Ford Transit Forum

by **Weegee** » Mon May 29, 2006 7:47 am

Hi and welcome to my progress report.

I use the internet through my mobile, while i am away in my van, which can be for weeks at a time, as i do security work. Due to this many of the pictures that i post wont be the best quality, as i have limited bandwidth, and only the camera on my phone. I will however endevour to make up for these shortcomings when i am back home.

My van is a 150L, has a passenger side sliding door, drivers side sliding window. It is currently diamond white, with fords own unique brown highlights (rust).

The rust at this stage is not too bad, in fact it is just surface rust at the moment, and im hoping it will stay that way for a while (till august) when i can get it resprayed panther black.

So far i have -

fitted orange beacons
run 12 x 12v outlets in three groups of 4 to various places in the back
run 240v mains sockets on both sides in the back
fitted 2 electronic (leave on all the time) battery chargers
fitted a 12v fridge (boy does this kil the battery)
Fitted Playstation 2
Fitted Flatscreen Digital Tv, and Magmount arial
moved rear bench seat back (leaving 1m between seat backs and rear doors)
fitted 75L Fresh Water Tank
Fitted 25L Waste Water Tank
Fitted 3 Mahoosive Leisure batteries
Fitted a Split Charging system to charge all the batteries whilst driving
Done the Fuel Pressure Mod
Fitted Curtains (To stop the theiving scum seeing whats inside)
Fitted a good alarm, with paging facility

Stuff to do --

Fit the supercharger (thread elsewhere)
Tint the windows (especially the back side sliding one)
Re-Panel the van, with all new looms behind the boards
Fit A bigger charger for the 3 battery pack (The one i got not strong enough)
Re-Upholster the headlining ( or steam clean, pm me if you have suggestions)
Add an external 240v power inlet for charging from home or generator
Add an external water filler flap, save loads of time carrying buckets of water out to the van.
Fit Voltmeters to both the main van battery and the leisure packs
Fit a thermostat to the 12v fridge to save power (dont know why they dont come with one, they freeze my milk

)
Fit an ammeter to the batterys too, just to make sure that nothing is draining the batteries when i dont want them too.
Paint the entire van panther black, with some hi vis (number plate style) checkers down the little 3 inch groove down the side of the van.
Fit a bigger tv
Fit a hard disc recording system and 4 cameras (it is a security van after all)
Fit a better version of sat-nav (fed up using laptop now)
fit some speakers and an amp.

Im sure this list will grow

by **Weegee** » Mon May 29, 2006 7:51 am

Today I will mostly be:

Fitting a reversing aid

This is one of the reversing aids from ebay, i never expect the quality of goods to be good from there, so its a plesant surprise when they are.

Anyway, this is the item that im going to be fitting:

It is a reverseing aid that beeps at you to tell you when your about to hit something/someone, and apparently displays the distance to said object/person to within 0.1 of a meter.

I will post up a few pics of my progress later today, and if anyone is interested, i will write a review of the product to benefit others - it does only cost a few quid afterall.

by **Guy88** » Mon May 29, 2006 9:46 am

i got one of them on mind. works a treat and is surprisingly accurate

by **rover** » Mon May 29, 2006 10:11 am

You have time to do any work while you're doing all that work on the van :?:

Rover.

by **Weegee** » Mon May 29, 2006 11:46 am

All done, needs a bit of a tidy up with the wires, but im not going to do that until i am doing the re-panelling, as all the wires will go behind there.

It took a total of about an hour to fit.

All the parts included in the kit looked good quality, shame about the scotch locks in the fitting kit, they were crap.

I ran the wire under the trim on the drivers step, and to the rear light cluster on the drivers side (no photos of that, because my van is mess at the moment)

Stuck the control box to the inside of the van, and scotch locked the reverse light wires.

Turned on ignition and stuck the stick in reverse, hey presto, the display lights up

Re built the light cluster and connected the sensors to the control box, just cable tied the wires just now.

The sensors are stuck on with 3M double sided sticky stuff, (included), and there are also screws included too, but im not overly keen on how much it sticks out, so when i get home - i will drill bigger holes in the bumper, and mount the sensors up from behind, giving them a more flushed look.

Seems to be working fine, but as im in a field at the moment, theres not much for me to reverse into, lol

For £11 im delighted, just need to put it to the real world test - and remember that my Towbar sticks out a further 10-15 cm from the bumper.

by **Weegee** » Mon May 29, 2006 11:48 am

Guy88 wrote:i got one of them on mind. works a treat and is surprisingly accurate

Great Stuff, how long have you been using it, where did you mount your sensors?

by **Weegee** » Mon May 29, 2006 11:51 am

rover wrote:You have time to do any work while you're doing all that work on the van

Rover.

i am fortunate that my job merely involves patrolling a field every few hours, and making sure that no-one has nicked the alloy road that im parked on :wink:

[/img]

by **Guy88** » Mon May 29, 2006 3:16 pm

Weegee wrote:
Guy88 wrote:i got one of them on mind. works a treat and is surprisingly accurate

Great Stuff, how long have you been using it, where did you mount your sensors?

I fitted it just about 3 months ago. mine is a 4 sensor kit and the sensors push into holes in the bumper. It even came with a drill bit. :shock:

Very handy to park with and a lot of people look worried when i reverse up to them and stop about 1/2m away from their cars. :lol: