Let the mAYHEM commence...

With the tangible possibility of Spring approaching thoughts have turned to getting pROJECT mAYHEM to the next stage of completion or as it is also known spending a truckload of money.

Today has seen the van booked in to have the side windows fitted - unfortunately it won't be until March as the recession doesn't seem to have rocked the VW market too much and in fact it seems to be booming at the minute. Also making an attempt to get the R&R Bed commissioned though that was thwarted by the minor fact of the boss not being there - no great issue really as I know the majority of the things that I want for it and it was more a matter of confirming a few thoughts than anything else and also getting some sort of build date so that I can start to plan out the changes I am going to have to make.

So what is to be done? What follows is an extensive (and probably horribly expensive) list:

• Strip carpet off side door ready for window to be fitted.
• Remove opposite board, cut down to half size ready for window fitting and refit.
• Remove other boards and re-glue where they have come away from the ply.
• Remove old floor and speaker\amp housing - strip of all parts that will be reused.
• Build new lattice frame under floor and cut new 9mm boards to fit.
• Move leisure battery to under R&R Bed.
• Run power cables to new location for battery.
• Rewire front speakers and add more sound deadening to try and stop the minor but very noticeable rattling.
• Move speaker cabling for rear speakers.
• Run cables to new location under R&R Bed.
• Build new bass bin and amp housing.
• Wire up amps - power, speakers, RCA cables and the like.
• Rewire interior mirror via a relay to the battery and re-run the wiring for the electric windows.
• Build cupboards in remaining space under R&R Bed.
• Fit electrics - Invertor, cigarette socket and the like.

That will do for now as it is a lot longer than even I expected it to be and I am sure that there is 101 more small jobs that I haven't even though of at the minute...

Unexpectedly syked

It has to be said that the power of the SYKE is strong at the minute - probably due to the weather being gloriously sunny and just plain pleasant. A fine time to be out on the grit for the afternoon before rolling into work at 7PM feeling battered but elated that yet another project has been dispatched you would think. Unfortunately for me the current spell of glorious weather has also arrived at the time where shit needs to be done like obtaining van insurance and other assorted things that can only be done during the day as that is when normal people work.

It has to be said that it's a real ball ache having to hunt around to get a decent price for these things and even more so when the usual comparison websites don't come up with a better price immediately. However thanks to modern technology you can get a few ideas of who to ring for a modified van quote that will not be the monetary equivalent of rape. Anyway the van insurance will be in the bag by tomorrow night at a whacking £150 cheaper than the renewal quote.

From there it is the start of organising my brothers stag do which is less than 2 months away . We have a plan and now my poor credit card is going to have to start putting it into action - I feel for my credit card.

One really good thing was that I got the EGR (Exhaust Gas Recirculation - a bloody stupid idea at the best of times) blanked off on the van. Took about an hour and the difference is amazing - I have something that could be called torque below 2000 revs now. Bloody brilliant mod and on the grand scale of expense that the van has been at times it was worth every part of the seven odd quid it cost me for the plate and the sealant. It is so good it almost makes it worth while not being able to go climbing...

Bugger Blackpool!

My theory was correct with regard to my wiring dilemma and after altering it to the new configuration no more blown fuses. This is good as it was getting frustrating but it also means that I have a surplus supply of 7.5 amp mini fuses so if you are ever in need of one just get in touch as I have plenty to spare.

Getting that sorted was the start of a good (albeit bloody long) weekend on pROJECT mAYHEM - finished off the wiring on the Friday, ripped out the front passengers seat, ran the wires down the B pillar, found out the wires were not long enough, extended the wires and then put everything back together again. Having got that out of the way I then ran the wires for the split relay charger under the van, found out that the conduit was not big enough to accommodate the power cable for the amps and the cable for the split charger, tried to force it anyway before giving up in frustration and deciding to cloth wrap the lot instead. Connected everything up and decided to call it a day at sometime after 7PM.

