Birdie

[fo4imtippin]

Celebratory Steaks

My weber is down as im replacing some parts that are in the mail. No problem! I had the blackstone 90% complete and mounted to the bus. I do plan on stowing it in the toolbox when not traveling. The salt and rain ruins everything here, so it wont last long being stored in the elements full time.

 

[fo4imtippin]

Great progress, keep it up!

You took a daunting approach for most with the electrical, glad you didn't have any issues after reinstall. Looking forward to seeing how you incorporate additional electronics in the freed up space.

Yeah, seeing all the problems people have with electrical, i don't recommend it unless you are very comfortable. I was lucky enough to have an accurate diagram and a bus with zero interlocks. Bluebird prints a number on every wire, so i didn't even need a tracer to find both ends. The engine wire harness is one that i will not touch, so much to go wrong. My panel was just things like clearance lights, 3 heaters, and windshield wipers. Felt foolish to leave it alone and put all my stuff elsewhere.

 

[cadillackid]

love the weay this is turning out!!


not sure why anyone would remove circuit breakers and install one shot Fuses though... I have swapped many fuses for breakers.. some auto reset others manual... I hate fuses that I have to go buy or remember where they are

 

[fo4imtippin]

love the weay this is turning out!!


not sure why anyone would remove circuit breakers and install one shot Fuses though... I have swapped many fuses for breakers.. some auto reset others manual... I hate fuses that I have to go buy or remember where they are

I just don't have a ton of experience with these Bussmann auto reset breakers. The rest of my fuse and relay panels all have standard blade fuses along with the factory fuse panel to the left of my steering wheel. I like to know if something trips and blows a fuse. I have to carry a case of spares for all that as well and don't want to have to stock spares of the Bussmann breakers.


I still use the resettable breakers for the bigger stuff above 50a.


What I really don't like is the random banks of factory relays found underneath the driver floor by the air tank. Can't tell what they are and they have oil on them from leaking steering gear I'll replace soon.

 

[cadillackid]

I just don't have a ton of experience with these Bussmann auto reset breakers. The rest of my fuse and relay panels all have standard blade fuses along with the factory fuse panel to the left of my steering wheel. I like to know if something trips and blows a fuse. I have to carry a case of spares for all that as well and don't want to have to stock spares of the Bussmann breakers.


I still use the resettable breakers for the bigger stuff above 50a.


What I really don't like is the random banks of factory relays found underneath the driver floor by the air tank. Can't tell what they are and they have oil on them from leaking steering gear I'll replace soon.

did your bus by chance originally have air conditioning? if so, trans/AIR was notorious for putting the relay panels under the floor near the battery box or air tanks.. and they get turned into a mess... if thats what those are and you no longer have the factory air you can yank em out...

 

[fo4imtippin]

did your bus by chance originally have air conditioning? if so, trans/AIR was notorious for putting the relay panels under the floor near the battery box or air tanks.. and they get turned into a mess... if thats what those are and you no longer have the factory air you can yank em out...

I have MCC A/C. I think everything was contained on the relay panel shown below. Ill have to look a bit more when i change the steering gear, there is giant bundle of wires and relays right under the steering gear that i will have to move to change it out.

 

[cadillackid]

got it! yep that looks like your A/C system control panel there..

 

[fo4imtippin]

Walls Finally going up

Finally i'm to the "conversion phase". Prior to this, i think i had a cool bus and everything was wide open. I'm committing to closing things up.


I scribed my roofline with some scrap plywood and transferred to my full sheet of 3/4 Birch. I wanted to use Baltic Birch, but currently it is unattainable, so im using some India Birch.


The only real "walls" in my bus are these shower walls. There will be a nautilus shower door installed on the shower threshold. Farther along in the project, I will put a plywood face on the shower with a 2ft wide door. The shower base is a solid surface base. There will be a toilet flange in the high side. I thought a trench drain might help in case i'm not perfectly level. The flange is a bit thicker than i have worked with before, so i will probably have to add another sheet of 1/4 plywood or floor underlayment to space the finished wall over the flange. Currently, the plan is FRP panels on each side.

 

[fo4imtippin]

"Bedroom" is framed

Threw up plywood walls on 3 sides and the window wall will be a perch for my bed frame. I'm going to weld up a 3 piece bedframe out of 1.5in angle perimeter and 1.5in square tube cross members. They will rest on a ledger board on 3 sides and the window sill. One of the important things to me was being able to change things easily. I left channels on top above the walls and between the chair rails and windows. I can run wire from the front to the back through this whole section. The joint between the ceilings and walls will be covered with 1x8 pine boards at the end of the project. This way i can fix/change any electrical stuff through the access panels. I left the top back wall up for two reasons.
1. I didn't feel that i had enough time left in the day to scribe this perfectly.

2. I'm not ready to close up my access from the garage yet. If i have big things i bring them through there. I plan on making a 24"x24" access hatch through the bedroom to get to the back.

 

[fo4imtippin]

Under Bed Mockup

I think its going to be a tight, but efficient use of underbed storage. I just ordered my two 100 gallon tanks that appear fit like a glove under here. $505 shipped from recpro didnt seem like a bad deal. I plan to put 1in XPS between the tank and plywood back, another 3/4 plywood between the tanks, and then another 3/4 plywood on the front of the tanks to protect them and hold them in place. I will be adding 1.5in square tube between the floor and ceiling of my back wall. I will then add some tabs to the bed frame to help hold it all in the event of locking up the brakes. Luckily the 1600lb of water is sitting just over the rear axle.


I went ahead and marked where everything else would go. Think ill still have some meaningful tote storage in the space in the middle.

