the sun and at times the rain allows us to stay outside longer. So we’ve been researching what retractable awning would be the Goldilocks, just right, just for us. 
We wanted an awning that would extend out from the Passenger Side PS as that’s where we tend to set up our table and chairs when camping and one that would be very quick and easy to extend and retract so that we’d use it frequently. After some research we settled on the Italian made Fiama 14’ F45S awning with a “Titanium” colour housing. 
It took a few weeks to get to us but I was able to get a good price with free shipping from Vanlife Outfitters and I picked it up from a freight terminal in Las Vegas which is less than an hour’s drive from our place here on Road Runner Ranch. The box it shipped in was just a bit over 14’/4.3M long so that roll down rear window in Totu (our 2006 Toyota Tundra) comes in very handy for extending the length of items I pick up without sticking out the rear too much. 
It was very well packaged for shipping with lots of very tough angled cardboard corners on all sides so it arrived in perfect condition. 
The awning comes with three of these extruded Aluminium brackets which hook into the extruded Aluminium on the back of the awning body itself so I just needed to come up with a way of securely fastening these brackets to the top PS roof corner on Lance’s Hab. (Habitat/Box)
I keep all the cut offs from the XAL or eXtruded Aluminium that I used to build all the cabinet framing inside Lance and just love working with this stuff so I was particularly delighted to find that the T-slot in the 10 Series 1 inch square XAL wedged itself perfectly into the L shaped aluminium gutter rails that runs down the top sides of Lance’s Hab. Sometimes you luck out!
This is the design I came up with. Solid and Simple; four small lengths of XAL with four corner gussets to bolt them all together. 
You’ll see that I’ve built these such that the top edge of these XAL brackets ends up at the same height as the top of the steel Super Strut rails you saw me affix to Lance’s rooftop for mounting the solar panels. This allowed me to bolt a short length of 2” wide 3/16” AL bar stock to the top of the XAL squares and then bolt through the Super Strut into the captured nuts that slide into these rails. 
These captured nuts twist lock in place using the blue plastic flanges to hold them right where you want them before tightening the 1/4” through bolt. In the middle bracket you see here as well as the rear one, the flat bar supports fit nicely into the 40mm/1.5” space I left between the bottom of the solar panel frames and the Super Strut. 
Here is what the finished installation looks like with the Fiama bracket now bolted into the top T-slot of the XAL bracket. 
This closeup shows how perfectly the bottom T-slot fits into the L shaped AL rain gutter that is part of the top corner extrusions on Lance’s roof. 
After I had them all dry fitted and checked that the three brackets were where Fiama wants them, I put in a bead of that same 8X Loctite industrial adhesive I used to affix the Super Strut to the roof top so these brackets are definitely on there for good! 
Being all aluminium construction whole awning only weighs 27Kg/60lbs so it wasn’t too much of a lift for Christine and I on two ladders to lift it up and slide the awning into the brackets. 
Once the awning is in place the final step is to drill through these holes you see on the bottom lip of the Fiama brackets and bolt the awning securely to the brackets. 
We like to keep things simple whenever we can so we went with the fully manual style that uses the little crank you see here to roll the awning in and out. If we ever wanted to Fiama makes an electric motor that bolts to the end and let’s you roll the awning in/out with the touch of a switch but we think this simple crank method will suit us best.
See you next year!!!
Easily one of the most used and most important areas for our day to day live in Lance and our 10,000 + mile “maiden voyage” this past summer proved that our design worked well as we used it during that two month test drive. We prioritized large areas of open countertop, dual deep sink, induction cooktop and large fridge and freezer and you can see the basic layout from the 3D model screengrab here. 
Underneath both countertops it is all drawers as we find these much more efficient to use than cupboards and overall we have more than 20 drawers inside of Lance. 
