Last Updated: 19/12/2019

Well, October went pretty quickly, but in all honestly I had a couple of weeks off. I did enjoy two weeks of Alpine roads in VIC even if the weather did made the whole exercise a bit too wet…  :D

Anyhow lots of jobs have being completed and Luigi is coming along nicely… First thing I wanted to do was to remove that ugly hinges plastic cover that was already half broken. Once the plastic cover was gone, I did polish the SS hinges and add a new rubber insert below the hinge so to still have a good weather shield.. It does work much better and the hinge looks good without that ugly black plastic..

Then the rain came and then more rain… while working inside, I suddenly looked at the floor around the front steps and realise that a new indoor swimming pool was becoming available.. We all stopped and start to look for where the water was coming in and it didn’t took long to realise that there were several seals failing…

But the bulk of the water was actually coming in from the corner of the front window were after a bit of cleaning became apparent that at some stage the bus hit something with the front mirror and did managed to break the fibreglass behind.. The previous owner did believe that a piece of sponge and some bog would have fix the problem…  Unlikely!!!

The bog was just sitting on the sponge and it didn’t take long to remove it and see the extent of the damage.. This time, again with the help of my mate, it was repaired using fibreglass and the soon the job was completed, surprise, surprise, the water did stop entering the vehicle…

With that scary moment out of the way, it was time to finish the above bed cabinet in the bedroom, that also does cater for the sound in the rear of the vehicle.. I also got a friend to make a Roman blind for the skylight and I did asked for something colourful  ;)..

The same day, around 5pm I did close all the windows to test how dark it was inside and as you can see from the picture (the one nearly all black), there is only a tiny little amount of light coming in from the gap on the skylight window… Not bad at all…

Then we got really busy… Firstly another 10 square metre of insulation panels were installed, followed by all the electrical conduit and cables and completed with another couple of composite panels.. Now it was time to re-install the original hatch but I did wanted to modify it so that I can access the roof from inside the vehicle by using a short ladder.. All I need it to do was to add an hinge on the fix side of the hatch as the other side was already removable as emergency exit..

It did work as a treat and the top panel can be swing open 180 degrees making the access to the roof a simple matter.. It beats using a 4 metre ladder from the outside, where now a simple 5 step ladder is all I need to get up there…

Next was the assembly and painting of the bedroom sliding door.. I really didn’t know what to expect from using a standard sliding door in a motorhome, but again I was quite surprise but the excellent result.. It did took a lot of cuttings and adjustments but it does work quite well and more importantly, I didn’t loose any space and I don’t have to use those ugly foldable plastic door that seem to plague the RV community..

While building the frame of the wall I also checked the vanity unit for its final location. It does fit nicely but apparently I was sold a unit with the draws on the wrong side, but it may be a good thing as I need room on the left side for the water pipes..

Finally I got the full size motorcycle up in the garage, and it did work well after fixing all the little problems mentioned last month, but taking the motorcycle out is still a major problem requiring excessive strength, in particularly if the vehicle is not levelled.. Maybe I’ll look into buying a smaller two wheels to fit in as I only need it for shopping…

The garage is also finally completed, with all the walls, the electrical and floor finished. Only problem here was that when the door is closed the room is completely sealed and the Outback was getting a bit hot.. So I did installed a waterproof grille that does provide plenty of fresh air.. Keeping the dust out will be the next challenge..  :P

One last thing was the installation of the Webasto fuel pickup line in the main tank. Next month I will show the full installation of the unit..