On Thursday I bit the bullet and went to “The Beast.”

This is what I should have been using all along. It was my Dad’s DeWalt 7.8 amp drill, and it made short work of the remaining 13 corner holes. It was a bit harder to control but at least it has a grip, variable speeds, and doesn’t overheat or have to be recharged. The trick is to lock your elbow up against your rib cage lest your shoulder gets ripped out of its socket.

I even avoided buying a new 6″ hole saw, which means one tool made it through 48 holes in 1/16″ aluminum. And that’s the equivalent of a 3″ block of aluminum in total. Not bad, Milwaukee Tool!

On Friday I aligned and jigsawed the last four interior holes and tomorrow morning we’ll install four windows in panels D3, D4, D5 and D6. And then, mercifully, I’ll be done with cutting windows. I’m surprised I have any teeth left after all that metallurgic gnashing.

The D3 panel is behind the galley base cabinet which is fashioned from a heavy stainless steel tool chest. So I’ll have to disassemble and move the galley’s wood cabinetry to get access to the lower half of it. And while I’m there, I might as well figure out my plumbing for the sink, faucet and water pump.

My six-terminal bus bars arrived today so now I have everything I need to pre-wire two banks of six LED lights in the ceiling cavities. That’s going to take forever because I have to cut, strip, crimp and heat-shrink dozens of ring terminals on 16 AWG wire.

This weekend is supposed to be 95° again so I don’t expect to get a lot done outside. But Gary will be here working on the RETROpad in all that heat. He’ll be burying PVC conduit, digging a trench for the northern curb, and building the forms to pour the concrete steps and curb. All while I sip iced tea and heckle him from under an umbrella. 🙂

Seriously, I’ll have to post a recap of the amazing timber-and-rock decks, stairs and hot tub platform Gary and I built in the back acre.

Nope, I’m not giving up. I just love the part where I finally get to drill and screw some wall panels into place, knowing that all the measuring and re-measuring, drilling and re-drilling, cutting and re-cutting, cursing and re-cursing — is all done and has paid off. I call it “buttoning up.”

Yep, I got the final two window holes cut on the passenger side, and without incident. I felt like I found a good groove and this phase is getting easier, if not tedious. It turns out my hole saw is still sharp enough. Maybe sharp enough to cut the remaining 16 corners on the driver’s side wall. But my DeWalt 20V drill and its batteries keep overheating from all the torque of spinning a 6″ metal tool. So each corner hole takes one battery and then a half hour to cool down and another half hour to recharge. But it does help me pace myself.

My neighbor Bob came over to hold the P3 and P4 windows in place while I put some temporary screws through their clamp rings. Those four side windows are designed to resemble app icons in the iPhone’s dock. They’ll each get a “title” decal (using the San Francisco iOS font) as part of my branding plan.

Here’s the passenger wall, dry-fitted. All done except for insulation and the final window seals. The 1/16″ aluminum wall panels are very sturdy and super easy to remove and reinstall, which I had to do a few times to achieve accurate fitting. The smudges and scratches will all buff out, of course. The corner cavities above these panels will get overlapped by their own panels with 90° bends.

The RETROpad (yep, that’s what I’m calling it) is progressing nicely. Gary came again yesterday and finished digging the utility trench from the house to the power station. The RETROvan will moor just on the other side of the big umbrella and the hops garden.

Here’s how the design is shaking out so far, looking from the front of our house. I have a paver and fencer coming to give bids soon.

Yesterday, I rehired my friend Gary Jackson to help build the RETROvan’s home base. It will eventually move from the driveway to become an integral part of our patio and courtyard area, secured by front and rear gates.

The first step is to demolish our ugly fence and gate. This photo was taken from where the rig’s back doors will be. Gary will be building a 30’x11′ RV pad where that wood pile is.

Our current design direction is to basically build a section of road; a pair of concrete curbs filled with concrete, bordering the pad. That greatly simplifies our drainage plan. Gravity will channel water toward the main street. Depending on the cost, I’d love to run concrete all the way to the street like a real driveway. And then I can paint some white dotted lines ahead of the RETROvan and put up a Route 66 sign. 🙂

This was a major find today. It’s a Hatteras Marina Power Pedestal, made by EATON. I custom-ordered it with dual 30A/20A outlets, a digital kW meter, ethernet jack, coaxial cable jack and fresh water connection. The top is an amber LED light that runs off a photocell (dusk to dawn). The 30A outlet will face the rig’s side for shore power, and the 20A outlet will face the patio for running tools, lights, a hot tub, etc. The cost was $658, but it fits the RETROvan’s “space marine” theme to a tee. I won’t have it for two weeks so I had to postpone Frahler Electric until after Labor Day. But that gives Gary and me some extra time to dig the trench and run the conduits. It’s also important to get the RV pad’s concrete cured before the rainy season starts in Portland.

And oh yeah — yesterday’s eclipse was spectacular!

This weekend I got two side windows installed, making more progress than I expected a day ahead of Monday’s big eclipse. The windows are only dry-fitted in place for now but they look great.

I wound up using the hole saw only on the outside panel, and it’s getting dull — not to mention boring. The sides of each window are inset 1/8″ from the corners on purpose, since the main part of the window is bigger than the interior clamp ring. This makes for a tighter fit since I’m not shimming them in a solid wall. It also gives me a way to trim the opening with my jigsaw for any last-minute leveling or spacing adjustments.

Here’s how I lined up the inner and outer holes. I first mounted the inner wall panel over its cavity. Then from the outside, I used a carpenter’s square to mark eight reference dots at the corner of the square. These dots are on the backside of the wall panel. This technique worked great to find what are essentially perpendicular projection points.

There’s no better template than the clamp ring itself. I used my reference dots to extrapolate a 14″ rectangle, which I outlined in pencil. Then I centered the clamp ring inside that rectangle and got it level by eyeballing it from above. Any discrepancies were averaged out, erring on the side of caution. Measure twice, cut once… And finally, I traced the clamp ring with a blue Sharpie.

I cut the panels with a jigsaw, including the corners. I wasn’t sure I could make turns that tight, so you can see my test hole in the middle. This task was made easier by laying the panel face-down, which also prevented scratches on the surface that will be visible. Don’t be shy about popping in a fresh blade. There’s nothing worse than a dull tool. Okay, well, there are probably a few worse things… I used Frog Tape to keep the panel from sliding and to prevent chatter. My workbench is actually formed by the two dinette bases I pulled out of the RETROvan during this phase. 

Here’s a shot of Olivia (wife and organic gardener extraordinaire). She made some amazing cinnamon plum jam this weekend. Installing these windows is a two-person job, so I’m glad she makes time to hold the outer part of the window in place for me.

This is the view from panel P5 (passenger side, 5th cavity from the front). If you look closely, you can see my original rectangle on the outer wall. Those master reference lines are “the truth.” The top is exactly 2″ from the lateral frame member and the sides are 2″ from a rib. This is the defining wall cavity because it’s the smallest, at a width of 18″. So that basically determined the size of all the porthole windows: 14×14″. The two holes line up just fine, so we mounted the windows with a minimum number of screws for now.

I don’t like the screws that Motion Windows provided. They’re painted white and they require a square bit to drive them. I have a square bit but not one that’s long enough to clear the trim ring’s flange without marring it. And it’s one of those bits with a driver on both ends, so it won’t fit into my bit extender. It’s very frustrating when you get this far on a task only to be tripped up by non-standard tooling. Almost as bad, as soon as you drive a painted screw, the paint looks terrible. So, I’ll rectify this tomorrow at Home Depot, one way or another.