I have always preferred dovetail joints for all drawers given their superior strength that stands up for decades of use and I think they look great too and so that’s what we went with for Lance. I was going to do this all myself but with almost a hundred dovetailed corners to do and SO many other jobs demanding my time and attention I decided to job this out. I found a fabulous company to work with called 
They shipped all the pre-cut drawers to me as flatpacks like this so the whole shipment of all the drawers was not too large and they were all very well shrink wrapped and carefully boxed up so they arrived with no damage at all. 
They also offered a great prices on the the top quality Blum undermount ball bearing drawer slides I wanted so it all came as a single order which made my life easier.
Mounting more than 40 drawer slides to the XAL framework was very straightforward but time consuming to get them all exactly parallel and lined up. 
and some required a bit of Houdini moves to hold in place and tighten up. 
Next, I set up a little workbench on top of the PS Galley counter to assemble each drawer. 
Each set of dovetails only required a few drops of wood glue and they went together very well with two bar clamps and some taps with my little hammer to get the joints to fit together all the way. The dovetails were so precise that every drawer went together perfectly square and were solid as a rock. 
The Blum drawer slides required two slots in the bottom of each rear drawer side so I cut those out next and then I mounted to the Orange locking hardware to the bottom of the front corners. These are where the drawer slides clip into the drawer and make it very easy to lift out a drawer at any time. It’s a great system! 
Installing each drawer was now a simple process of pulling out each drawer slide………. 
………… setting the pins in the rear of each drawer slide into the corresponding holes I had previously drilled and pushing them closed till they clicked in place. 
Et Voila! We’ve got drawers! Sad to say that I wasn’t able to get this done before we left on our big summer adventure so we REALLY appreciate having these now! 
I wanted all surfaces of these drawers to have a tough durable finish and decided to go with this two part Rubi Monocoat finish that you put on by hand with cloths rather than brush or spray. Hand rubbed finishes have always been my favorite and while this was a new one for me I was eXtremely pleased with the end result and the whole process of applying it. 
It was a bit laborious and a good workout but a very satisfying process for me. 
Difficult to see in photos but the Baltic Birch plywood came out with a glowing warm colour and a very tough finish that is also very easy to reapply in the future. 
To reduce the loss of usable space under the sinks I used these low profile P-traps which have turned out to work very well. 
and only required a small cut out on the rear of the two under sink drawers to clear nicely. 
For lighting, I decided to use COB (Circuit on Board) LED strip lights which I set inside lengths of 20mm wide black aluminium U channel which I ran in between each of the White PVC ceiling planks. I like these newer COB strips for two reasons; they provide an uninterrupted line of light rather than individual points of light in the regular LED strips and they can be adjusted from about 2200K (very warm amber) up to 6500K (daylight white). 
Once I had the layout done and the strips of PVC and AL channel cut to length, the process went quite quickly. I could apply the construction adhesive to each plank and AL channel and press them up into place and then use my super handy cargo jacks and some scrap lengths of XAL to press these all up against the ceiling so they ended up flat and aligned. 
You can buy the COB LED lights in 20 meter rolls which you then cut to the lengths you want and solder three wires to the copper strips underlying the Yellow COB light strips. Takes a bit of practice to get these tight solder joints without any cross connections but all went pretty well after a few practice solders. 
Then I twist the wires to help reduce any electrical interference and slide a clear tube of heat shrink tubing over the joints and shrink them in place for a nice clean and protected connection.
……………. I could now press these clear covers in place. 
Here’s the result at about 6000k. These LED light strips are also fully dimmable so you can adjust both the colour temp from warm to cold white and from off to full almost daylight brightness.
Click to enlarge and read that this is not just any ole ferry, this is the last remaining coal fired steam driven public ferry in existence. And my oh my was it ever an experience. One part of which was that in the photo above that is NOT us driving Lance OFF the ferry, this is one of the ferry crew members BACKING Lance onto the ferry, which was their requirement for EVERY vehicle going on that ferry! I could go on with more stories about that ferry ride but we need to keep driving onward …………. 
However this was all easily upstaged by our overnight free camping spot just a few miles north of Ainsworth at Fletcher Creek Falls.
After making the VERY steep climb up the mountain we wanted to push the bikes harder and see what they were capable of so we headed down and back up another even steeper set of climbs over to the Feral Goat Bistro at Sage Hayward Winery and enjoyed THIS delicious spread along with some flights of wine. 
We both love eggs Benedict and had many of them for breakfasts on this trip but still enjoyed making my own version once we were back home. 
I had a fabulous drive making my way over to Pacific Coast Highway on roads I’d not tried before and
This is already getting long so I’ll condense the rest of our travels since then and just say that we had a wonderful few months on Saturna. 
We needed to get both vehicles down to Nevada so Christine drove Totu and I drove Lance and we found some more new ways to get from Saturna to Searchlight. This time we took the ferry out of Victoria over to Port Angeles, down the PCH and then west along the north or California on fabulous Hwy 36 that I had found on my drive up with Totu a few months previous. 
It was a truly wonderful Summer and Fall for all of us and we are now settling back into life here on our winter base at Road Runner Ranch, out in the BLM lands just north of Searchlight NV. 
and this is the overhead cabinet above the DS Galley countertop.
You can see a bit of the detail of the way I am connecting all the various lengths of XAL which are all 1 inch square with either 2, 3 or 4 T slots. 
You can also see some additional XAL framing above the Entry Door into Lance’s “Happy tat” which I’ll explain a bit more in a few minutes. 
Peering into the Fusion 360 3D model of the Happytat might help to give you some perspective of the overall layout. L-shaped Settee in the Rear (far left) with the Queen Bed (not shown) raised up into the ceiling and the two Galley countertops on the PS and DS in the middle and then the Fridge/Freezer PS front with the shower in between that and the Head/Bathroom on the DS front (upper Right here) 
The last bit of XAL framing when pretty quick and easy to put the last piece of the L-shaped Settee into place for the seat that goes across the back in front of the two rear doors of the Happytat “box”. 
Not to get too far ahead of ourselves but thankfully my Beautiful Bride has been taking some time away from her writing to create these drawings for the Settee cushions with the help from some AI of course to create these sketches a bit faster. She is now working with a local upholstery guy up in Vegas as we simply don’t have the time to sew these ourselves. 
This is a sample swatch of the upholstery fabric that Christine has found and we both really love. 
….. and this is the beautiful (we think) glass and stone tile that she found and should be here in a few days. 
We found this Blue Lagoon pure acrylic at Solid Surface.com (where else?!?) and got a great price at $639 for this 1/2 inch thick 144 inch x 30 inch slab. They did a great job of packaging it all up and it arrived in perfect condition. 
Would have been a bit of a challenge to bring this 12 foot slab the 75 miles back to RoadRunner Ranch but I needed two pieces that were just under 6ft each so I brought my handy cordless circular saw with me and cut it in half and loaded it into Totu our 2006 Toyota Tundra, and we were off. 
Well, I did make a quick stop while I was up in Henderson (south part of Vegas) at our favorite Home Depot to pick up four sheets of 1/4” and 1/2 thick Baltic Birch plywood and these two other boxes which you’ll just have to wait for a bit to discover what’s inside them. 
This 1/2” solid acrylic material was very nice to work with using my regular carbide tipped saw blades and router bits and after some careful “measure twice, cut once” checks between the model and the actual interior I quick had the larger DS Galley countertop cut out. 
With the cutouts to go around the intersecting XAL parts and the bed lift linear actuators on the far Left here, it was a nice close fit.
We like the look of thicker exposed edges around all the countertops so my next step was to cut 1” and 2” strips of the acrylic sheet and glue them along all the edges and overtop of where the countertop attaches to all of the XAL framing underneath. Pretty simple process using a purpose made epoxy glue and matching gun you can see in the middle Right and then clamping the two mating surfaces together. 
Now for the FUN part! Cleaning up all the now 1” thick edges where the two pieces had been glued together. The clamp on strait edge was a bit help to quickly have a straight guiding surface for me to hold the base of the router to and shave off the edges.
