Thursday, January 04, 2018

Vanlife begins - a new toy, a Toyota Hiace LWB van to camp in

Very excited with my purchase of a rather beaten up 2000 Toyota Hiace LWB van with some basic camper van facilities built in.

The back is rather filled with a full size double bed mattress but underneath there is lots of storage space.

It came with a 100W solar panel on the roof and two batteries making up 200Ahr. There is pretty nice LED light bars and oddly little twinkly lights that I'll probably remove.

Already I've made a few improvements to the electrical system by upgrading the charge controller to one with a digital readout of battery voltage and larger capacity. Before:


After:


I plan to run more 12V equipment, obviously ham radio gear, so I've added a distribution board:



The van drives well (I drove it back from Wollongong to Sydney this morning) and the most amazing discovery is that the radio has shortwave!



Surely it was meant for someone like me. Table for outdoor cooking and battery box.


The mattress rather fills the space:


Lots of storage underneath. Here's the drinking water (with pump) and gas.


Battery box has been done pretty well although I fear dropping a spanner in there.


Looking pretty comfortable now.


2 comments:

Unknown said...

Wow that's great Peter. Like the fridge in the back too. I'm having fun turning my boat into a camper as well - 24V traction pack gives me heaps of power. Bring it to Adelaide!

Tim Bowden said...

Peter - very impressive. I don't think you need any advice from me, but looking forward to lowering a few cold ones and chewing the fat when we can. Tim B