The fabric seat coverings are coming along really well although my mum informed me that we hadn’t bought anywhere near enough denim so she has been on a mission to buy some more – oops! We promise we did try to measure but it may have ended up being a bit of a guesstimate.  Photos of the progress will be added soon.

We are also really looking forward to having new curtains as soon as we’ve sourced some fabric so this will be another winter job to complete whilst Bertha is in hibernation.  She’ll be a new woman by next spring!

Anyway just a quick run down of all the jobs i’ve completed on Bertha

• Wired in new leisure battery with alternator and 240v charging with seperate fuse box
• Wired fridge to run off alternator
• Fitted new stereo headunit
• Applied Wayoyl to front doors interiors
• Sound deadened front doors inside and out.
• Fixed 240v charging unit
• Fitted MDF speaker mounting rings to front doors.
• Fitted new front door speakers
• Fitted new front door cards
• Wired stereo to run off lesiure battery
• Wired internal lights to run off leisure battery
• Treated rust in front foot well seams
• Painted front foot wells in Hammerite to help prevent further rust
• Fixed Steering columng cowel
• Painted gear lever blue
• Sound deadened front cabin floor
• Fitted new rear exhaust silencer
• Cleaned contacts and fitted new spades to cabin earths
• Fitted new cabin carpets
• Fitted new tailgate card
• Fitted new rear speakers with MDF baffles
• Fitted new aerial
• Fixed dash lights
• Refitted boot wardrobe/cupboard
• Sterilised water container
• Fitted new tap spout

Phew tired just thinking about all those jobs!!!

Discovered in my ignorance that the fridge shouldn’t be powered of the leisure battery and had drained the living daylights out of it. Nor did the leisure battery seem to recharge from the alternator – found out later that this the fuses blowing with the large current drawn when turning the engine over with the starter motor.

I was almost correct in my wiring but I needed to use one of these Split Charge Relay instead of the relay already installed. Some changes to the rewiring, seperate circuit for the fridge, added a multiple fuse holder (instead of the individual inlines), power splitters, some spades etc. and now everything is tickerty boo.

Been away on several trips with no problems, fridge runs on 12v from the alternator, leisure battery is recharged from the alternator and provides power to stereo, internal lights, pump etc. Also have a mains charger recharging the leisure battery when on hookup. Happy days

So I rolled up my sleeves and got the screw driver out and started unscrewing the shelf, panel and back of the cupboard it had been installed in.

To my delight there was a split charge relay installed as well, so the leisure battery must of been removed by the previous owners before selling it. This is good news so as the leisure battery will now recharge from the alternator when driving and mains hook up when camping – best of both worlds.

The fridge and water pump are wired up to it but nothing else, going to wired up the stereo, interior lights, and a w4 12v plug so we don’t run down the main battery when parked up.

Day 2 and number one priority is to get a stereo in the campervan as there isn’t one in currently. After painstakingly  researching  (sometimes OCD is a benefit!) I found a suitable head unit with bluetooth streaming – Clarion FB289RBT. Once Iphone OS3.0 is released this summer we’ll be able to using our iPhones to remotely stream audio from it, so they’ll act like wireless full colour touchscreen remote controls – how cool is that!

Now it was time to install and work out the mass of wires. There seemed to be rather too many lose wires around, so i decided to have a clean out. Whilst doing this I put new spade connectors on all the earths and cleaned the contacts as some of these were rather brittle and frail to the touch.

Front speakers didn’t work definitely and had seen better days and the door cards look a bit tatty – ordered some new ones from JK. Need to think about covering the door cards as well – vinyl. cloth, padding…

Going to try and get some 6×9’s in here with mdf mountings. Rear speakers work fine, although they’ll need upgrading at a later date – but for now we’ve got some sounds!! Need to wire up the head unit to the leisure battery next but I need to work out how that’s wired in first.

Anna got her cleaning gloves out and some 1001 carpet cleaner and gave her a good once over, got rid of those dirty marks in the carpets and cleaned out all the cupboards She’s smelling like a new lady….