Stage 2 the Chassis/Suspension Cont.

Setting up the suspension



The suspension is mounted on a 100x50x6 RHS cross member. A friend of mine owns a Trackmaster caravan with a similar suspension and he found that the cross member started to crack at the suspension mounting points. The cross member was only 4mm thick so I upgrade to 6mm.


Diagonal bracing is used to steady the cross beam and also stopped the cross beam distorting when carrying out the very heavy welding required to hold the suspension mounting brackets.

Note the diagonals are followed through to the main chassis rails.


JR

Stage 2 the Chassis/Suspension Cont.

Mounting Water & Grey Water tank with stone guards

Three stone guards were required, the most front water tank guard was also covered with ¼” rubber across the front. The guards were made to cover the front and sides of the tanks to fully protect the inlets and outlets.


Extra frame work was welded to the chassis to mount the tanks. Rubber was inserted between the tanks and their mounting brackets


The water tanks are just common old Ampac 82ltr tanks that have been around for years. I like the heavy corrugation design and had a 60ltr one in my old Jayco and never had a failure. One of the most important things to do when fitting a water tank is try and have the filling line as straight as possible and vent the tank some were so dirt cannot enter.

The Camec filler lockable caps now are four years old and are not always locking and sometimes not unlock, they are becoming a real problem. The other problem is the body is only pressed together and can leak and can even pop apart if they have any tension on them.

Back of water tank filler showing vent retuning to filler


I would not recommend the Camec filler and cap.

JR

Stage 2 the Chassis/Suspension Cont.

Grey Water Tank (82ltr)

Grey water tanks in caravans are really only starting to emerge but mobile homes have been using them for years.
The grey water tank fits between the two main chassis rails and has three inlets, kitchen sink, bathroom sink and a shower inlet.
Atlas Tanks in Queensland were able to make my tank with 6mm polypropylene and double thickness where inlets were to be fitted.
I faxed a drawing on Thursday from Newcastle to Brisbane and at 8:00AM on Monday morning the tank was at my front door.

Tank fittings:
two 1.5” BSP threaded inlets for the sinks,
two 0.5” BSP threads on top of the tank for vents one each end
one 1.25” BSP thread for the tank drain
one 136mm hole on top to take the shower outlet trap.
Bottom slopped one way to allow good draining
One baffle across the centre

Grey water tanks are well known to create odour problems within the van due to the grey water smell feeding back from the tank into the van via sink and shower outlets.
I decided not to rely on a mechanical type of shutoff flap and went for water seals on all inlets to the grey water tank.

Bathroom sink s-trap

Bathroom sink inlet into grey water tank at rear of tank


JR

Stage 2 the Chassis/Suspension Cont.

Grey water Tank Cont.

Kitchen sink inlet on side of grey tank, note pipe travels through miner chassis cross member to reduce exposure to pipe damage

Drain tank by dropping hose below tank level, when jack is down the hose still sits higher than the tank so it doesn’t drain


JR

Stage 2 the Chassis/Suspension Cont.

Grey Water Tank Cont.

It is easy to stop odour coming from the sinks by adding an s-trap after the sink but to stop odour coming back up the shower drain can be a bit difficult as the shower outlet is at floor level and there is very little room to fit a trap.

I decided to design a trap that would fit within the grey water tank. The trap I designed required the shower outlet to be exactly on top of the trap into the tank.

Shower trap in grey water tank
The shower water trap was made up of standard pluming fittings from Bunnings.


Two1/2” vent pipes feed up the wall cavity to louvers at top back corner RHS of van


JR

Hi John,

I really take my hat off to the professional way you approached your building project.

Many people build from scratch......but use other peoples fully documented plans, which includes a 'bill of materials' needed.

Building from scatch without plans is a mamoth task, but enjoyable at the end to see the finished project elvolve into the dream.

Do you have any idea of how many total hours the project consumed ??? and do you have a break-up in hours of the many tasks needed to pull it all together.

I am really enjoying the effort to document the project for the enjoyment of forum members.

Cheers,

Hi Ken and Kristine,
It’s a bit cool isn’t it, I’m in the hill behind Cardiff I expect the Lake would be the same.

I cannot accurately estimate the hours, I do not even think about it.

I actually started thinking about building a van in about 2001 and then moved house so thought that was the end of that but once the new house was set up and we checked the cash flow I consider it again.

I retired in January 2006 and was a shift worker and probably a year before that started draw up a few ideas at 3:00AM in the morning when on night shift.
I started taking my lap top to work and drew the van on and off over the last twelve months before retiring.

When I started to build the van I usually worked four or five days a week from 9:00AM until about 5:00PM but took plenty of coffee breaks. That went on four 14months but had a few two to four week breaks here and there. There were plenty of trips to Sydney to get things and also the weighing of items was time consuming. The three main places I used for parts was Barns Caravans (Sydney), Camec and the Hexham Jayco dealer. Barns Caravans gave me a reasonable discount and the four Barns brothers are very knowledgeable men when it comes to building caravans.

I cannot really say how many hours but if you costed that into the equation the budget would be blown.

JR

Wonderful job JR, and I can appreciate the hours involved. It is a labour of love to do it. My small refurb pales in comparison to a full build as you have done; and your tradesman ship and attention to detail is excellent.
Thanks for posting it for our benefit.

Stage 2 the Chassis/Suspension Cont.

One last stage was to paint the chassis

The chassis is DuraGal and as such is galvanised but the DuraGal galvanise coating is not as heavy as when a chassis is hot dipped galvanised and where all the welds were carried out the galvanise was ground away or was burnt away with the weld.

Paints used:
A) All welds were sealed with cold gal.
B) The chassis was etch primed
C) Areas that would be exposed to stone damage was sprayed with under body coating called Gravi Tex.
D) The lot then sprayed with two coats of Hammertone enamel.

I used approximately eight to ten bottles of Gravi Tex and at $20 a bottle works out not cheap.
Gravi Tex or similar produces chip resistance is good but under very bad stony roads it will eventually loose the battle but from my experience it is about as good as it gets to resist chipping.

The stone chip protection requires a special spray gun that screws straight into the container of Gravi Tex


Chassis complete


Lowering completed chassis


If you notice a fairly large clock in some of my photos, it was the turbine house clock from Eraring Power Station. When at the power station the clock was mounted in such a location that it required a very large cherry picker to access it and became a real problem to change the time for daylight saving and every time a certain station service switch board was isolated the clock would stop so it was updated and I was able to buy the old one.

JR

Hi JR.
The chassis looks great you have done a great job. Where can you put orders in? I was wondering about the clock in the photos i thought there was a town hall missing its time piece