Sunday, Jan. 13, 2013, Guerneville, CA.
Some serious surgery is required today.
It was just coming off thirty two degrees F. today as I got going around ten thirty this morning. The plan,….. surgically remove some metal on the side door of the van so I can move and mount the new Wave3 propane heater there as I think it might be a better place for it, rather than putting it on top of the cook stove to operate. This would also get it lower to the floor, which is a better place for it.
Of course, I was a little slow in getting started. I turned the heater on in the van and procrastinated for awhile waiting for things to warm up a bit. That didn’t really waste any time as I still needed to think this surgery out a bit more and how I was going to do all this.
I wanted the heater to be on a hinge, as there is some valuable storage space in the door, under where I was going to install the heater. To access it, I would have to put the heater on a hinged metal shelf so I could tip it out and get to anything I might stash in there. This hinged metal shelf would also give me something to screw the heater down to, to keep it there.
I taped off the area I needed to cut out and made measurements and drew some guide lines on the side door.
Below, is a picture of the tape and guide lines to be cut on the door.
Some three eighth of an inch holes were drilled on four sides to allow me to get the jig saw blade started in the cuts.
I used a jig saw with a metal blade to cut it out as you can see below.
I broke one blade, which is to be expected when cutting this kind of stuff out. Lucky it was only one blade. Some hand filing was in order to remove all the burrs from the saw cuts.
Below, you can see that I’ve removed the piece of metal and exposed a good hole in the van side door.
I cut a piece of metal off the piece I cut out and bent it to form a little shelf that I pop riveted a hinge to, so the shelf can fold out. This will allow me to move the heater and get to stuff I might have stored under the heater. I needed to build a box in there to support the weakened door and tidy this all up.
I plan to glue auto type carpet to the side door metal eventually. It will be applied to all the metal sides inside the door. This will help keep the van warm and it will stop any condensation from forming on the inside of the outside metal in the door. I’ve found that glued on carpet works best to stop condensation on metal van walls and doesn’t take up much space either. I don’t’ have the stuff to do it now, so I will have to disassemble all this later, when I get the materials to carpet it, but it will do for now.
Below, you can see the little metal shelf I made and put the hinge on for the bottom of the box.
The picture below demonstrates how the heater will hinge forward to get to stuff under it.You can also see I’ve added some wood to reinforce the metal in the door. I’ll have to cover this wood with some metal to make it fire proof, which I will do later.
The project came out, mostly ok. I’ve already moved it to the left a little, than what it shows in the photo below. I plan to put a metal shelf, just over the top of it, also on a hinge, so it will fold down over the stove when not in use and protect the heater while driving around. The metal shelf should also be nice to put my feet on while I’m sitting in there.
Below, you can see what the new Wave3 heater looks like mounted.
I still have some modifications to do to this project to complete it. It needs some kind of a latch to keep it from tipping over.
And I also have to install the main gas line to it too. I plan to just finish enough of it to make it work for now, as I will try it soon on my Arizona trip which I’ll be off on soon, well, maybe in a few weeks.
Had a great day.