Step one. Bought the van.
Hello Everybody, First post. I camp a lot in tents but after spending three days straight in a tent in the rain at Dolly Sods I swore I'd make a change. Here it is. Bought it Wednesday. Dro...
Forum Discussion
One of the projects I have to do before bolting down the kitchen cabinet is a modification to the sofa-bed. When I designed and built the sofa-bed two years ago I hadn't yet taken up welding. Now that I've got some rudimentary welding skills if I was to create another sofa-bed it would be very different. I've been mightily tempted to to take another crack at it but finishing the van takes priority.
Of course nothing to stop me from making a slight improvement. Here is the lifting actuator for the backrest portion of the sofa. I wasn't happy with the design at the time but had beat my head against it for too long and wanted to move on.
The problem is that the actuator didn't lift the back all the way into the final position. It had to be pushed against the lifting blocks via the other actuator to complete it's upward movement. To allow that to work I need to have a sliding mount point at the back where the lifting actuator attaches.
This did work but it left the sofa backrest loose enough to bang against the lifting blocks on a bumpy road. Time to fix it. Start with some measurements.
Take the bed off the sofa-bed and put on a couple sawhorses. Remove the old lifting arrangement.
Use some left over bits to make a new mounting point.
The measurements show that backrest of the sofa-bed is to go from flat (zero degrees) to 68 degrees as the actuator moves from fully closed to fully extended. Dust off my geometry and come up with a design that fits the equation. Make a test version out of wood.
Check that it will work.
It's successful so start to transfer that design to metal.
Finished product.
Make a pivoting attachment point for the actuator end.
A much cleaner looking design I think..
Test it out.
This design is more economical with space so gives me a little more storage room under the sofa-bed.
Add a limit switch.
Install the bed back onto the sofa-bed and check the operation of the new lifting design. While doing this I noticed something. These lifting blocks on the back of the sofa-bed. They help guide the backrest into position and support it when in the sofa configuration. They were the best I could do at the time but can now be improved.
Replace with angle iron.
After switching over to the angle iron backrest supports I'm able to move the sofa-bed closer to the wall. How much closer? In this picture you can see a right angle taped on the floor. This is the old position of the sofa-bed front right corner. I've now gained an 1-1/4" along the full length of the sofa-bed.
While 1-1/4" might not seem like a lot, in the context of the inside of a class B camper van, it's Huge!
Of course nothing to stop me from making a slight improvement. Here is the lifting actuator for the backrest portion of the sofa. I wasn't happy with the design at the time but had beat my head against it for too long and wanted to move on.
The problem is that the actuator didn't lift the back all the way into the final position. It had to be pushed against the lifting blocks via the other actuator to complete it's upward movement. To allow that to work I need to have a sliding mount point at the back where the lifting actuator attaches.
This did work but it left the sofa backrest loose enough to bang against the lifting blocks on a bumpy road. Time to fix it. Start with some measurements.
Take the bed off the sofa-bed and put on a couple sawhorses. Remove the old lifting arrangement.
Use some left over bits to make a new mounting point.
The measurements show that backrest of the sofa-bed is to go from flat (zero degrees) to 68 degrees as the actuator moves from fully closed to fully extended. Dust off my geometry and come up with a design that fits the equation. Make a test version out of wood.
Check that it will work.
It's successful so start to transfer that design to metal.
Finished product.
Make a pivoting attachment point for the actuator end.
A much cleaner looking design I think..
Test it out.
This design is more economical with space so gives me a little more storage room under the sofa-bed.
Add a limit switch.
Install the bed back onto the sofa-bed and check the operation of the new lifting design. While doing this I noticed something. These lifting blocks on the back of the sofa-bed. They help guide the backrest into position and support it when in the sofa configuration. They were the best I could do at the time but can now be improved.
Replace with angle iron.
After switching over to the angle iron backrest supports I'm able to move the sofa-bed closer to the wall. How much closer? In this picture you can see a right angle taped on the floor. This is the old position of the sofa-bed front right corner. I've now gained an 1-1/4" along the full length of the sofa-bed.
While 1-1/4" might not seem like a lot, in the context of the inside of a class B camper van, it's Huge!
