Blue View – A Nickel Tour - Blanche's Second Upfit

We’ve been busy working on Blanche’s next round of upgrades

We’ve been busy here in Las Vegas, working on Blanche’s next round of upfits. Here’s a quick nickel tour of what we got done…

Saloon

I’m not sure what the area between the bed and the front seats should be called. Lounge? Living room? (On a cold, rainy day, this is where we spend our time if we’re not driving or in bed). Bathroom? (We do use the potty and brush our teeth here). Changing room? (We get dressed and undressed here). Galley? (This is where the fridge and coffee pot reside, although we don’t normally cook inside). Saloon? (That’s what a similar area on a boat might be called). Whatever it should be called, here’s some before and after shots…

The cabinet with drawers should be a big improvement over the bins we used previously.

Each drawer has a locking latch that will, hopefully, hold the drawers in place when we’re moving, and also act as drawer pulls.

The lower center section is actually a door, and is where we store the toilet when it’s not in use – which is almost all the time except for nighttime.

We store the toilet in the center section

We modified the counter-top so we could add a sink. The new version also has more room for the coffee pot.

We added a battery monitor to keep track of the battery charge. We also moved the 110vac outlet, USB chargers, and inverter controller to a single, more accessible location above the counter.

Our new battery monitor with 100vac outlet, USB chargers and inverter controller

We found a nice paper towel holder that could be wall mounted. An issue with previous paper towel holders was that the roll would unwind itself on long drives. We’d drive for a few hours and find almost the entire paper towel roll lying on the floor. This holder claims to eliminate the problem, and I’m optimistic that it will, but we’ll soon have plenty of opportunity to test the premise.

The new paper towel holder should be an improvement

Sink

High on the priority list was the addition of a small sink for brushing our teeth, washing our hands and faces, rinsing coffee cups, etc. Initially, we had trouble finding a small enough sink basin at a reasonable price, but eventually, we found a stainless steel mixing bowl that was just the right size. It was easy enough to drill a 2” hole in the bottom to attach a standard sink drain.

We’re using a six gallon water jug as the water source. It is plumbed to an electric water pump which provides pressurized water to the faucet. The pump is controlled both by an internal pressure switch which starts the pump whenever the faucet valve is turned on as well as a rocker switch located just above the sink. The sink drains into a second six gallon water jug. As long it’s primarily just the water from the faucet that goes down the drain, it should only become full when the fresh water runs out. Then it’s an easy matter to unscrew the tops, pull both jugs out, empty the grey water and refill the fresh water.

This will be home to a trash can and laundry hamper

Freshwater tank and greywater holding tank

We replaced the old footboard with one slightly taller and painted it grey instead of the blue we used before. The overhead LED lighting is controlled by a switch and dimmer located on the footboard.

The new footboard is taller than the old one, and is home to the LED lighting switch

Battery

We added a third house battery – another 105ah deep discharge, sealed lead acid battery. We originally had two 105ah batteries, and the combined 210ah was marginally okay in the sunny southwest. We’ll be heading to places that probably won’t see as much sun, however, so we thought it advisable to add another battery.

Insect Screens

In the dry southwest, flying insects aren’t usually much of a problem, but we may be heading to areas that are known for their mosquitoes and biting flies. With this in mind, we decided to add insect screens to Blanche’s sliding side door and rear barn doors. Marcie will be describing our adventures in adding screens this coming week, so I won’t steal her thunder.

Bike Slide

It was a real struggle getting our bikes in and out of the garage, and adding a pull-out slide was another priority item. On Blue, I put the entire garage area on a large sliding drawer – which turned out to be less that ideal. On Blanche, the slide fits just the two bikes, and so far it seems to work great. I have to remove the front tires, rotate the handlebars downward and lower my seat to get them to fit, which takes just 11 minutes to get both bikes locked in place. Decanting them is slightly faster, taking only 8 minutes – assuming I have the tools at hand and work reasonably efficiently.

One bike faces forward and the other faces rearward

One tire gets stowed on the door, while the other is stowed next to the bikes

Spare Tire

This wasn’t part of the upfit, but it’s a good story. I needed to drill some holes through the floor of the van to mount the bike slide, and since this is the general area that the spare tire is located, I thought it would be prudent to take some measurements to make sure I didn’t put a screw into the tire. In the process, I realized that I had never checked the spare tire, other than looking underneath the rear of the van to see whether it actually had one. I lowered the spare to check it and discovered that it was flat. When I took it to the local tire shop, they found a nail in the tread area which was quickly plugged. As I remounted it and was cranking it into place, I heard the unmistakable hiss of a large leak. Bugger! I lowered the tire back done, crawled under the van to take a look and found that the previous owner had drilled a long screw down through the floor to hold the flooring in place. Apparently the tire had been flat for a long time, and it wasn’t until the tire was fully inflated that the screw was able to penetrate the tire’s sidewall. Five minutes with a grinder plus $150 for a new tire, and all’s good again.

The upfit list was long but we managed to complete it in just over four weeks. We still have a few more minor items to get done, but we plan to be hitting the road again right after the Memorial Day weekend. The timing is good – the temps here are just starting to break the triple digit mark and it will soon be too hot in Las Vegas to do much outside work.

Stay tuned as Marcie talks about the next grand road trip...

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