So I’ve bedazzled the interior of the van with a mile o’ LED strips, how much power do they draw?

Full brightness:

strip over kitchen area =  0.37 A, 4.7 W

strip over sliding door = 0.39 A, 4.8 W

strip over lower bunk = 0.30 A, 3.1 W

pop top perimeter strip = 1.43 A, 17.6 W

total = 2.47 A, 30.2 W

(funny, power values differ slightly than what I posted back in Feb when I installed the strips over the kitchen and the sliding door. Due to the different controllers?)

With the PWM brightness controllers, the power consumption does go down when lights are dimmed.

For comparison, the stock fluorescent light above the sink found in some westies draws 0.9 A and 8 W. I don’t know what the power draw is with the stock light and incandescent bulbs.

Update: David and I were discussing (in the comments) white LED spectrum. He sent me the pdf file about that subject that is buried somewhere in the Cree website.

LED_color_mixing

Long weekend here in Canada, and it was a warm one. Others might laugh, but out here on the wet coast hitting 30 C is warm. What better time to put in a different pop top canvas. The one I had on was from my old ’82 westy and it had seen better days. My wife had patched it up and replaced zippers but the time had come to give it some rest. Last summer I helped my friend do 2 canvas install and one of the old canvases was in pretty good shape. All it needed was a new bug screen in the window. My wife sewed in a no-see-um proof screen last year so it has been ready to go for a while. Why not put in a brand new canvas you ask? After all it is a pain in the ass to install the buggers. I am storing a brand new (Just Kampers brand) 3 window canvas for the aforemetioned friend, why not whip that in? First of all I think he would notice, secondly I like the way the stock VW canvas fits, the cotton material looks better than the Sunbrella versions inmy eyes (Sunbrella tops often drape like elephant legs). I guess the third reason is that the top was free.

As I was trashing the old canvas I went at it with a knife. Easier than dealing with the lower screws with canvas in place.

After hinges and lifting mechanisms disconnected, I rolled the top back on a long dowel laid across the van. Neighbour was called in to help lift the top onto a worktable beside van.

A couple of years ago when I painted the top, I installed what I thought at the time was a great idea, a fabric covered foam pad on the ceiling of the top. Well, this innovation was a dud, didn’t stay up, dropped, sagged, looked like ass. The idea of having a foam pad up there still appeals to me but I have to figure out a better way of attaching the foam (removable way). This time I went the expedient rote and bought some cheap indoor-outdoor carpet from Canadian Tire. It is very thin carpet, but it’s a not unpleasing texture and colour. The length is just enough to fit the top.

Just a matter of cutting to rough size and spray gluing it down, in stages, to the top. Went pretty well except towards the end (and I foolishly started at the rear) and the limited stretch of the material and my lack of skill created some wrinkles.

But if you squint, and have another drink, the wrinkles disappear.

In the little space between the canvas and the ceiling I ran a strip, on all four sides, of LED lights.

I swear I tested them before I installed them, honestly. Little things like this really pisses one off. The photograph of the lit strips doesn’t really do them justice. It does make a good light up there, and the LEDs are on a dimmer so it doesn’t need to look like the Blackpool Illuminations all the time. I’d show you the wiring and controller but I’m not really happy with the wire routing (down the lifting mechanism) and I want to tidy it up.

Not a bad job, perhaps a little loose at the back, but sides and front are tawt.

One more thing… a little thing to hold a flashlight.

I had 2 niggling problems after the head R&R. One was a pushrod tube oil leak. Seemed to be on the case end of #1 cylinder exhaust valve pushrod tube. I don’t know why it leaked, perhaps I did not expand that tube far enough when I installed the heads? Or maybe there was some dirt on the sealing surface. I did install the seals “dry”, no sealant. So to fix this leak I pulled off the rocker arm assembly on that head, pulled the pushrod from that tube, and removed the tube (large tinsnips – collapsed the rube enough for it to fall out.). I cleaned up one of the spring loaded pushrod tubes that were originally on this engine and installed it, this time with a smear of Hylomar Universal Blue non-setting sealant.

The other problem, and this one had me worried, was a scraping, rattling noise coming from the engine or transmission. You couldn’t hear it if you were standing back at the engine and revving it, it only started when the engine was warm and the van moving. Clutch in or out, or in neutral, when I was driving and revved the engine this noise was there.

I could get it to happen when parked, if I had the parking brake on hard and slowly let the clutch out in 1st gear.

