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
Solar Panels continued -
Run the wires for the solar panel through the roof to check their fit.
Looks good.
The roof is slightly narrower at the rear of the van. This caused the outer edge of the rear most set of brackets to almost overhang the roof. Take both of these brackets and shorten the angle iron slightly to correct it.
The mounting holes in the roof were drilled with the brackets in their current configuration. I'll have to remove the brackets for painting and was worried that all the holes wouldn't line up again if the brackets got mixed up. To prevent that I took a file and made a small notch on the angle iron of the three brackets on the drivers side.
Remove all the brackets. Weld a small metal square over the open end of each tube.
In the last posting I mentioned about where two wires cross between the panels. To protect those wires in the open space between the panels weld a piece of 1" angle iron to the bracket end closest to them.
All done. At this point used a grinding wheel to round the corners on all the angle iron pieces.
Get out my box of painting supplies.
Cover the brackets with the same NAPA paint and clearcoat that I use on the van.
If I'm going to paint the brackets, might as well paint the solar panels. One reason for painting them is I didn't like the way the black panels looked on top of the white van. The other reason is I'm betting most people will not really notice them thinking that they are nothing more than those white racks you see on work vans all the time.
While waiting for the different paint coats to set up it gave me free time to do some cleaning under the penthouse top. Something I'd been neglecting up till now.
Also clean and treat the penthouse rubber edge gasket.
continued -
Run the wires for the solar panel through the roof to check their fit.
Looks good.
The roof is slightly narrower at the rear of the van. This caused the outer edge of the rear most set of brackets to almost overhang the roof. Take both of these brackets and shorten the angle iron slightly to correct it.
The mounting holes in the roof were drilled with the brackets in their current configuration. I'll have to remove the brackets for painting and was worried that all the holes wouldn't line up again if the brackets got mixed up. To prevent that I took a file and made a small notch on the angle iron of the three brackets on the drivers side.
Remove all the brackets. Weld a small metal square over the open end of each tube.
In the last posting I mentioned about where two wires cross between the panels. To protect those wires in the open space between the panels weld a piece of 1" angle iron to the bracket end closest to them.
All done. At this point used a grinding wheel to round the corners on all the angle iron pieces.
Get out my box of painting supplies.
Cover the brackets with the same NAPA paint and clearcoat that I use on the van.
If I'm going to paint the brackets, might as well paint the solar panels. One reason for painting them is I didn't like the way the black panels looked on top of the white van. The other reason is I'm betting most people will not really notice them thinking that they are nothing more than those white racks you see on work vans all the time.
While waiting for the different paint coats to set up it gave me free time to do some cleaning under the penthouse top. Something I'd been neglecting up till now.
Also clean and treat the penthouse rubber edge gasket.
continued -