Saturday I ripped the doors apart, fitted the motors for the electric windows, dynamatted round the speaker apertures, behind the speaker apertures and also on the backs of the door cards, tidied up the wiring and then put it all back together again. Cranked up the stereo and no more rattle from the doors - RESULT!! Following that I wired up the electric windows, tested them and was surprised to say that they worked apart from a minor cock up with connecting to a permanent +ve instead of an ignition +ve resulting in taking the glove box out (again) removing the radio (again) connecting to the right wire and then removing acres of skin off the back of my hands (again) putting the radio back in. It was only a minor cock up but bejeezus it was taxing on the patience to say the least. Finally finished at nearly 8PM and was very glad to leave the lock-up and adjourn to Tesco's for a much needed bottle of wine which disappeared somewhere far too quickly for my liking.

Compared to the previous two days Sunday was a breeze, ran through a cable that I had forgotten about the day before, got the battery fitted under the passenger seat, got the split charger and all the rest of the fuse boxes and the like installed and tidied the lot up. Again it all worked so my ability to wire auto electrics is either getting better or pROJECT mAYHEM has realised that resistance is futile. Finished off by getting the other roof panel installed, bypassing a dry soldered joint to one of the lights connections and then moving the switches to the correct places on the board. Moving the switches resulted in a couple more blown fuses (not those of the 7.5 Amp mini variety though) and that was that.

Will get some pics over the next couple of days of pROJECT mAYHEM illuminations in all its glory!

Fat Knacker

Quick round up of the last few days.

Climbingworks on Wednesday and a new circuit - managed 36 out of the 40 problems but I was climbing like a fat knacker to say the least. Vertical problems and slabs were OK most of the time - I managed to flash most of those but when the steepness kicked in I was a dead man walking. Flipper on the other hand flashed 38 of them and the other two he was done for by reach related issues as usual. Still it's a very good circuit all in all - technical and featuring nice movement and as an added bonus the Fiendometer quotient (flange to climber ratio) was in the high 8's - it was like your very own DFBWGC wall.

Spent yesterday blowing fuses at a rapid rate of knots trying to wire up the interior lights in pROJECT mAYHEM. Hopefully this is now going to be an issue of the past after a brainwave this morning caused me to wonder why I was so stupid in the first place to think that the way I was doing it would ever work. The new theory also makes sense in my head whereas the old one didn't - a classic scenario of being too close to something to see the obvious errors in the plan really. The best I can liken it to is someone pointing out the obvious beta to a problem that you have been sieging for ages. In retrospect it all seems so obvious but at the time you just get obsessed with a duff sequence that you think must work and it is your own failings that mean it isn't happening. All I need now is to rewire the switch and get some more fuses to test the revised plan.

Following on from that I went to see Kick Ass - a fucking excellent movie that will become a cult classic. Snappy dialogue, a great script and some really funny moments - go and see it.

BOOM!!

The first of the VERY stripey roof panels is in place and once that was done then the important part of the job became a reality which was to get the rear speakers in. Now I can really see some progress being made! Couple of slight issues that I know of at the minute - one of the LED's in the panel is not working so it is just going to be a matter of time until it annoys me to the point where I am compelled to fix it. The other one is that the fade on the the radio is back to front but that is getting put down as an idiosyncrasy of pROJECT mAYHEM due to the amount of work needing to be done to correct this small error is huge.

Talking of huge - look at that little bundle of wires that I have got to sort out and connect to different switches - should be fun...

Did I mention that it sounds bloody brilliant by the way? Was a good moment when I fired up the stereo and it all sprang into resplendent tuneful life. Even so there is still the vibration from the passenger door speaker which has been reduced in annoyance levels but I still know it is there so that is going to have to be fixed soon before it really does my head in.

Stuff, stuff and more stuff.

The weather actually turned out half decent yesterday afternoon so I got cracking on pROJECT mAYHEM for a while. Finished off the wiring looms and got those cable tied in so they are ready to be run down the B pillar when we eventually get a couple of consecutive days worth of decent weather whenever that will be. Also stripped out the reversing camera and painted the hole where the camera goes with a couple of coats of Hammerite to make sure that any idea of rusting is stopped in its tracks.

After that I got side tracked with a stereo wiring issue on some kids car. It has been a while since I saw a wiring job done with such a lack of skill - it was a classic example of letting a monkey do something that they have the minimal knowledge required to get the end result. Honestly the Albanian Rat Hound could have done a better job of it. As if the god awful state of the wiring wasn't enough as final insult to everything the radio had blown a fuse. The usual thing to do in this situation is to buy a new fuse and trying to figure out why it blew in the first place but the Johnny Cock-Shaft option was to wrap the fuse with a strip of copper wire! Fucking monkeys!! From what I can tell this prize piece of engineering has resulted in the live running to the radio burning out so I sent him off to buy a new fuse for the radio and an in-line fuse as I am going to have to run a new live feed in and there is no way that it is going in without some sort of safety mechanism in place. Thankfully the rain saved me from having any further dealings with it yesterday but assuming that the whole thing doesn't catch fire first it will have to be looked at soon. I can see that I will also end up sorting out his sub which has been wired in with a similar skill level from the brief look I had yesterday - expect some more prime ranting when I get round to dealing with that!

After getting away from that it was off to a really quiet Climbingworks with the Flipper - excellent session all round and contrary to expectation I flashed another CWIF problem which I was rather pleased about - probably 6a+ or really soft 6b but still got it sent first go. Did a load of other stuff - if it looked good we tried it and even though we didn't seem to be pushing it that hard I was ragged after two hours. My tips felt like they were on fire which was probably a result of trying a particularly savage CWIF problem featuring an overhanging arête and ridiculously small holds - bloody brutal and equally brilliant at the same time. One thing I can tell is that I am getting some raw power back again and what I consider to be a base level problem is going up all the time - something that I would have expected to take three or fours goes a fortnight ago I now think I should flash. The one area that's proving to be a big weakness at the minute is pulling hard on small holds (half digit sized) - I can hold them fine but just can not do anything with them which is frustrating. Anyway it will come soon I hope but I suspect that it won't be before next Wednesday...

Minimal Progress

Got a bit done on pROJECT mAYHEM yesterday and was hoping for good things from the weather today but it seems to be mainly intermittent hail showers at the minute which is not good. Still one must persist so I am going to try and finish off a few small tasks in between the showers and then off to the Climbingworks tonight with Flipper and Twitter. Maybe I will flash another one of the CWIF qualifying problems though I suspect that in reality I found the one soft problem in the entire circuit and flailed up it manfully because every other problem I tried gave a whole new meaning to the expression "hard as nails".

Spaghetti anyone?

Take one standard VW roof panel, drill lots and lots of holes in it, cover with nice stripey material and add LED's in a vast number. Then tape them all down nicely so that it is nice and neat.

Lovely!

Then proceed to solder them all to other bits of wire to link them together. In an effort to hide the resulting mess (or maybe to keep the wires in place) add vast amounts of duct tape.

Repeat the process on the other roof panel.

Turn over and hopefully it will look a lot neater than the back...

I have also made up three of the four wiring looms to connect stuff to the incredibly neat "magic box" that takes care of the power supply\battery charging\fuse box side of things - all I need now is for the roll of tape to turn up to wrap the loom for the reversing camera. Other than that I need to do a bit more soldering so that the reversing camera has power, remove the passenger seat, run all the looms in which you can't do this without removing the passenger seat (thanks VW) chop out five LED's that would be hitting one of the roof beams if I left them in, patch up the holes where the LED's used to be, put all the roof panels in, build the switch box so that I can turn the scores of LED's etc. on and off, wire the switch box, test everything, wire up the rear speakers, test again, run in the power supply for the "magic box", refit the passengers seat, fit the "magic box", fit the leisure battery, test some more and that will hopefully be the electrics sorted. If I have doubted my sanity at any time during the construction of pROJECT mAYHEM it is probably about now as the weather has decided fuck me over big time - it has decided that Spring has either not arrived yet or it is over for this year and we have just gone into Summer which is obviously the wet season as any climber well knows!