…….. and then switched to a 1/4” radius bit for the bottom edge as we thought this combination looked and felt the best.
…… provided Christine with some chuckles and entertainment courtesy of her very own Frosty the Snowman. 
Now on to the details starting with the cutout for the nice big and deep SS sink. 
Once I had the large opening cut out with the circular saw I cleaned up the inside edges same as I did with the outer edges using the router and a 1/2” radius round over bit to provide what we thought was the best look and feel for the undermount sink. 
Gee, actually starting to see a Galley in here! 
With the sink test fitted and approved, next detail was to use this flush bottom router bit to cut a shallow recess in the XAL where the edges of the SS sink would sit down flush with the rest of the XAL surfaces. 
This was necessary so that the countertop would sit perfectly flush on top of all the XAL and sink edges. 
The final result was well worth the eXtra effort to get this clean fit between the undermount sink and the countertop material. 
One more job checked off the list! 
Moving over to the PS Galley, next job was to fit this lovely 2 burner induction cooktop into the countertop using the same process as the sink…… 
………. layout the opening with masking tape and pen, cut out the opening with the circular saw and Japanese flush cut hand saw……. 
….. a little bit of filing to put in some small grooves for the screws in the side edges of the cooktop and it slid into place just right.
If you peer through the mess you just might be able to see quite a large and lovely two sided Galley?! 
Final bit of kit to finish off the Galley for now was to install this marvelous dual kitchen faucet that we can’t wait to try out. 
Quick and simple install, just drill the 1 1/4” hole in the countertop, assemble the braided SS Hot & Cold hoses into the base of the faucet and insert through the hole. A brass nut then slides up from below and threads onto the base of the faucet with washers sealing both sides and it is ready to be connected to the hot and cold PEX hoses when they go in on the upcoming plumbing phase of Lance’s transformation. 
All the potable water we put into the two 170L/45 USG water tanks will go through a set of three filters but to clean it up to the next level I installed this Acuva UV water filter with its own faucet. 
Then make the 2 mile drive into the booming metropolis of Searchlight (pop 245) to this “secret” water tap carefully tucked away on this abandoned lot courtesy of one of our neighbors “Amber”. This is fresh out of the ground from the large wellhead that provides all the “city water” to the homes of residents of Searchlight and has incredible pressure and volume so only takes me less than 20 minutes to completely fill the IBC Tote. 
Then drive back home to RoadRunner Ranch, connect the hose to the large valve on the bottom of the IBC Tote which leads into ……. 
…… here and use an electric pump to transfer the water into our four IBC Totes stacked up inside the end of one of our two 40ft shipping containers.
Yup! This awemazing 9000 BTU Pioneer mini split ductless inverter heat pump.
I’ve been quite blown away by how much these units have increased their efficiency in cooling/heating/dehumidifying and even more so with their power efficiency. 
Do you recall me pointing out the additional XAL framing I installed above the Entry Door into Lance’s Happytat? Well here is what that was for. I put in two vertical XAL supports in the framing above the door and so all I needed to do was bolt in the mounting plate that Pioneer includes with all their Mini-Splits and then you simply lower the unit onto this plate and click it in place! 
One of the benefits of doing a custom build is that you get to make everything a Goldilocks (just right) fit and this is a good example.
Looks may be a bit deceiving here in terms of the headroom when going up/down the entry way stairs but we had calculated this all out and even our taller friends well over 6ft won’t have to duck or have any limitations getting in or out. 
Well that was pretty quick and easy but not so fast Wayne!!
Whatta ya think?Is it going to fit? 
Well I did say this was going to be a shoe horn fit, and for a change this was NOT hyperbole as you can see! 
With a little help from my friends; Misters Crowbar, floor jack and ……….. 
……… tie down ratchet strap, guess what? 
Once I knew for sure it would actually fit, however closely, my next challenge was how to hold this 24kg/52lb unit solidly in place? 
Here is how it was looking underneath around this time. 
