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Saturday, July 2, 2016

Summer Update #6

I am starting to accrue piles of parts and gear again…. Now I just need to find time to install it all. Working a day job is makes it tough to have van hobbies.

Here are some photos of the Websasto FCF 5000 AC unit. As you can see it’s quite compact. Construction quality seems to be good. A few loose zip ties, and a scratch here or there.







Here it is mounted. The factory supplied mounting brackets are not strong enough for an automotive application, so I added some larger brackets with through bolts for the floor.





I did some testing on the unit using a garden hose for water supply. The unit moves quite a bit of air. It was able to drop the ambient air 20 degrees (88F to 68F). Humidity was around 55%. The water stream was heated about 5F which a bit higher than my estimates. Power consumption was 4AAC (according to the inverter, not sure how accurate this is). DC power usage was about 55A on high. This is a bit higher than my initial estimates. Apparently the inverter is only 80-70% efficient at these low power levels. There will also be power draws from the yet to be installed water pump and radiator fan(s).








I installed a couple of grab handles to aid ingress/egress.









I took a good part of the day on Saturday to mount the bumper. It was not a simple bolt on job for 2 reasons. The first was due to the mounting holes not lining up. The second is that I want to strengthen the fairly weak stock mounting points. The factory mounting points for the bumper cover are just 2 rivnuts. (this bumper also uses the step mounts). I drilled out the center 2 rivnuts and installed ½” through bolts with backing plates.





The bumper has little or no resistance to twisting backwards. So I added a mounting bolt into the fender panel skirt on each side near the rear. This adds substantial rigidity, and hopefully will keep wildlife from rotating the bumper into the hood.

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