Stuff

Yesterday was a good day if you exclude the fact that I was at work. The leisure battery for the van was delivered so now I have no excuse (apart from the snow) not to start on the electrics on pROJECT mAYHEM. Mere words can not express how much I am looking forward to laying in the road and running the cable for the split charger in but once it is done then that should be that and the next stage of the conversion can start.

To add to the good news the reversing camera and monitor was also delivered and when I got home the coffee I had ordered from hasbean had arrived (super fast deliverey, would buy from again. A* etc.) so at least I will be well caffeine-ated when I am laying in the road and swearing about skinned knuckles, the general indignity of it all and the like.

Last but not least I think I have decided on the project for next winter but I won't say too much for now - I need to finish off the one that is currently occupying me and then get a good summer of climbing in first...

How long....

It has been nearly a month since I last rambled on so what is new in the world of butters then? pROJECT mAYHEM continues to progress and the worst of it seems to be over and the end is in sight allegedly. The rear speaker housing has been completed, the speaker cables have been belled out and once a few other tasks have been finished off the van will feature its full complement of 11 speakers but for now though I am just revelling in the sound of phat bass emanating from the working sub woofer. I finally got round to sorting out replacing the amp that was driving the sub (or not in this case), sorting out a few other minor tasks at the same time and getting the HPF's sorted with rather impressive results even though I say so myself. I am still getting a small degree of bass rattle through the passenger side speaker but I was half expecting this and it is only at very high volume so I can live with it for now. Eventually I will get round to fixing the problem permanently as is down to the door card not being fitted correctly but it is a job for a fine day as it is quite possibly the most frustrating job know to man to remove and refit the bloody thing.

Anyway here are a few pics of the rear speaker housing to be getting on with for now - I did take some of the speakers in place as well but they are rubbish so just make up some pretty pictures in your head as they are likely to be just as good as the reality.

No snow...

No snow has meant that the sledge remains untested but at least I have been able to get back on with pROJECT mAYHEM stuff for the first time since Christmas. What I have been trying to do is build the housing for the rear speakers which has been quite simply mind-bending at times due to the proliferation of angles that exist in the back of the van. In short nothing is straight and after spending just over a day creating the first version only to realise that it was not going to work regardless of how much I tried at least I am now making some sort of progress. I have got the back made up out of ply thin enough to bend to the contours of the van and the centre section is pretty much done but that was the easy bit as you are only dealing with an angle in one direction - the fun starts with the rest where I will be dealing with angles in two directions at the same time. It is actually quite enjoyable work but progress is very slow to say the least - still another day or two should see it done hopefully and then it is on to the next stage.

Last post for 2009

Christmas has been and gone and now we are a mere four hours and twenty minutes from 2010 and so the question is what does the new year have in store?

The primary objective is to get pROJECT mAYHEM finished off. In my last post I mentioned that there was a surplus of bass in the sound system and there still is but I have since discovered that it is only the two 6.5" speakers that are causing the huge amount of bass - the sub is not even working!! Now this just proves how frighteningly good the Infinity Kappa range of speakers are really but as usual I digress. I am guessing that the sub isn't working because either the wiring to the sub speaker is wrong or the amp is not working but regardless the amp is getting replaced. The simple reason for this is that I have inherited another amp which is not only bigger and better but I also know that it works and as an added bonus I have wiring instructions for it. Therefore the first jobs of 2010 will be to get to remove the bass\amp enclosure, swap out the amp, rewire both amps so the fuse box is on the outside where it will be a lot easier to access, run in a new earth wire, set the high pass filters on the working amp and then start what is likely to be a rather extended play with settings to get the sound right. After that it will be getting the rear speaker enclosures built and wired in and then play with the settings some more no doubt! Nothing like an easy start to the year eh?

After that... to be honest the above is enough to think about for now so in short get that lot sorted and all the rest that needs doing by the end of April and then the trad season starts...

