biv box

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All ready for the weighbridge and an insurance quote on Monday. What a hectic Friday...
kidding, just photoshopping the Luton aka master bedroom. Friday was postponed. Now Monday afternoon is booked for welding the Luton bars. I considered the bar lower down to support the lower corner joints but it looked 'orrible.

As for the frankenflanges, maybe Monday as well.

[wonkywheel]

Just a personal opinion.
You said you are limited to cab-over extension by the hood hinges. Looking at your mockup I would consider if it were possible to alter those hinges to allow more extension. The further away from vertical you can get means the hood front edge is getting lower with the arc.
It's just it looks very short (single bed?). If I were to contemplate a second build would make the overall dimensions smaller but I would increase the over cab bed width as 4 foot seems narrow when you're in it.
Looking good though

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Land Rover owners in europe and elsewhere have noted the huge rise in vehicle theft and the market has responded with a variety of knick knacks. One thing was better hood aka bonnet hinges. I fitted front of hood locks but the hinges at the firewall screw on. To remove the bonnet i could unscrew them like the thieves.. Maybe a change of hinge would kill two birds with one stone therefore allowing a longer overhang.

The original idea was to copy the market where the bed base is two thirds into the main living area, made with 2 full width boards and a mattress in pieces that stash away during the day (out of the way) up front in the overhang. This means both people have to get out of bed to make a morning coffee, unless it is warm enough to go outside to make coffee.

Morning coffee in bed can be a real luxury for the "other half" and improve the overall comforts of home and increase the level of general feelgood. So does hotwater shower... we have roughed it in swags at times and, short term, no probs. But longer term, a year going around Australia, I think little lightweight luxuries are important for 'sustainability'.

This switch out from a hard shell Maggiolina roof top was because 3 or 4am leg cramps (nerve pinch) or foot arch cramps (i get them bad) meant there was nowhere to stand up and stretch to relieve the cramp so you had to clamber down a cold ladder in your undies to take a few steps on the ground. Bad news. I just wanted a Luton aka overhang camping overall design do-over to be able to stand up beside the bed for cramps and -bonus- be able to get dressed/undressed inside like a full height tent. The rest of the bonus features like extra security and bad weather space sweetened the whole deal.

When i make up the interior you will definitely see the 'basic' motives in action. Bare essentials. Eg drinking water from stainless jerry. Outside drop down and roll up 'Quick Pitch' ensuite. No lpg. Portable liquid fuel twin burner stove for when a fire is not possible. Engel old school 35litre chest fridge. Portable washing basin/sink. Old school dinette design -storage under lids that are also bench seats and also a place to stack a few portable 550mm sq weatherproof containers. Stashing some storage containers outside means more space inside overnight. We got to like them camping. We used them on the Queen's shilling (as they used to say) and they are brilliant for food, messing items, clothes. For our travels we used quite a few and avoided making them full of weighty things to avoid them becoming over awkward.

The pics are from about 2016 when we used to put everything in the containers. I think we have culled items and could get away with just 4 now. The big lego design means you can make them into benches outside too. When a cooking oil container broke on Broken Cart Track the mess was limited to one army container. In a regular campervan the oil would have seeped into every bit of cupboard framework etc. Good reason to stick with canned olive oil. We never had ant or mouse or dust or water ingress, and the lifting/moving when needed was good upper body exercise i suppose. We generally camp alone in places like farm stays. If we had to use a caravan park or even a motel we used some stainless cable thru the handles to make sure the containers didn't walk off overnight.

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Pic from today - welding on the Luton end and gussets.
It was frosty at daybreak, -6 deg C, coolest May morning in a decade.

[wonkywheel]

I know what you mean about not being able to stand with leg cramps. I had a small 8 foot by 4-foot teardrop trailer for a few years. One of the things that spurred me on to make a demountable was being able to stand up to alleviate cramp. My teardrop was just tall enough to give me about 6 inches of headroom while sitting up. The warm cosy bed and hot weather encouraged sleeping as nature intended but it did mean a couple of strategically placed windbreaks protected my modesty when all that was available was to fall out of the door onto the floor headfirst. There certainly wasn't room to bend your legs to get out feet first. and night cramps seem to get more regular the older I get.

[zildjian]

I've had those feet cramps (thought it was just me till now)

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Had a afternoon off work. A proper weighbridge experience - Rivets without the BivBox frame, without legs, but with full main fuel tank and 4 full jerrys, and rachet straps and the mounting points, was 2420 including me. My weight with boots and jumpers and a thick bad weather jacket is about 110kg, so that gives me 2310kg. The GVM is supposed to be 3200.