See that spot at the rear between the Pioneer unit and that black leaf spring holder on the frame of the Kenworth chassis?
In
OK, so it was now all mounted and bolted very solidly in place, now I needed to fabricate a new stair riser to replace what I’d cut out and cover this corner of the Mini-Split. I built a frame out of some of the 10 Series 1” XAL left over from the cabinetry framing and bolted that to the AL diamond plate of the steps to create a solid frame that could be stood on. 
Added 2” of PolyIso rigid foam insulation for acoustic and thermal isolation and then started to fabricate rectangles of AL diamond plate that slid just perfectly into the slots in the XAL framing. 
This simple little new step turned out to be quite the challenge of its own as I always consider future access for maintenance and repair into my designs and knew what I’d need to be able to access the forward side of the Pioneer unit for connecting the electrical cables and copper lines for this initial install and any future work that might be required. 
I used to love making little wooden puzzle boxes that had a specific pattern of sliding intricate pieces to open it up and this experience came in eXtremely handy here as this step box turned into an origami puzzle of its own. That side facing plate you see above slides down, then the top frame and its encapsulated plate slide out ……… 
…….. and now you can slide the front facing plate up and out…….. 
…. to reach the end goal of accessing the electrical panel. 
I fabricated this new cover plate and glued the wiring diagram from the original cover to the inside. 
Connected the 240VAC power in wires ….. 
….. and screwed the new cover plate in place. 
Lastly I reversed the puzzle box “secret” sequence est Voila! The new step was done and the new Pioneer Mini-Split
When I am all done, I will be sliding lengths of this rubber channel into the exposed slots of the XAL for a nice finishing touch and a bit of aesthetics.
these two boxes, back home from one of her most recent drives up to Henderson for her fitness workouts and shopping’ 
Holy 3Dimensions Batwoman, boys and girls,
To max out volume of storage areas I framed in the space above the Joolca “Gotta Go” separating toilet to create an overhead cabinet. 
As you may have noticed I am working my way counterclockwise around the interior spaces and the last part of the main framing for the primary cabinetry is the currently empty area on the far Left you see here, which will be the Drivers Side Galley. 
The model gives me the precise length of each piece I need to cut on the cut off saw and how each joint goes together. Each of those four vertical spaces will be filled with drawers of different heights and the vertical XAL front and rear provide very strong attachment points for all the undermount drawer slide hardware that I’m about to order. 
Speaking of windows, we have our always alert security guards keeping a close eye on the comings and goings of the various others we share this fabulous area. No need for any worry about our safety with these two vicious watch dogs on the job! 
While we don’t see too many people, which is just the way we like it, there is lots of life to see out our windows including the real life versions of Wile E. Coyote & Roadrunner, rabbits large and small, lots of mice and squirrels on the ground and ravens overhead.
Here is a skeleton view of the XAL bed frame in Blue which will then have a plywood panel spanning across the support bars with the mattress tucked firmly inside the outer XAL bed frame. 
All four actuators plug into this FLTCON-4 central control box which provides the 24 volts for each motor. 
Last piece of this automated lifting bed system is this small set of buttons that is also plugged into the control box. Once the interior panels are all installed this will be the only part you will see and will likely be mounted somewhere out of the way but easily reached when we want to move the bed Down to Sleep or Up to eat. 
The Up/Down buttons allow you to move the bed Up/Down to any position you want and then you can save this position into memory of button 1, 2, 3 or 4. 
I work hard to maintain my well deserved reputation as a pack rat and so I had kept ALL the wires, materials, nuts, bolts and hardware when I fully gutted the original Horton ambulance box and took it down to the bare AL frame. One of the pieces of aluminium I kept was this C-channel and it turned out to be my just right Goldilocks solution for building the saddle blocks I would bolt to the cars on the actuators. 
I cut the C-channel into four short pieces that were the same length as the Black Cars on the actuators. 
The width of these Black Nylon Cars was just a wee bit larger than the inside width of the AL C-channel so I carefully guided each actuator through my table saw and trimmed off about 2mm from each side. 