Anyway here's to climbing like a punter and more importantly getting off the hill to a pub which awaits us with a pint of fine ale. Once there we shall revise the day till we finally sound heroic (to non-climbers at least)!! Happy New Year.

More bass than you can shake a stick at...

For the last couple of days I have been wondering why the sound system in pROJECT mAYHEM has been producing such a huge amount of bass and today I figured it out. Somebody (who coincidentally might be the author of this blog) forgot to set the High Pass Filters on the main amp and so I have one 10" sub and two 6.5" speakers all pushing out sound below 80hz instead of just the 10" sub which is how it is meant to be running. I am a bit annoyed at myself for such a dumb mistake but at least I have finally figured the problem out as it was confusing me quite a lot to be honest. Still it provides a much needed excuse to stay out of the pub for a couple of hours over Christmas and while I am fixing that I can sort out the earth lead problem at the same time I suppose. In fact it's almost a win-win situation...

The Final Push II

Well the list of five minute jobs turned into a list of five minute jobs, a lot of lost skin trying to get the head unit to fit back into its hole with all the extra cables that are now running out of the back of it and a major panic when I powered everything up and no sound was forthcoming! The problem was eventually traced to the earth cable having come detached from its terminal so that is probably going to have to be rectified next year but for now it can wait.

In summary everything I set myself to get done by Christmas is complete - even the lock up got swept out and all the tools got put away which was nice - it's been a bloody hard slog at times but it is all starting to come together.

The Final Push

Today went rather swimmingly if I am honest - tweeters fitted in the dash, 6.5" speakers fitted in the doors, speaker cables run and wired up and it all worked first time! The only slight downer was the door card on the passenger side has not gone back on as it should but I can live with that for a couple of weeks.

Tomorrow will be finishing off the odds and sods (of which there is a very long list but they are all five minute jobs if that) take some photos for the random people who follow this blog to look at and maybe say nice things about and that will be it with regard to pROJECT mAYHEM for Christmas.

To say I am pleased as Punch would be an understatement on a massive scale - I am absolutely ecstatic about it.

Three good days...

Thursday, Friday and Saturday marked the turning point on pROJECT mAYHEM - the van is now insulated, carpeted, panels fitted and lino on the floor. A few shots to give you the idea of what has happened in three days but I am pretty bloody pleased with what has been done so far - it makes the hard work I have put in so far seem worthwhile now.

One thing I haven't got any shots of is the amp\bass enclosure in place but that is in and wired up which required grovelling about under the van in the freezing cold today to run the power cable. As it stands currently the passenger side seat has been taken out so that I could run the RCA cables in yesterday, the passenger side door is in bits and if it ever stops snowing the replacement speaker will get fitted in there and the tweeter in the dash. Once that has been done then it is the "simple" task of running in the speaker cables, putting the door back together, channelling out a run for the power cables and then bolting in the seat before doing the speakers on the drivers side.

I think it's fair to say that tomorrow is going to be a busy day and just to add a bit of interest there is also the small matter of not buying a single Christmas present yet and I am also working nights from tomorrow night.

Making progress

All of the panels have now been carpeted and so tomorrows job (and likely Friday as well) is to apply the under-carpet to the passenger side and side door and then fit them. The rear doors will have to wait to get the under-carpet applied as I don't have enough to do those at the minute but it will hopefully be a reasonably straight forward job compared to the sides. Really impressed with the carpet that I got from MegaVanMats I must say - the stuff will stretch for miles - just apply heat with a hair dryer and and it is possible to do the sides and cover the wheel arch without cutting a thing. The result I got on the drivers side (once I got how to do the job figured out) was pretty good even by my exacting standards and would have been even better if I didn't have the floor base in place. I had removed the floor itself but had left the grid in place so couldn't get to the bottom as nicely as I wanted but I will just console myself with the fact that nobody will see the couple of wrinkles that are there once I put the floor back.

