Back Cabinet

Today the day was spent scribing, cutting and gluing the back cabinet. This will not only hold stuff, accessible by one large door and multiple shelves accessible from the back door, it will also support the bed. Because of this added stress, I opted to screw directly into a roof frame. Mercedes unfortunately did not place the roof frames in the perfect spot so there were some compromises. Actually, when building into a van frame like this, there are a lot of compromises. In the plans this cabinet was supposed to be 8 inches further forward, lining up with the back of the seat. It was also supposed to provide deep drawers the opened out the back door. Due to the body sweeping inwards at the back, this was not possible. Actually with the roof angling inwards and the inward sweep, it makes access from outside a really small space making deep drawers virtually useless.

Another trip to Windsor Plywood for some more Baltic birch. I think I may need to keep a tally on how much all this costs. Like how about $17 for each drawer pull.

Here's a shot of the back cabinet:


And here's a pic of what caused much confoundation and frustration. I still don't know how come this is out by so much - every other angle is square. Yet another joy of building into a not so square shell.

What are we doing here?

This is a blog about Kim and my attempt to create a better Westfallia. After spending 7 months in Tortuga we came to thinking of a couple of things that we want to change. The things we felt were most important are:
A permanent bed
refrigerator
solar power
hard shell and generally better security
increased ground clearance, possibly four wheel drive
more segregated storage
more water capacity
nothing outside to attract attention

We finally decided on the Sprinter after meeting an Austrian couple in their 4x4 Sprinter as they travelled across America. The company Iglhaut Allrad does a very nice conversion that is far superior to the system offered by MB in Europe which is more of a get you to the post office in the winter type system rather that a get you out of the amazon kinda system. The four wheel drive system is not an option in N. America. We will most likely upgrade to a manual tranny and four wheel drive in the future. For now, a Tirfor aka griphoist, will get us out of the muckClick here for a link to there website. For now a Tirfor, aka griphoist, will get us out of the muck.

We found a 2002 Freightliner badged cargo model on Ebay with 240,000 kilometers on it for about $13,000(US). We've budgeted about $3000 for the conversion.

Originally we thought the bed would be a permanent type that retracted into the roof or mounted sideways. Of course once reality set in, this is not a land yacht after all, we realized we would still have a folding bed. For Kim and anyone under 172 cm a sideways bed would work in the Sprinter chassis. The layout took many many hours over several months with hundreds of iterations and now looks surprisingly like a Westy. It is no coincidence why the Westy is such a popular camper!

We are using Baltic Birch plywood for the interior, 15mm for the bulkheads and 12mm for cabinets. Here are some pics of what we've done so far: