Well It's been awhile my friends, so let's do a update. Been away camping and ran the starter battery flat. Reason for this was. I thought that the leisure battery was powering the CD player. Turns out that all the electrical items that you want to use from the leisure battery have to be connected to the leisure battery. I thought that by connecting the leisure battery up to the relay I had done that. Sadly I am again wrong. All the relay does is allow split charging from the alternator, that's it, nothing else. So I have know wired up the CD player to work from the leisure battery.

Today I have fitted a Accessory socket that works from the leisure battery.

The Socket was bought from Maplins along with a small black plastic box. A hole was drilled in the top for the socket to fit into and a smaller hole was drilled through the bottom of the box for the positve and negative wires to connect onto their connections marked on the socket.







The box was then fitted into the Bus and the negative wire connected to a suitable earth. The positive wire was connected to the leisure battery positive terminal through an inline fuse holder with a 10amp fuse.

Fitted a new gas stove yesterday as the one I had been using had a leak and had caught fire on two separate occasions which was quite scary. It was a cartridge type stove and the spring on the back of the unit was worn and wasn't pushing the cartridge into the mechanism enough.

Now have a double burner unit bolted through an aluminium plate which bolts through the top of a cupboard unit.
This stove runs off a 4.5 kg gas bottle. Made a box for the bottle and bolted it onto the inside of one of the storage boxes/seat next to the stove. I then ran the gas pipe from the stove behind the seat and connected it to the bottle using a regulator. Turned it all on and there was a gas leak coming from the stove connection. Turned the gas off then tightened the connection up with mole grips, turned the gas back on and there was no leak this time. Lit the stove up and everything works fine.

OK a bit of a much needed update here.

Fitted a 110amp leisure battery behind the drivers seat. All fused and connected up to a Relay. Made a wooden box for it to sit in and covered the outside of it with carpet. A couple of brackets were made and the box was screwed into place.

Did the forest festival again this year where I sold a few of my glass paintings.

This was followed by three festivals over the coming month.

Drove down to Cheltenham, a trip of about 5-6 hours this is when I found the gears becoming stiff. The next day drove into Somerset and again the gears where pretty stiff.

The local garage checked the gearbox oil level and this was fine. Had a couple of days near Glastonbury then drove to Dorset. The bus ran OK on this part of the journey and even got up zig zag hill in 2nd gear. The journey home was pretty bad as traffic jams and hot weather caused the bus to again develop a sticky gearbox. The drive back up the M1 in the rain wasn't much fun.

Have had the bus over to the diesel doctors where we changed the gearbox oil with a semi synthetic and added some friction fighter.

A part in the linkage (see photo) was also a bit worn and a small rubber ball was replaced with a new one ordered from VW.

Hope to do a engine flush/oil/filter change next month and also add some friction fighter to the engine.

Finally I'm back. Couldn't log onto blogger. kept saying that my account didn't exist or my email addy was invalid. Hhhhmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Haven't done anything lately, apart from buy a double step to use at the back doors of the bus. This will make it a lot easier to get in and out of the rear of the bus. Also got one of those triple 12 volt adapters that you can plug mobile phones, etc into.

Have been looking at 12 volt heated water handi-washes on ebay. I could fit one of these onto the rear door which would be very handy when camping.

Had a drive to Staffordshire last weekend. Went to Wheaton Aston festival. About a 400-450 mile round trip. The bus used around £30 worth of fuel for about 250 ish miles. Average speed of about 55 mph. The bus ran really well, no worries.

Painted the brackets for the rear mudflaps with Hammerite.
Fitted them yesterday. A bit of a pain as the brackets had to be cut to fit and new holes drilled into the brackets and the inner bodywork.
Checked the mudflaps to see if they where fitted straight and then finally bolted the mudflaps onto the new brackets.