Transporter

Fresh air is great but on those few days in summer it is even nicer if it is freshly chilled. Better still; in misty Lincolnshire, is the ability to clear your windscreen with dry air thanks to air conditioning. Reserach Some forum diving made it clear that a retro fit is a massive pain in the bum and rarely taken on by individuals. Those that have either pay someone to do it or haven't writen a great deal about the experience. The best forum post I found on the subject was by an Aussy chap called Phil on the T5 forum but this was for a 1.9 so I had to be careful not to get sucked in too  much. It looked like the parts were expensive and that was the easy bit. Wiring isn't straight forward and usually mixed into the loom of the donor vehicle if buying from a scrap yard. Nobody seems to make a retro fit loom either so I was looking at a full loom change or some hardcore loom building. This should be an interesting modification! Shopping I bought the front end a...

The lighting in the back of the T5 isn't great, even for a van, so as a camper it looks dull.  Time to fix that. I have looked high and low for suitable lighting for the back of my T5 and either found ideas too complicated, expensive, space consuming of simply ugly. At some point I was alerted to the idea that kitchen cabinate down lights are generally small enough and run on 12 volt direct currents with an inverter to connect to the houses mains. They can also be picked up for sensible money from your local DIY shop. I went to B&Q and got a set of 12 LED down lights for £20 (the box was open) and at some point later got a hole saw and some time to get this job done. I have taken the time to photograph as much as possible for you to do the same should you wish to do something similar. When planning this, I was particularly keen to keep clutter to a minimum and keep an OEM looking. As such I decided to make these new lights slave off of the sliding door light fitti...

I live in Lincolnshire and one thing Lincolnshire does well is fog.  Time for some fog lights. I was bought the LED fog light kit from Travelinlite10  for a nice combined birthday/ Xmas gift (cheers mum). The kit comes with everything you need as well as some helpful instructions complete with pictures to reduce your chance of crapping it up. The only real variation from the image on the right was that the replacement switch has a painted silver knob which looks loads better than the original all back one pictured and the chrome plated metal one I have. The fit was fairly straight forward as you are just following instructions so I won't go into pointless detail. One of the only deviations from this instruction was that I took a bit more time on the drilling clean up. Also I didn't have a 12mm drill bit so that was bastardised with a 10mm. I should have checked before starting.... It doesn't mention it on the instructions but it is always a good idea to ...

Intro During my window fixing escapades I was sat, with a cup of tea, reading what other people had done with a similar problem. Well this didn't take long as it happened as most peoples experience was subtly different from the last. So I just kept digging to see if I could find anything relevant else where. As the windows on my 2007 van are controlled by the comfort and convenience unit (CCU), I was also playing particular attention to anything else that went through the same box. So here I was reading a central locking blog. For once everyone was unified in agreement. It was caused by one crimp on a wire coming out of the module and it went wrong ALL THE TIME! "Interesting" I thought to myself. As it happened I had my CCU on my desk so already had access to the offending part of the loom and was quite frankly out of ideas with the windows before I had to start buying parts. So what harm could a little win do? Symptom The usual reason for you to start this on...

Hand cranking your windows open and closed  is a massive pain in the bum and is surprisingly distracting, something you only really notice when you go back to them after years of button podging. Well I'm missing that little hand crank now as my windows remain stubbornly closed. It all started when I went out to my van to try and add a new key remote to my van as the range was terrible at best. I started the procedure and realized I needed the window open but when I tried to open it they wouldn't budge. Neither window wanted to move in fact so I had a poke about at the fuses which were fine. There was no relay click either which got me thinking that I might be missing a hidden fuse or some such malarkey but no joy. My next port of call was to hit everything with WD40 to push out any water ingress and clean the contacts on plugs. Again though I was greeted by silence from my window motors. I read my Haynes manual which wasn't very helpful and the forums were the us...