The wbridge is in an out of the way location, but so is the only place I could find supplying Reidbar stuff, so two jobs done driving out to that suburb. I was hunting up a reidbar joiner piece to cut in half to make to Reidbar nuts. Nuts are for each end of the reidbar upright in a Grillit campfire grill. http://www.grillit.com.au The 20mm piece of reidbar fits inside the front end Army roobar - in the horizontal center pipe.

Welding - more work with gussets and trying out the franken flange. Ver 1.0 was soon rejected or rather superceded with ver 2.0 using some purpose built and exact fitting discs to minimise lateral movement.
Instead of trimming the oval galvanized flanges or welding a smaller diameter pipe piece to the faces of the discs, a smaller disc was welded in to match the rollover pipe socket sections we are using as mounts.

Tested on site. No movement...

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No new work done. The welders are on 2 priority pay-me-more-money callouts: a broken steam pipe thingy at the hospital laundry contractor and a big item vital to a local quarry.

But..

Steven, coming up on 26 yrs in 8 weeks, has cut into his house savings to buy a welding kit and do some after hours tech courses to eventually get a ticket. He currently does brickie labouring and cementing and did at stint as an apprentice with a dodgy labour hire company. A rippoff. He has never had dole money but just like when i was young the big suits keep closing down jobs here and sending them to Asia. Home construction is trending to more offsite and prefab at the cheaper end. When i was his age there were same recessions etc and i never felt secure in a job or really "into" a career so i got forklift and trucking tickets etc, both on the job and after hours, "just in case".

So the welding finishing bits and little extras could yet be done at home.

More trivia. The National Animal of Scotland is a Unicorn. Fitting. No, thats not it .... i won a golf club raffle at the local footballs club last night. Yes! I can say my losing streak for raffles is finished after a run of some 40yrs. (I rarely rarely rarely buy raffle tickets but this little raffle was for a 1litre bottle of jim beam. There's a red and a white wine in the basket as well, but its not my thing, a long story, i only ever got drunk once on wine).

--------- its been suggested to use the jim beam for the Celebration Toast and Thanksgiving when the Biv Box is finally finished and out somewhere on its shakedown trip.

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Lets talk electrolysis corosion between aluminium and steel.
The exoskeleton is steel, the 90degree 50mm flashing is raw aluminium (. It has to be scuffed up before installation too.

I could use steel rivets to fix the flashing to the steel, and in that method i could thickly paint the steel to put a long delay on rust due to water/salt air/mud.

I could use screws or rivnuts (aka nutserts) in the same way.

But i could also use the high end sikaflex adhesive stuff from locktite and not worry about rivets, rivnuts or screws etc.

The steel and the aluminium gets pretty hot on hot days and expands/moves therefore the flex in sikaflex is super necessary. Also, the sikaflex holds in place the plastic shims used to get the flashing all trued up for the composite panels, so when the panels are perma-glued in place... its all straight. The sikaflex and the plastic ... i like it as it cuts down thermal transfer from the steel as well as electrolysis too.

If i do not trust the simple sikaflex solution... i could combine the methods (a combo), minimising the rivets a fair bit but i heard yesterday that the combo idea is overkill for my small panels. Also heard that the face of the steel being fixed to the aluminium should be sanded and super cleaned, and non painted .. i had assurance the sealant function of the high end $$$$$$$ sikaflex works well to prevent water etc corosion.

Any advice?

[wonkywheel]

I am a belt and braces man myself too.
Although my build is mainly all aluminium I did use steel self-tapping screws on things like checker plate cladding. The screws really just held the plate in place while the sikaflex went off. After 4 years it is noticeable that some of the heads are going rusty, some of which have just been replaced with aluminium rivets. I am not even sure that the rust is a galvanic reaction or just the coating on the steel given up.
I recently took some of the checker plate off to make an access panel for my new tie-downs. It was possible to remove with like a peeling action with a pry bar but it would never have come off on its own. The sikaflex had formed a watertight seal as well.
Also when I fixed the giant solar panel to the roof I used Sikaflex on the framework, held down with loads of bricks, but I did put a screw at each end just to be sure.
I believe the galvanic reaction is reduced by the oxide film that forms on aluminium. My attempt to self teach aluminium mig welding did make me aware of the fact that bare aluminium forms a protective oxide film very quickly when exposed to air.

The need to remove this film with a stainless steel wire brush prior to welding was vital to successful welding, as surprisingly, the aluminium oxide has a melting point 3x higher than bare aluminium so on thin sheet you blow through as soon as the film melts.

I am no expert, only with quite a bit of practical experience. My take on it is, it needs physical contact and moisture for corrosion to take place. Without both you are safe?

Perhaps not a help really but at the end of the day, if you built it you can fix it if there is a problem later.