It really sounded like something was rubbing against something else. My rational side was leaning towards an exhaust pipe problem, my irrational side was making up all kinds of horrible scenarios. Well, it turned out to be the forward exhaust pipe hitting the skid plate where the pipe crosses under the engine. I’m going to blame the exhaust maker, Dansk, for this. My skid plate was not bent or damaged in that area. I think the pipe was just not bent correctly. I took a heavy hammer to the skid plate and bashed out some clearance.

I have a confession to make. When I wired up that switch to shut off the door activated cabin lights it did not affect the additional lights (LED strips) I installed in the footwells and the step protector. Had me puzzled for a while, I thought I had connected those lights to the map light feed which I thought was the same feed that the other lights were on . The Bentley wiring diagrams didn’t help until I looked at the “after 1990” pages. Turns out that the map light gets its power from a different feed (but still protected by #3 fuse). So in order to be able to switch off those lights independently of the door switches I would either have to intercept the power feed or simply intercept the power going to #3 fuse.

This post describes how I feed the circuits on #3 fuse from my auxiliary battery. And in this post you can see how I subsequently powered the radio with its own feed. So all that was being powered on #3 fused circuit was the map light, my footlights, glove compartment light, and the cig. lighter. Easy to see that putting a switch on that circuit would do the trick. But wait you say, won’t you want to have the cig. lighter powered all the time so that you can plug in a USB charger or something? Well, yes, I suppose. I’ll see how it works out. I’m wanting to add more power points in the van, the cig. lighter may become redundant.

I went ahead and rewired the switch. Here is the updated schematic.

Addendum: cutting power to #3 fuse circuit also cuts power to the dash clock. I can live with that, I have plans to hard wire the dash cluster due to a very deteriorated instrument foil.

A couple of small things. First off is replacing the window felt in the sliding windows. You can only get at the horizontal felt with the window in the van. But if the entire window is out, then the frame can be spread and the sliding portion removed and you can get at the vertical felt seal. I found some felt seal at a local RV supply store, and I think that auto glass outfits can supply it too. I looked in the hardware store at some patio door felt seal but it wasn’t quite the right size. You might have better luck.

So open your window and at the forward end pull out the rubber seal a little, just so that you can get better access to the seal. Grab the seal and slip it out, little by little as it has to make a sharp turn out to get past the window frame. My old seal was very worn and brittle, kept breaking as I pulled it out. The new seal goes in the way the old seal came out. It is easier than it looks.

The new seal is so much fluffier than the old one and the window initially did not slide very easily. But after a day the felt compresses a bit and sliding is easier.

Picture time. Three felt seals: on the left is the new seal (yeah, not the same colour), middle is a bit of what looks like unused original seal (lord knows where I got it), and on the right is the old seal.

Back side. And yes, the new dark seal has an peel off backing, adhesive under. I din’t have any problem installing it with backing on.

An attempt at a side shot. The old seal is very worn out.

Installed. The dark colour is not that bad.

Next up is a silly little mod. My van was originally a 7 passenger tin top and so it has interior/cabin light switches on all doors, including the hatch. Factory Westies do not have door switches on the sliding door and the rear hatch. So what you say? Well, when you are camping, and you have the sliding door open then the interior/cabin lights are on whether you want them on or not. Kinda silly during the day, and not really needed at night if you have added lighting on a different circuit. Of course you can turn off each individual light, or you can find some of those door switches that have the little notch in the plunger so you can have the plunger stay depressed, but jings, where’s the fun in that?

So one evening I made a little switch plate to fit where my old Webasto BBW46 control panel was (I gave up on the heater, removed all the plumbing during the head replacement job). I didn’t use the sexiest of switches, but they are what I had. I used two just because one switch looked silly. And the two switches left an awkward space between them, so I added some LEDs.

So what I did with the wiring was to intercept the power wire to the interior lights (on my van it comes out out panel from B12 connection, then splits at connector T2c. That power feed also supplies radio and make-up mirror light. I did not have to worry about power to radio, I’m supplying it another way. Ok, I cut that power feed and connected it across on of the new switches. Just for fun I wired in the amber LED to light up when switch is closed. So to turn off all the door switched lights I just have to flip one switch.

The green LED is connected to my Blue Seas ACR and lights up when the main and auxiliary batteries are combined. The red LED is still waiting for a use, as is the other switch.

A year ago I made some speaker mounts to help hide the torn up lower half of the front door panels, and to mount the speakers more securely. It was a previous owner that installed (and cut some door metal) these speaker and it really wasn’t a very good job. My solution worked out ok, but I tired of the unfinished aluminum look and the speaker grills had been kicked repeatedly and were dented. I can’t really blame anyone for the kicking, the speakers are in a vulnerable spot.

So I pulled them off, took them apart, and reformed the stainless mesh grills back into a shallow dome. Then I painted everything with rattle  can bed liner. I think the paint stiffens up the stainless mesh, gluing the wire crossings. I painted some plastic screw cap covers to match.

Original look:

New look:

I installed 3 old gauges, VDO Cockpit series, that I had in my old I4 powered ’82 Westy. It was sure easier to install the senders in that engine, no relocation manifold needed. But on the WBX I had to relocate the stock oil pressure senders so I could add an oil temp. sender and an oil press. sender.

I detailed the sender install in this post. That short temp sender (Beck Arnley part# 201-1098) seems to be the right one, the oil temp gauge is indicating pretty well expected readings. Yeah, yeah, I should have set up some boiling water and tested before installation. But I didn’t, so there.

Hey, if anyone has a mind to copy the aluminum manifold for the senders, give more room between each sender. I put them too close together, wrench access not so great.

The gauges have seen some wear and tear, and I replaced the bezels on two of them with bezels from salvaged gauges from an old Volvo 245 turbo. The bezels are crimped on so removing them means prying with a fine edged screwdriver and you can’t really get that back to factory condition. But from a distance it is not really noticable. During the bezel replacement I dropped 2, yes 2, of the glass faces. What a clumsy fool. I had one spare glass, and for the other I cut a circle of Lexan. I repainted the needles with fluorescent orange paint while I had the chance.

For wiring I used some old computer cable, 6 insulated wires in a grey sheath. Each wire was multi-strandded and the sheath was pretty flexible but I bundled the 3 cables in some black heat shrink tubing and the bundle is pretty stiff. I used a heat gun to warm up the bundle so I could manipulate it into the right route. And that route runs right in front of the padded dash to the corner of the instrument panel cover, where I made a rounded notch and the cable makes a 90 degree bend and a little down to end up close to the right hand side dash support strut. The bundle lays down with no glue or clips after the heat gun treatment.

At the sender end, I used a couple of spare wires from the now removed Webasto BBW46 heater wiring to send oil press. and temp signals up front. For the voltmeter signal I connected to  “G5” terminal on the fuse panel (“15” power, ie hot when ign on). For illumination, I tapped into “G8″ (dimmer controlled power) on the fuse panel. To make things a little neater, I used an old terminal strip that has screw connections and used that to connect the gauge wires to the sender wires. This terminal strip was mounted to one of the dash support channels beneath the instrument panel.

The gauge pods were screwed onto a bit of 1/4” aluminum plate, painted black. One day I’ll get some black covers for the screw heads. The plate is glued to the dash with that foam cored double sided tape. That stuff seems to take dash heat better than other tape . The gauges seem to work fine, I didn’t confirm the oil temp or pressure with another method, but the values I see look reasonable.

I had the afternoon off so I drove up to Malahat Autowreckers to see if there were any new Vanagons in stock. And indeed there were, 2 1990 MY passenger vans that were not completely stripped. One was a weekender, driver’s side jump seat and table still intact. Both had something I had not noticed on a Vanagon before, an aluminum sill plate on the sliding door entrance. I bought one, here it is.

The part number is 255 853 558. I think it is available from VW Classic parts, “scuff plate – sill panel- Einstiegleiste”,

Back side:

I also managed to find a couple of undamaged cup holders.

And some fairly new looking front door inside latch plates (they really get ratty, especially the brown ones), and a couple of surrounds.

A few relays and clips rounded out the shopping spree.

In this post I described installing some led strip lighting and dimmer switches. During the install I smoked one of the dimmer switches so I wired both strips to the one controller and lived with it until I ordered another switch. Those dimmer switches were inline units and I spent some time milling out a kind of mounting plate for them. The more I looked at this kludge the less I liked it. It didn’t help that a couple of friends were less than enthusiastic about it, despite my glee at actually being able to make the thing. Looking around superbrightleds.com I found a better solution, this dimmer switch. All it does (capacitance touch method) is turn light on and off and dim them. The previous switches had additional flashing and flicker settings which really are useless in this application ( I thought perhaps the flicker setting would mimic candle light – ha! was I wrong).