Which allowed them to be a slight press fit onto the Car. 
The inside corners of the C-channel have a radius to them but it was easy to file the corners of the Nylon Cars to match and Voila! A perfect fit. 
Progressive Automation manufactures the thick Black Nylon Cars with three threaded mounting holes on each side which go all the way through the body of these Black Cars; a large M10 in the middle with two M6 on either side, so I drilled out matching holes in the sides of the AL C-channel saddles so I could very securely attach each saddle its Black Car mate. 
…….. to make these matching L-bar mounting brackets ……….. 
………. which I then bolted to the C-Channel saddles with the Heim Joint sandwiched between the two “ears” of the brackets and through bolted. 
Worked very well and I could then bolt each Heim Joint Saddle to its matching Nylon Car. I then bolted each linear actuator to the vertical XAL support posts using some AL bar stock that I cut to be thick enough to keep the inner surface of the AL saddles spaced clear of the inside of the XAL posts and they moved up and down.
The sides of the bed frame are made from lengths I cut from 3” x 1” XAL and carefully clamped each one in place so I could precisely mark the center of each SS insert and then I drilled undersize holes through the XAL. As you can see in the photos above these SS inserts are tapered so I used my handy dandy Dremel tool with a rotary carbide cutter to enlarge these holes and carefully hand fit the SS inserts to be a slight press fit into the XAL. 
I
I allowed about 5mm / .2” clearance between the moving bed frame sides and the XAL posts so it is a very close fit that was relatively straight forward to adjust by turning the threaded SS inserts with a wrench on the flats I ground on each one (see photos above). 
The power/comm cables on each actuator need to be extended but I was able to just plug each cable into the control box and hang it in the center which allowed me to test out the whole assembly. 
We continue to work away at getting things setup here on “Road Runner Ranch” and this arial shot from Christine’s drone video that you might have seen in the previous post, shows how we are setup so far. 
The 40’ shipping container above on the left is what I’m setting up for my workshop with Lance parked right beside. 
Looking forward from about mid way inside Lance’s “Happitat” the blank wall on the left is the front wall with the cab on the other side and the main entry door that is on the passenger side PS in the right corner. I’ve put in a scrap of 3/4”/20mm plywood to create a desk for myself on what will eventually become one of the two galley countertops with a larger one yet to be framed on the opposite left or driver side DS. 
Here is a sample of a length of the XAL with several different corner brackets that bolt into the T track grooves in the XAL which turn this into a giant adult version of the Erector sets I used to love playing with as a young boy, long before many of you were born! 
I’m working my way somewhat counter clockwise around the Happitat walls so my next focus was the XAL framing you see now in the front right PS corner. The Blue poles you see ratcheting cargo support bars that have proved indispensable to me for holding things in place as I build. 
This full height cabinet will have our fridge/freezer mounted inside the large opening you see here with lots of storage in the spaces above and below. 
This front DS front corner is a bit more complex as the large vertical exterior access cabinet is also in this corner and it is where I’ll be installing Lance’s whole electrical system with three large lithium batteries on the very bottom and then all the other components such as 12VDC to 120/240VAC inverters, battery chargers, and much more mounted this exterior locker. 
This will give you a sense of the size and shape of the server rack style lithium LiFePO4 batteries that will provide all the 12VDC and 120/240VAC electrical power in Lance. 
For those interested in the details, this shot the label on one of the three batteries will give you all the numbers.
I knew that the batteries were going to be a very close fit and I had built the framing for them back when we were in Klamath falls but now was the moment of truth to see if they actually fit?!! 
With the shower area in the center area the whole bathroom space becomes feels very large and open both when using it as a shower and when seated on the throne. I had my Beautiful Bride check it all out in person this morning and got the two thumbs up so the framing progress can now continue. 
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We continue to get sunsets like this almost every evening and sunrises are pretty spectacular as well so we continue to enjoy our new location a bit more each day.
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