A second door

My brother Winny, who himself has a lot of experience with building a camper (he had an Hanomag a few years ago which which he was travelling across Europe) has advised me that it would be good to have a 2nd door in the camper box - just for the case that one could not open the rear "balcony" lift.

He was right, of course, and so I got on eBay such a door. Is a Dethleffs replacement door for their own campers, is basically a new item that had be in store for a while. Reasonable price, so I ordered it.

All I had to do was to cut the opening in the Luton box. There were some space constraints: the total width between 2 vertical pillars was about 55cm. The door would fit OK.

But I was a bit worried about removing the only metal horizontal bar which keeps the box stable. 

Well, I had no other choice; if I want a door, the metal bar must go. So with a Ryobi flex I cut through the metal.

Now drilling a few pilot holes, then drawing the outline onto the outside, then cutting with a jig saw through the double-walled Aluminium box.

Inserting the door was easy - the frame fit perfectly. A bit of SikaFlex, then I began affixing the door frame with self-taping screws into the Alu. 30 of them. 

Looks not too bad!

The upper half of the door can be opened to let air in.

Now the camper has two entry doors.

 

Mounting a fourth solar panel

Up to now I had only three solar panel: one on each side, and one to the front. In order to cover all 4 sides I had planned to mount one on the left rear door. There was space, and it would serve well also as a visibility protection for the inside seating area.

I had already pre-planned the mounting and had ensured that the spacing of the frame bars were suitable to allow mounting of the panel.

The panel was of the same type as all the other 3 panels.

The cable duct through the door is through a water-proof cover.

Inside the cables currently just dangle, waiting for their connection.

Next step: configure the power setup to be able to deal with 4 panels. Problem: the solar MPPT controller at 12V can only handle up to 80V solar input.. But that is almost reached by my 3 panels. With a fourth panel the full voltage would go up to 95 V. I could remedy this to switch to a 24V setup... but then would need a 24V-to-12V DC-DC-converter again, to power all my 12V devices.

Will consider this later - my current solution is to manually select which 3 of the panels should be switched-on in series.