The new switches come with 5.5 mm barrel connectors so I also ordered up some adapters so that I could attach wire pairs. I installed the switches today and I have to say they are a big improvement over the other ones. One touch turns the light on or off (and the light ramps up and down with the on and off touch – a small feature but very cool), and holding your finger on the switch dims down then back up. No moving parts, its all to do with capacitance (David B. needs to explain this to me).

No points for guessing where the makers got their design influence from.

The male and female 5.5 mm barrel to wire adapters.

The wires go here 🙂

Adapters on the switch leads.

The switches come with a small square of 3M adhesive backed Velcro. Makes them dead easy to mount, but not dead easy to get two of them perfectly aligned.

Addendum: I just measured the current draw of the new switches. When turned off my Do Wattson shows 0.00 A. When both main cabin strips turned on the meter shows 670 mA. This is better than the old switches that did consume a little power when off (somewhere under 10 mA) and when switched on the system drew 750 mA.

Yeah, I know, I know, these heaters are not the best solution for the van. I got this one back in ’93 and never did install it in my ’82 westy. But over the last couple of years I’ve dragged it out to use in the syncro for winter camping, and last week I finally cobbled together a more secure mounting system for it.

BTW, apart from the risk of oxygen depletion, and the possibility of CO production (although if the heater is working properly little CO is created, well except if the oxygen level is low then more CO is produced) the big drawback of an unvented propane heater is the production of water vapour. Here’s the logic, using a 1 lb propane bottle as fuel source:

combustion equation:

C3H8 + 5 O2 —–> 3 CO2 + 4 H2O

so for every mole of propane burned, we get 4 moles of water.
the molecular weight of propane is 44 g/mol, and therefore a 1 lb (454 g) bottle contains 10.3 moles (454/44)

So burning the entire bottle would produce 4(10.3) = 41.2 moles of water

The molecular weight of water is 18 g/mole, therefore  741.6 g of water produced.

A respectable amount, almost 3 cups, of water is liberated into the van when you burn a one lb bottle of propane.

So the lesson learned is either buy a vented heater or make sure you vent the van well. I like to have the pop top vent partially open and one window open about an inch when I use my unvented heater.

OK, enough. The point of the post was to show my quick and dirty mount. I used scrap 1/4″ aluminum (5052 if you’re asking) and instead of welding  (my skill at welding inside corners, especially on tubing is still at the crap level) I bolted it together.

The heater.

The unpainted aluminum shape is bolted to the heater to stiffen things up. The painted “wing” is the bolted to that stiffener. The bent tube is actually bolted to the wing – bolt through wing into a tapped hole drilled crosswise in a bit of steel rod which is running crosswise in the tube. Oh yeah, that’s great descriptive prose. One unexpected bonus is that the heater now can be placed on floor, if desired.

Unpainted end of tube fits into front table arm of the van. It can be adjusted to a range of positions and is high enough to mostly avoid being hit by the dogs.

I’ve been using a 20 lb propane bottle sitting in the driver’s footwell. No, not the most elegant solution.

Addendum – it just occurred to me that it might strike some as strange that I don’t simply attach the tubing directly to the stiffener piece and get rid of that black wing. The truth is I made the tube and wing first and mounted it directly to the top two bolts on the heater. But I found that not steady enough so I made a backing plate. I liked how I could coil the propane line around the wing, so I kept it, for now.

It’s not hard to guess that I am enamoured by led strip lighting, but my latest project using the strips is a (qualified?) fail. I’m posting it just to make it clear that I often go down wrong paths.

I had some led strip left over from the step protector project, and I wanted to get some light back at the hatch area. Sometimes we sleep with “heads at the hatch” (more of a summer rather than winter position, but what the heck do you care? :)) and It would be nice to have a reading light back there. A light also could be useful for finding stuff in the dark etc. So how to mount a strip of led lights back there? Well of course a bit of aluminum channel screwed to the back edge of the ceiling – in place of the T moulding – would be the way to go. But I decided I was smarter than that.

I took the T moulding off and went about hacking it up to install the leds actually in it.

The Westy T moulding.

The led strip, looks like it will fit behind moulding if T was removed.

After some false starts, I found that my die grinder with a ball end bit cut the T off nicely.

Ok then, done.