It is amazing just how much difference the insulation and the under carpet make to road noise as well. Driving to Nottingham last weekend to see my brothers new baby the difference in noise levels from the carpeted side to the non-carpeted side was massive and the effect will only be increased with the carpeted panels going over the top of that.

To paraphrase the Alien tagline "In the van no one will hear you scream!"

Two steps forward, one step back.

As ever the path of pROJECT mAYHEM never runs smooth - after finding myself woefully short of speaker cable I decided to get the insulation finished and proceeded to stick the roof insulation into the roof space. It was only when I had completed this and tried to put the roof panels back on that it became apparent that it was not going to be a success - the insulation just wanted to take up too much space and the end result was a roof lining that looked like a fat bird in Lycra. Roof lining out, insulation out and a trip to the local D.I.Y. centre to buy some silver backed roof insulation and a short while later the roof was done and looking tidy.

Next up was the speaker cable runs - the original intention was to mount the high and low mid range in the rear doors - something that seemed eminently feasible from my investigations into one of the rear doors. What I hadn't taken into account was the largest piece of metal since the invention of Christendom in the other door which forms the locking\dead bolt system - it is HUGE to the point where it fills about 75% of the lower half of the door!! Obviously no chance of getting a speaker in there let alone two so now I have to make up some speaker housings to fit these but if done right the end result should be a better solution. Also I won't have to run the speaker cables in through the doors now which saves me a few metres of cable and a fair degree of trauma so I can live with the set back.

Other than that I have got the two panels for the rear doors ready to carpet now (holes drilled and in the correct places first time) and hopefully tomorrow the rest of the panelling will get done ready to be put into place once the cable runs are finalised and the under carpet gets put into place.

It all sounds so simple...

Some Logical Progression

Well I made a start on the things to do today but I am nowhere near there yet strangely enough. The plan to do the speaker cable runs hit a major flaw by not having enough speaker cable and we are not talking about any minor shortage here - I am somewhere in the region of fifty metres short!! I knew when I started that I was going to require a few more metres of cable but had guesstimated that I had enough to do the runs for the rear speakers. As it was I managed to run in two of the rear speakers and there is another four to do in the rear alone.

Other than that the roof lining is out, the bass\amp position has been marked and some insulation has gone in but things will have to be worked around again as it is now a matter of waiting for the extra speaker cable to turn up so that I can complete the speaker runs before I can finish off the insulation.

There is a reason to be (hopefully) cheerful today though as I think I have located the source of intermittent rattle that has plagued me for ages from the region of the drivers B pillar. As with the best of rattles it only starts at about 70mph and it has been driving me completely mad for ages so while I had the housing off the B pillar I had a root about and discovered this.

Hopefully there will be no more rattle now but if the rattle remains then a lot more than just the housing will end up getting removed to discover the source...

Logical Progression

I surprised myself yesterday by being alive enough to do a bit of work on pROJECT mAYHEM. Usually nights out with Mr D turn into a drunken mess followed by a day of feeling far nearer to death than is good for any sane (or insane) human being. As it was a damn good night was had which culminated in getting home armed with a kebab that, for reasons I am unable to comprehend, had the salad replaced with chips and watching the legendary Johnny Cash on TV.

Anyway when I crawled from my pit (feeling positively chipper when compared to how I had expected to feel) I decided that I was going to finish off carpeting the supports for the bass bin and complete a couple of other jobs that needed doing. Overall it went well with a fair degree of making it up on the fly as usual when some great plan turned out to be a rubbish one instead but that is the story of pROJECT mAYHEM in a nutshell.

Today I am having a day off and tomorrow the fun begins again with figuring out where to fix the bass bin before stripping out the floor, panels and the roof lining, getting the insulation cut out and fixed into place followed by running in the speaker cables for the six speakers in the rear. That should be more than enough fun for the day and in theory the day after will be taken up with getting the ribs carpeted out and maybe start on the panel work. I must admit that I am slightly dubious about the panel work bit at the minute but it will probably turn out to be a lot less hassle than I am imagining it will be.