Probably the most gratifying part of this task was actually buttoning things up for a first look at the finished product. That is, screwing a few inner wall panels into position. Yes, I’m using coarse sheet metal screws (not rivets) because rivets can’t be easily removed. The wall panels are vertical, and they alternate in layers with a 1″ overlap exactly over the wall’s vertical ribs. So that means every 6″, I drilled a pilot hole through two panels and a rib, forming vertical seams that resemble the skin of an aircraft. I might double them up (every 3″) later just for grins.

The result is absolutely riveting if you ask me.

Today I started off trying to install wall panel P2 because I thought it would be the easiest. It doesn’t have any windows or electrical behind it, and I only plan to mount the medicine/zombie ammo cabinet on it. But then we realized that cabinet needs to hang at the same height as the mirrored cabinet over the sink, on the opposite wall. And that mirror needs to be higher than the wall panel itself. Those cabinets need to hang from the ceiling corner panels, which haven’t been bent yet.

So, I switched gears and started removing some of the dry-fit on the starboard wall. All the cushions, the base cabinet and the wall panels that were just taped into position. Then I measured out the placements of the four porthole window cut-outs on that side.

And then I had an epiphany: After many sleepless nights trying to visualize how things may or may not play out, I reminded myself that many things in life ultimately may seem impossible, difficult, or not worth the effort up front. Until, that is, you bite the bullet and strike up a little determination and momentum. And it’s that momentum that will carry you through the most daunting of tasks.

I measured out the outer wall holes evenly spaced from the inside, after starting over at least three times. I based everything on the smallest wall cavity, and simplified all the offsets at 2″ using a carpenter’s square. Then I drilled 16 1/8″ pilot holes from the inside out. From the outside, all I had to do was verify they were all within 1/16″ of plumb from the nearest visual reference, which happens to be the rain gutter running along the top of the RETROvan. That tolerance ultimately doesn’t matter because I’ve learned the 6″ hole saw is pretty sloppy. And, that slop is readily covered up by the inner and outer window flanges, so it really doesn’t matter since the final fit of the windows are reasonably adjustable.

The trick is to not draw tangents directly on the rather ragged corner holes, but rather re-scribe them from the inside-out and adjust the jigsaw cuts to bring the supporting edges back into line. This is super important because when I re-measured the windows, I noticed the outer part is 1/8″ smaller than the inner trim ring. Motion Windows just assumes your walls are solid wood (or whatever material), and that you can just use a shim to compensate. That’s not going to work in my case. I need the inner and outer aluminum wall panels to support their fair share of the window assemblies in level fashion, without shimming.

Here’s the first porthole window, dry-fitted into position. There will be three more holes to its right. The inner wall panels haven’t been cut yet, and that’s the next challenge. Hopefully I can do that with some careful measurement transference and cutting on a flat surface over some scrap plywood. That, because I don’t have access to an NC plasma cutter. But, this part was easier than the back windows because there was no inner wall panel to bang against when cutting.

So everything now depends on reference points, and keeping the number of those reference points to a bare minimum. That means I’m securing each wall panel with only a single top corner screw for now. The rest of the screws can go in once I’m sure that whole panel is in alignment with its window and ready to commit.

Yesterday I cut the port side back door window holes, and Olivia helped me install the window. Here’s how they look when dry-fitted:

We’re thinking it would be nice to find some small awnings to mount above them as fixtures.

This window took another five hours to cut, mostly because of how close the inner and outer wall panels are to each other. That, and because my 6″ Milwaukee Hole Dozer seems to be be wearing out after only 16 holes, now preferring to leave a groove rather than a clean, round hole. So with eight windows to go, that means I’ll need to buy four more hole saws at $40 a pop.

And here’s the view from inside the RETROvan. The windows provide much-needed natural light and ventilation. I have decided I’ll need to insert a 1-1/8″ wooden frame around these windows to keep the aluminum panels at a consistent distance apart.

It looks like I can install one window every two days, based on how my back aches after doing this up on a wobbly ladder. But I’m hoping the side windows will be easier because I won’t have the wall-thickness problem. But I will have a different problem: The fact that the inner wall panels have to align across a 3-1/4″ wall cavity, leaving little room for error. But at least I can cut them flat on a table before screwing them in place.

Yesterday Olivia helped me tighten all the bolts on the driver seat and passenger seat. That, after yet another trip to Home Depot to get the ideal combination of bolts, lock washers, fender washers and nuts. Not all of them could be the same combo because under the deck, the bolt holes had to dodge various steel frame elements.

But the result is good, and both seats feel solid. And hey — the driver seat is actually centered on the steering wheel now! Both International Harvester tractors seats are fully adjustable and they swivel, so even the driver seat can be part of the party. And that means the RETROvan seats eight comfortably. Nine, if you count Mazy in her bed on the front desk.

So today I’m marking, drilling and cutting out my first 24×24″ window hole in the starboard back door. The windows are premium quality. They’re dual-paned, tinted glass, with symmetrical locking sliders and removable, sliding screens. Wish me luck…

The first problem was with the 6″ hole saw and centrifugal force. It’s intimidating enough on its own, but once I spun it up with my DeWalt drill there’s way too much kickback when the drill stops suddenly. That drill doesn’t spin down gracefully; it’s either on or off at full speed. I didn’t feel I should risk scraping the surrounding wall whenever I let go of the trigger. So I switched to my cheaper, slower Black + Decker drill and had marginal success. However, it’s underpowered and too slow, and starts to bind and heat up quickly. And then it finally died so I was forced to buckle up with the DeWalt anyway. The trick was to lock my shoulders and right elbow tightly against my body. Not easy when you’re up on a ladder, too.

The next problem was that the back door cavities are barely 1-1/8″ deep between the inner and outer panels, and my jigsaw cuts to a 1-1/4″ depth. And that means a lot of chatter and kick-back. So my solution was to jam some landscape spikes between the panels to spread them out a bit, along each cut line. This worked, but it was still slow going. This must mean that the side windows will be easier.

It took all afternoon and several batteries, but I managed to get both holes cut through the door. The corners are more ragged than I expected but they’re covered nicely by the window trim on both sides.

Olivia helped do the dry-fit, which was pretty easy. And she approves of the window style and placement. Just one window dramatically changes the RETROvan experience. Next I’ll need to determine whether these windows need an interior frame to keep the aluminum panels spread out to a full 1-1/8″, because they’re pretty wavy. The final fit will include closed-cell foam tape and exterior Dicor sealant around the flanges.

Only 72 more corner holes, 72 more side cuts, and 9 windows to go! Woohoo.

You may remember my Window Plan post from April.

Today I drove up to Motion Windows (aka Peninsula Glass) in Vancouver, Washington and picked up my eight side porthole windows, and two rear picture windows. There I met Jeff Kemp (my salesman), Mike (a foreman) and Trent (a fabricator).

Mike was kind enough to give me a tour of the shop. They do everything onsite except for powder coating. They have their own water-jet cutter and a furnace for tempering smaller windows.

Here’s how the extruded aluminum frames are measured and bent to shape, with the help of a custom NC machine that automatically adjusts a “hard stop,” onto which the operator places the end of the extrusion. To me, this is the most amazing part of the process because it ensures that window frame will only have one seam, where the two ends of the extrusion ultimately meet after all the corners are bent to spec. Mike explained that this involves some serious math, which must take into account the deformation characteristics of the metal.

And here’s Trent, the fabricator who did the final assembly on my job. He helped me load the final product in the back of my SUV:

The windows came with seal tape and white screws, and an actual physical cross section of how one should be installed. All ten windows are dual-paned, but the larger rear windows have sliding screens that will face each other symmetrically.

So tomorrow I’ll start measuring the two back windows, one on each door just above the dinette table’s height. Those windows are each 24×24″ square, with 3″ radius corners. The walls are 1-1/4″ thick so I should be able to drill four reference holes from one side, then use my 6″ hole saw to cut out each corner. The inner wall has to line up precisely so since the hole saw is 2″ deep I’ll just use it to help locate tiny reference holes on the opposite side, then mark and cross-check their centered measurements from the inside to make sure the inner outline is square. The windows do have some play in them but the more precise the cut-outs, the better. Once each group of four corner holes are cut, I’ll mark and connect their tangents with my 4″ circular saw. (I can’t use my jigsaw because it cuts deeper than 1-1/4″, so the blade would bounce around on the opposite wall.) Then I’ll repeat for the next window. The side windows should be easier because those walls are 3-1/4″ thick, and that means I can use my jigsaw.

Total cost for ten custom windows: $2,956. But, I’m saving around $2,500 on shipping and labor. Motion Windows does install (replacement) windows for $100 each, but they won’t do any wall-cutting because that’s where all the risk is.

With rain looming, Saturday’s goal was to screw and seal the HDTV antenna and the solar cable entry gland. What can possible go wrong, right? Well, the tube of Dicor lap sealant malfunctioned in my caulking gun and burst open at both ends, blapping a pile of white sealant on the roof. So I had no choice but to use my fingers to finish the job. Apparently I forgot to puncture the tube’s inner seal.

What is it about seeing someone up on the roof of an RV that makes people think it’s a good time to come over and make smalltalk?

Next, I wanted to finish cutting lumber so I could move my saws out of the garage and use it for, you know, storing vehicles. So to get access to the cockpit floor, first I had to remove the original driver’s seat post.

The main bolt was rusted in place after 56 years, so I had to use a PB Blast penetrating oil that my brother-in-law recommended. (He’s a metal worker.) A few heavy doses of that helped, but I still had to wedge an adjustable wrench on the nut against the deck and then pound a 11/16″ socket wrench with a sledgehammer. After a half hour of this back-and-forth, it broke loose and was out. That’s a pretty good feeling.

From there I spent around two hours carefully measuring and cutting the plywood cockpit floor pieces to size. These were my most complex cuts by far, because not only did it have to fit a non-square space, it had to clear bolt heads and the empty seat post bracket that was still bolted to the frame below. So that required some crafty jig-saw work to make a 16-sided shape.

There were also some hex bolt heads sticking up from the diamond plate deck, which meant the plywood did not lay flat at first. My solution was a simple one: I set the floorboard in place and stomped on it, making impressions of the obstructions in the bottom of the wood. And then I simply drilled out 3/8″ countersinks in those spots. It fits like a glove now, and soon I’ll be able to mount the driver’s seat pedestal through it all.

The last task was to cut out a hatch in the floorboard to access the starter battery compartment. This required a U-shaped rectangle with sharp corners. So to get my blade in there, I first drilled a 3/8″ hole in the center of the U’s base, which will serve double duty as a pry point for opening the hatch with a screwdriver.

The front step needed an angle cut  because of the way the bi-folding “school bus” door closes. If I keep it like this without creating a tripping hazard, I’ll finish it later — maybe with just red paint. Note that all of the marine plywood still needs a coat of polyurethane followed by the finished flooring material.

The White House has no monopoly on leaks. Water can be far more insidious than even the most inept presidential administration.

While the rest of the world slept on pins and needles, last night we camped out in the RETROvan together for the first time. The bed was firm and cozy using sleeping bags, and the climate inside was just right. We watched a variety of free HDTV for a while before nodding off. Heavy rains started around 3:45 AM. We know this because the vent over the berth dutifully whirred to a close once its sensor got wet, waking us up. We not only got rain, but hail too. The storm lasted about three hours.

Throughout the night I was able to locate several drips. Most of them appear to originate from the main seam in the roof, traveling along the lateral ceiling ribs and dripping at the lowest spot from there. And that means the drips are rarely where the leak is. The entire roof is covered with a thin layer of rubberized sealant, but that coating is cracked, flaked and failing in several places. So water is pooling up wherever the ceiling sags a bit, then it’s wicking under that coating and finding its way around rivets in that main seam.

You can see from the dirty shorelines where water has pooled in the saggy spots on the roof. These may be useful clues. You can also barely make out the main seam just to the right of the two vent domes.

I was hoping I could just run a 4″ or 8″ Flex Tape along it, but when I looked at it this morning I’m not convinced that would work. It’s not like the seam itself has obvious failures. That is, you don’t see any rivet heads protruding topside. So my guess is that water is getting under the old rubber coating through a number of cuts and scrapes, wicking under the coating and then finding the seam. So I think I’ll need to re-coat the entire roof with cans of Flex Seal or similar. And I am not looking forward to that mess! Hopefully I can use a roller, making sure to mask off my solar panels first.

Or better yet, I found that Camping World does this kind of work. They also use a system called Seal Tech, which uses air pressure (inside the RV) and a soapy film (outside the RV) to locate the sources of leaks.

With my self-imposed deadline of September 9th looming (NFL weekend #1), I made efforts to reach the end of the dry-fit phase of the project.

This week, the RETROvan has drawn blood and sweat — but no tears. The blood came from a gash on my forehead from hitting a sharp aluminum brace, and the sweat came from global climate change. We haven’t had rain in Portland since spring, and that’s highly unusual. Especially with high humidity, I’m only getting a couple hours of work in at a time.

Tuesday I managed to slip the third deck piece into position, under the helm and the refrigerator. This was less impossible than it sounds, considering how heavy the helm is. But the helm is still tippable and it slides. Once I got it the floor under it, I noticed the driver’s side is about 1/4″ too long, which means the cargo area is not square. But that can be compensated for with the frontmost floor pieces, which will have to be custom cut anyway to work around various obstructions and access panels in the diamond plate subfloor.

Assumptions, assumptions…

The 3/4″ marine plywood floor adds considerable stability when moving around in the RETROvan, and provides much needed support for fixtures like pedestals. I’m leaving 1/8″ gaps around all edges on purpose, for expansion and for the ability to remove a section of floor if needed. Those gaps can be filled with silicon caulking to form a better seal against moisture, insects, etc. And then the whole floor will be covered with my B&W rubber puzzle tiles.

I next proceeded to finish assembling the galley cabinet and bulkhead, running out of Kreg pocket screws in the process. My biggest pet peeve is zinc-plated screws that strip if you look at them. Screws should always be stainless steel, but Kreg’s screws are special and they only come in zinc. But at least for the first time folks can see the real shape of things. The double ovens fit great, and there’s still plenty of room on the upper shelf for foodstuffs. That cabinet will eventually get swinging doors with an RV latch.

On Wednesday I replaced the refrigerator’s temporary extension cord with a hard-wired dedicated 120V circuit and custom plug. The Nostalgia Electronics fridge is on its own circuit because you can’t risk spoilage — or warm beer. That circuit only draws 110W, so my 2000W ProMariner inverter can service that load 24/7 just fine on solar and battery, whenever the RETROvan isn’t plugged into shore power.

I found a better place for the weather station display, above the TV on the mounting arm. That provides an ideal viewing angle for its LCD display. But soon after installation, it was reporting an inside temperature of 112° when it was only 97° outside! Turns out it’s actually measuring the heat generated by the TV, which just won’t do. So I need to move it again.

That evening I spent an hour or so attaching spade terminals to the six LED lights that will make up the aft lighting bank in the ceiling. That makes it so each light can be detached and removed more easily, which is important because they’ll be part of an aluminum ceiling panel assembly.

I’ve figured out that each bank needs to be wired in parallel, so that each individual light gets a full 12V. Otherwise, if wired in series, the total circuit would require 72V (6 x 12V). So to do this, I finally found a pair of six-way bus bars made by a company in New Zealand. Unfortunately they’ll take a month to get here.

We finally see rain in the forecast for Sunday, so that means I need to screw and seal the HDTV antenna mount and the solar panel entry gland into position on the roof. Then I’ll need to camp out in the RETROvan during rain to check for any leaks.