The next part was to drill holes for the leds to peek through. Now I don’t know what system the makers were using to space the led elements, certainly they weren’t thinking about me laying out for drilling. And, every so often the spacing changes as strips are factory joined together. Grrr, I had to drill holes larger than I wanted too. But I kept on going down this path and I glued the led strip face down onto the T moulding.

Right then, after the glue had set I took the strip out to fix it up on where it used to be. I have no pictures of the shambles that followed, but imagine the floppy strip, Sikaflex, no real locating mechanism to keep strip from sliding sideways, spring poles that kept falling…

But up it stuck.

It looks much worse in real life. Here is side view.

So what are those aluminum bits at either end? My attempt at hiding areas where the laminate had chipped off the plywood (nothing to do with this project) and to securely hold down the ends of the modified moulding. During the project I had glossed over the question of what kind of switch to use and where to mount it. I tried but came up with nothing better than this switch mounted on a little but of angle glued to side of upper cabinet.

It is not great I know, but there you go. And switching on…

Bloody hell, 3 leds out. I’m sure that when I tested the strip before gluing it on to the cabinet all of the leds worked. I’ve resolved to rip this out and re-do using aluminum channel and new led strips. Will the night time shot make me feel better?

Couldn’t wait until full dark, pics taken at dusk. First one, light off.

And light on.

The pics don’t do it justice, there is certainly enough light to read by. And enough to really show up the dirty marks on the fabric attached to the hatch (it is about 12 years old now). All in all I’m pleased with the light, I will redo the mounting, but damn those failed leds!

Just over a week ago, Psyncro aka Syncronoid posted a clever mod on this Samba thread. I slapped my forehead, doh, why didn’t I think of that? So blithely I set about making my own version. I have an abundance of scrap aluminum left over from various projects/jobs so I figured I could knock one out in a trice.

Ha!

I cut some 2″, (3/16″ thick) angle to size, angling the ends to match the rubber mat I have over the carpet in the walk through between the front seats. BenT suggested I do something to make the top surface more interesting, so I clamped up the angle in my lathe’s little milling head and cut some 3/8″ wide grooves. The milling head does not have enough travel to do the cuts in one go, so the angle has to be repositioned during the cut. That, and my rushing, produced a sloppy effect.

So I decided to paint it with satin black Krylon. What was I thinking? I forgot to prime (zinc chromate is common primer for aluminum, strontium chromate is the better primer but hard to get). No primer meant the paint scraped off easily, not a good thing for something that would be trodden upon.

Then I had the idea of filling the grooves with some 2 part polyurethane. Do you get the idea that I am spending too much time on this simple project?

I mixed up a batch and poured it on.

Then squeegee’d off most of the excess. BTW, it is sitting on a plug-in battery warmer blanket to help the polyU cure. I was getting sloppy, the stuff got everywhere.

And whaddya know? The polyU did not go off, no curing. Expiry date on package is for later this year, bugger it, so I wiped the mess off. On the Samba thread Doug suggested LED lights, seemed like a good idea. I had bought some LED strip lighting (warm white, 30 LEDs/meter) from Lee Valley and at the time was a little disappointed that the strip did not have a clean silicone-like cover like the strips I bought for the interior lighting and glove box lighting job. But the strips with their exposed and projecting LEDs would work great on the step. I drilled a bunch O’holes, same spacing as the LEDs on the strip along the bottom edge of the vertical face of the angle. I also drilled 3 holes for mounting screws then painted the angle with some Dupli-Color bed liner. Then I painted it again to get rid of the thumb prints when I grabbed as it fell off the painting block I had it balanced on.

After the bed liner dried,  stuck on the LED strip using some of that foam type double sided tape (with holes in it too, of course). You can see the 3M name on the backing tape of the LED strip, I left this on.

I used some big-ass 1/4″ stainless sheet metal screws. Pan head, as I did not counter-sink into the angle. Why you ask? Well when you countersink you have to get things lined up pretty exactly and as I was match drilling through the angle to make holes in the van, and as the angle is sitting on a rubber mat over carpet over insulation, I did not think I could push down on the angle firmly enough as I was drilling to get a good tight fit. Using pan head screws and oversized holes on the angle allows me to push down on angle after holes drilled to get a tight fit of angle to floor. Man, that was a wordy and awkward description.

I have to blacken those screw heads.

And the LED feature? I don’t have it wired into the door switch yet (I’m thinking about adding an additional switch so I can turn it on independently), but I hooked the leads up to the battery and…

All the trials and tribulations of this job vanished at the speed of light when I saw this. It is better than I thought it would be.

