Mine started to focus about 2am a couple of days ago.
After spending a couple of days putting in vertical beams everywhere and the roof vent aperture etc. I awoke with the thought that "there is a 60mm flange 3m thick pressed aluminium angle to go all around the top and on each corner riveted every 150mm to the frame and I have built the doors full height with only a 25mm wide face at the top edge. That is not going to work!!"
After a sleepless night I finally got out in the workshop to discover that the doors were about 2000mm high.
They don't need to be that high - tall people can bend a bit to get through.
In fact I have been in quite few buses and in very few of them can I stand upright in most areas.
I think that is why in most of the professionally built versions a roof lift is step one.
Never the less I was able to add a 100m wide architrave at the top of each door and then had to try hard to bump my head going though.
It actually required a little lift up on my toes to manage and I'm 1830mm tall so I think it will be fine.
The motorbike ramp idea I mentioned previously will (I'm sure) turn out fine.
The winch I ePurchased the other day has arrived and looks just fine.
I expected a "Made in China" version (and it may well be) but I cant find a single reference to any Asian country anywhere.
All the standards marks and instructions are in European languages (mainly German) and while compact, which is what was required, looks quite substantial.
All of this made me realise I needed to pay attention to the actual attachment points for all this hardware.
Having a good look made me realise that in fact apart from the new pivot points added the rear was rather flimsy.
I didn't fancy the idea of a 120kg tyre and wheel combination, or two of them even, hanging on the back as it stood.
Actually standing was not a problem - quite small components can support quite large weights - but any movement, particularly a couple or tens of thousands of kilometres of corrugations can break just about anything.
This needed serious attention.
Firstly a beam was needed which could actually stand up to that sort of punishment.
There was some left over 150mm x 50mm x 3mm RHS from the main longitudinal beams which carry the entire house. If that wont do it then the whole structure will collapse anyway.
So a bolt pattern was set out that will support some adapters which penetrate the fibreglass but not allow leaks (more on that another time) and will actually carry the mount for the wheels.
I made a little mistake some time ago when I bought the tyres and wheels and missed out on two good second hand spares and was forced to buy a single brand new spare.
In the hope of maybe later finding another spare (or as a last resort buying one if/when needed) I set out two patterns for carrying one wheel in the middle or two side by side.
As the corner posts were not originally originally intended to carry the load the two inner posts were removed and some new 75mm x 50mm x 3mm posts substituted to transfer the weight down to the lower beam.
This solved the problem of weight and vibration for the wheel mounts but left the upper cross beam a little weak for mounting the necessary pulleys for lifting everything up and down.
Out with the angle grinder again . . .
Actually it got really frustrating there for a while and I had to go across the road to my neighbour as I no longer own a HACKSAW and an angle grinder just wouldn't quite get to the part I wanted to cut out.
Talk about desperate !!
A new 75mm x 50mm x 3mm beam was then welded in right across the top, which will incidentally help with the flexing problems as well.
And a couple of extra pieces with "rivnuts/nutserts" in place and the final struts for panel support added as well.
That leaves just the intermediate struts below the main beam for later and we're are almost ready to go.
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