I bought some material a week of so ago with the idea to try making an insulated window blanket. At the fabric store I found some brownish-red microsuede material that was deeply discounted, and some “Insulbrite”  sorry, “insulshine”. foil faced polyester batting material (about 1/8″ thick). I also bought some 1/2″ diameter, 1/10″ thick rare earth magnets. Today my wife sewed things up (and very nicely too) and I think it works out well.

The idea was to be able to have the shiny side in for winter camping – keep the heat in, and the shiny side out for summer camping – keep the solar gain down. I had thought about using snaps to fix the blanket in place but magnets seemed more versatile. I think it turned out well.

I’ll post a bit more on the construction later.

I was in an unsettled mood today, my plans to help good friend Simon add some shims to his syncro were scuttled by unforeseen events. Spent some time with my falling apart dash cluster, trying out a new UV led, but that made me feel worse – the cluster foil is in such bad state that I fear the next time I go in there I’ll really be forced to do a hardwire. So I looked around for an outlet for my angst and I fell upon the 10″ bit of led strip left over from the interior light install shown in last post (on the kitchen side the 2m strip had to be trimmed to fit).

I had this idea to wire it in parallel with the small light above the glove compartment and placed so it would light up said compartment. And I didn’t want to dick around and fuss with the install, so what follows could have been done better.

Look up the Wikipedia entry for glove compartment. I draw your attention to the last paragraph, more proof that the Vanagon was a car ahead of its time.

Most led strips can be cut on the indicated lines (drawn on face of strip), at the cut area there are soldering points. I soldered a couple of wires to those points (nice tinned, teflon insulated wires).

Then some heat shrink.

Polarity is important, that’s why I have both wires the same colour . There are tiny +/- markings on strip, but you can confirm with 12 V power source (I’m fortunate to have an adjustable DC power supply. It is very handy for this sort of dicking around). The positive wire was soldered to the long contact strip on the little light that mounts above glove compartment (what the heck is that light called anyway – Courtesy light? Vanity light?  it’s a Map light according to BenT). The negative wire was soldered to the other contact strip. Yes, soldered to the strips. As I said, I wasn’t feeling like doing it kosher.

The strip and wires were fed through the light opening and the light popped in after. The strip has self adhesive backing, and I stuck the strip up under here (sorry about focus).

And how does it work? Some daylight pics to show.

Light off.

Light on.

Well what did you expect? Fireworks?

🙂

Just to be clear, the led strip is now switched on and off via the “courtesy light” or whatever you call that little light above the glove compartment. (BenT: It’s a  map light,  you dolt)

I’ve been wanting to have some led strip lighting in the van for a while but never got around to ordering any online. But a few weeks ago I found some led strips at local hardware store and even being on sale they were pricey ($43 each), but I fell for them. You can do much better price-wise online.

The strips are 2 m long each, with 60 smd leds per strip. That’s a good led density for this application. Calling leds “warm white” is so subjective, a little better descriptor is colour temperature, and these were listed as 3500 K correction, 3000 K. The strips came with a small inline transformer to change 110V AC to 12 V DC. We don’t need that for the van, but we do need some sort of switch. I decided on an inline dimmer/controller from Superbrightleds.com, this one. I ordered 2, one for each strip. When they arrived I realized that perhaps an inline dimmer is not the best way to go, would be better to have a wall mount. Time for some metal butchery. The same old thing with me, going the long way around.

A bit of 1/2″ aluminum.

I really just eyeballed the milling (used the wee milling head for my lathe).

Then a half hearted clean up. I need to get a better countersinks, see the chatter marks in the holes, especially the mounting screws?

And the dimmers added.

The milled slots use now clear. Can I draw your attention to the black heatshrink on the ends of 2 pairs of wires? I forgot to remove one of them, grr.

I secured the wires to some extent with some Goop. The heat shrink job was redone a couple of times after this, you’ll find out why.

And installed on top front inside corner of the wardrobe. I figured I could reach the dimmers when lying in the lower bunk.

The leds strips were installed in two places: one on the underside of the kitchen trough so that it pointed straight down. The other on the angles face of the slider door valence. The latter shines in and down. So I wired the strips to the dimmer and during the process forgot about one of the heat shrunk wire ends, and I shorted one dimmer which let out a little magic smoke. Stupid mistake eh? I left the broken dimmer in place and re-rewired things so that the remaining dimmer controlled both strips. Troubleshooting this screw up resulted in re-doing a lot of connections, sigh.

This pic makes the slider door side strip seem brighter  and more glaring than it actually is.

The kitchen side strip has no real glare, I’m guessing the beam angle of the leds is about 120 degrees.

I’m very happy with the amount and quality of the light these strips make. I’d like to add more, and maybe even some RGB strips and a colour mixer.

Addendum : I forgot to mention how much power the lights draw – if I recall correctly it is around 4.8 W per strip. I know nothing of how PMW controllers work, ie how much power is used by controller and strip when light is dimmed down low.

Another addendum:

I did some measurements with my installed Doc Wattson. Measuring current flowing from my aux battery.

first, van as is:
leds off, 1W, 85mA
leds full on, 9W, 750mA
leds dimmed lowest setting, 1.7W, 140mA

Radio face plate off:
led lights off, <0.1W, <10mA

For interesting comparison, kitchen water level/battery meter panel on, led lights off, between 0.2 and 0.3W, between 20 and 30mA.
So the led dimmer control draws a little power even when off, but it is less than the “switched on”  kitchen indicator panel.

So the led strips, both sides combined, only draw 140mA power at lowest brightness. And that low setting is pretty good for a standby/casual use light.

Those of you that have the little light above the glove compartment know how easy it is to ground the hot part of the light against the dashboard metal when you remove the light. I have lost count of the number of fuses I have lost that way. Oh sure I hear you say, why not disconnect the battery before removing the light? Well, yes, of course.

But, you can do something else. Slip a bit of heat shrink tubing over the flat metal inside the light. Shrink it up and your good to go. Here is a pic (I have a LED festoon replacement light in there). The light green is the heat shrink over the metal strip.

Good friend Stephen gave me this for a Xmas present and I got around to installing it. Made in Germany of all places, I didn’t think the Germans encouraged drinking and driving.

I didn’t have the guts to try it with a liquid that would be a pain to clean up, so water it was, in a short trip around the farm.

I installed a Doc Wattson into the house battery circuit of my van last weekend. I must emphasize that I have very light electrical demands when camping. Interior lights are LEDs, one fluorescent light under the trough, the fresh water pump, kitchen unit indicator lights, and the stereo and cig. lighter is the total draw on my 31 Ahr AGM aux. battery. The Doc Wattson acts as a (only one way unfortunately) power meter showing and recording battery voltage, battery lowest voltage,  current draw, peak current draw, watts used, and kWh. The connections made are all via short pigtails of 14 g, fine stranded and silicone insulated wires. This small wire would be a concern if the unit was used to measure larger currents (say above 20 A). The black wires on the unit carries the current, and in my install they connected the neg battery post of aux. battery to chassis ground. Any one of the 2 red wires is connected to the positive terminal of the battery. Keeping the wire runs as short as possible the meter ended up just in front of the front table support bracket.

That was a very brief outline of the install, more info from the source here. So what did I find out about things electrical these past couple of days? Well I took some pics to show. I reset the gauge before these pics, so kWh and Ahr will be showing zero.

Here we are, engine off, stereo has been on but now off, stereo head unit still attached. 80 mA draw eh? That drops to zero when face plate off (or as close to reading zero as the meter resolution allows) BTW, I noticed the kitchen panel indicator draws somewhere between 10 and 20 mA when switched on.

Stereo on and playing (have external amp too), volume at camping level. See the peak Amp (Ap) reading?

Engine on, both the house and starting batteries have been combined via my Blue Sea System ACR. I have an adjustable voltage reg. on my alternator and it is adjusted a tad high I think. When the 2 batteries are combined the ammeter portion of the meter does not work (the starting batter neg to chassis connection by-passes the meter). But once the ACR separates the batteries when the ign key is off then the stored current and power values are displayed.

So what do I think? Some pros and cons:

Pros – inexpensive, easy to install, handy at a glance indication of how much electrical power you are using.

Cons – measures current via neg ground path. That means, in a car with the chassis as return path, you can’t (as far as I can tell) measure a particular circuit. One way measurement – would be neat if when the engine is running and the battery was being charged, the meter would run backwards and show the elimination of the electrical debt you got into. No back light.

I’ve got more to say about this meter, and would like to show the install wiring. But I need to get my wiring runs neater before then.

There have been a couple of disturbing posts recently on the Samba and on the Yahoo Syncro mailing list about Vanagons moving on their own and or catching fire due to massive electrical faults. A short somewhere in the ignition wiring causing the starter to engage etc. It’s enough to make even the most happy go lucky owner shiver. A recent post to the Yahoo Syncro group mentioned this kill switch – Amazon link and how it was possible to mount it on the  negative pole of battery (starting battery under front passenger seat of  gasoline Vanagon). I happened to be out Langford way today and dropped in to Princess Auto and found what looks like the exact same switch ($9.95).

It is a squeeze to get it on the negative post of the battery (I installed the Westy swivel seat base on that side, that does not help matters at all), and the taper on the switch is designed, I think, for the positive post so you have to be sure to tap the switch down to the base of the post.

It works as advertised, a turn of the green knob connects/disconnects the ground. I have a house battery under the driver’s seat (and a fused distribution box) that supplies power to the circuits needed during camping i.e fuse #3 circuit (which powers radio, interior lights, cig. lighter, clock) and power to the kitchen. The kill switch will be used when van is parked for a time, or if I feel especially paranoid. The battery compartment lid does fit over it ok.

As seen here on this Samba thread and I got the tape from Lee Valley, (link to product page). I’ll cut to the chase and answer the question “Is it worth it?” – yes. It really does make a difference in the noise made by the sliding door as it is opened and closed. This is on my ’86 syncro which has the improved sliding door set up that started in ’85. That improvement in door design is one of the nicest mods VW made to the van over the years. Ok, on to the hack.

First I pulled the track cover off the side of the van. Two screws at either end of the cover and then some wrestling to get it off. I’m not going to tell you the exact motions needed to get the cover off, but for goodness sake’s don’t pull the bottom of the cover out towards you. That is not the way it goes. It comes off straight up but you do need to clear the tabs that the attachment screws use and that does mean you have to ease the cover out a little towards you then back to the van. Sometimes grime and crap glues the cover to the van, so be careful.

Cover off and this pic shows the track one of the rollers rides on. You have to clean and degrease. And this is when I realized that I would only be doing a half assed job. You see the paint is worn off the track, and when I stick on the tape there will be no grease to keep that track from rusting. The best thing to do would be to paint on some POR15 or something similar before sticking the tape on. But I have a really annoying summer head cold right now and I just didn’t have the energy.

The forward end of the track. Two rollers there, and four surfaces to be covered in tape.

The lower track covered in tape. The tape is folded over the top edge of the track. It stuck on pretty tight. Both vertical inner surfaces of the track above this one was covered too.

I did this mod to my old ’82 years ago – a bit of self adhesive bitumen impregnated fabric to try and stop the track cover from acting as a sound board.

I put the cover back on and tried the door. Much better, really, I’m not joking. But still not as quiet as I thought it should be. I could hear noise from the upper track above the door opening. A roller bearing here as well, not the old plastic block of the pre ’85 doors. Tape applied to the outboard vertical surface (the only surface that showed sign of wear).

And I cleaned up the lower track surface, the one at the foot of the door. The track that is often dirty and greasy and rusty. Now I have my share of rust on the van, but fortunately the track surface was good and it got the tape. And now some proof. Note that the last clip that is titled “tape added to upper track” , the lower track had been taped too. God I have to deal with the rust on that door.

So I notice the seal on my luggage rack was detaching from front rack, damn 3M weatherstrip adhesive failed me (see here for glue on pics). So I pulled off the luggage rack to re-glue the seal and I was shocked, shocked I say, to find some rust spots on the roof under the seal. Pic below is after I scuffed with Scotchbrite pad.

Was it just abrasion by the seal on the metal roof? No, looking at the seal I could see bits of rusty metal embedded in the rubber. Bloody hell, looks like metal filings trapped between the rubber and the roof. A lot of filings were created when I was cutting up the roof to add the pop top, and I thought I had cleaned them all up before installing the luggage rack. I’m sure I did, perhaps some fell through the drain holes in rack and lodged themselves under the seal. In any event, it was my fault .

I masked off and painted some POR15 over the affected parts. I scrubbed the embedded rusty bits from the seal and re-glued it back on the rack, this time using clear silicone caulk.

While I had the rack off, I glued on some stainless mesh on the underside of the (5) drain holes. Some have used little stainless filters that you find on some garden hose connections, but as I had the stainless mesh… I used “Automotive Goop” to glue the mesh onto the fiberglass and that glue worked very well.

But that rust, what a pain.