 

[cadillackid]

remember to make it so you can get the mattress out if needbe to work on something.. a local guy near me (he doesnt do forums).. built a really nice bedroom area and has tanks and some equipment under his bed.. but you cant get the mattess out the door way of the back bedroom and he sprung a leak in his fresh tank.. he went through a bunch of PITA to strap his matteress up sort of out opf the way so he could get in and fix the leak.. something that wouldve been real easy if the mattress couldve been put out in the main area.. I got involved as somehow in his horsing around he smooshed the plastic cover of the minisplit enough to push the grill into the fan and shatter the fan wheel..... so guess who got to fix his busted A/C..



something to think about - always think about service.. because things will break or needattention at some point

 

[fo4imtippin]

remember to make it so you can get the mattress out if needbe to work on something.. a local guy near me (he doesnt do forums).. built a really nice bedroom area and has tanks and some equipment under his bed.. but you cant get the mattess out the door way of the back bedroom and he sprung a leak in his fresh tank.. he went through a bunch of PITA to strap his matteress up sort of out opf the way so he could get in and fix the leak.. something that wouldve been real easy if the mattress couldve been put out in the main area.. I got involved as somehow in his horsing around he smooshed the plastic cover of the minisplit enough to push the grill into the fan and shatter the fan wheel..... so guess who got to fix his busted A/C..



something to think about - always think about service.. because things will break or needattention at some point

That's a good point. I didn't even think about the mini split being in the way. We actually have an extra full size mattress that we planned to have in the bus, but i'm hesitant if i could ever get it in the space. I was going to finish the walls and see how it goes. The frame will be welded into 3 sections so i can haul it out if i need to get in for repairs. My backup plan is to buy a split queen and put a 1in or 2 in foam topper on it to hide the seam. Then i can haul it out in 3 pieces in case i have to replumb my water tank.

 

[DeMac]

Engaging

I'm lovin' it!

 

[fo4imtippin]

I'm lovin' it!

Yes, thinking about Chris's comments made me rethink my fridge wall framing. I had planned to run plywood to the ceiling on the window side of the bus to wall off the bedroom and give me place to mount my fridge to. I think i will instead, just make the wall up to the top of the mattress and then i can move the fridge out of the way and fit the full matress over the kitchenette. This also helps as i was concerned with squeezing the fridge into a tight box with no airflow.

 

[fo4imtippin]

Tanks Arrived One Damaged

My 100gal tanks arrived. After opening them, one had a hole on what will be my bottom of the tank. I checked the cardboard and looks like something speared it during shipping. Sent a picture to recpro and they are shipping another one out pronto. I can probaby spin weld a fitting into the hole, but since its on bottom, wont work for me. Ill probably sell cheap to someone who will lay it down on the 24in side rather than the 11in side.

I'm anchoring a cleat around the top and then ill have 1.5 square tube steel as a mattress frame.

 

[fo4imtippin]

New Bus Network Gear

Since i do IT for work, when im traveling, i just want something that works, but give me lots of options. I have had T Mobile 5g home internet at my house as a backup WAN for my crappy xfinity service that has weekly outages. It has been okay, but i don't need it bad enough to mount an 4x4 mimo antenna on my house. When on the road, i plan to work 50% of the trip, so i need certain days with reliable internet. I want all my systems to work in motion, but also be able to improve them when parked. Since i had canabalized a light tower for the generator piece, i mounted a mast on my skoolie.


Well i got a 3rd party modem/router to permenently mount in the bus. It has tons of options, but what makes this one special is that it allows you to band lock or tower lock 5g and 4g connections. The modem that Tmobile sent me pretty much only allows wifi name and password setting changes. So after popping the sim into my new GL.iNet X3000 Spitz AX, i quadrupled any speeds i got from the T-Mobile gateway. I was also able to set carrier aggregation speeds to ensure i could balance upload and download speeds. Out of the box, i went from 220mbps to 860mbps. The upload on both devices was under 3mbps. That isnt ideal for remote work where i have VPN going. I changed a few settings that turned down download speeds to allow greater upload.


So since im a nerd, i got the settings i liked best for 5G and tested from the roof of the bus and then 20ft higher up on the mast.
Roof

Mast

Not a huge difference, but depending on the load of the T mobile towers, it can make a huge difference and allow uploads of over 180mbps. Additionally if im a longer way from the tower, the 20ft can make a huge difference. Especially clearing obstructions. Now, im not going to mount a $300 modem out in the elements, this was just to test whether its worth running cables and an antenna all the way up. If you think im a nerd for this, im sure my neighbors would agree with you. ..

So, like everything, gotta overkill it. At some point, ill also plop a starlink on the mast so that i can work from BLM and stuff with no tower nearby.



So one of the coolest things about the router is that it runs OPNSense OS, which i havent used in years and probably wont go into the poweruser settings, but the folks over at GL.iNet have built a really cool interface on top that allows all kinds of settings and features. The main one i wanted was to control failovers and internet connection priority. Currently, i have it set to prefer a WAN ethernet (Starlink) connection first, then the sim card, then any wifi connection i choose. It will then spit out the active internet to its wifi and ethernet ports. I looked at making my own pfsense device to do this, but the built in ability to choose wifi from a starbucks, or rest stop, etc and repeat that to all my devices made me abandon a home grown solution. Anyway, more to come on this as i build more, but for now, its just going to live on the dash while i continue the inside.

 

[bb12489]

Where did you get that mast?

 

[cadillackid]

this isa good stuff.. i currently use a mikrotik router that I put a 5G modem (RM520) in and get good service, except that thew new modem didnt fit the case and i cant use both SIM slots on tme MT router.. apparently the wiring is different.. my Tmobile throughput is decent as well as my AT&T, however not being able to switch SIMs on the fly became a pain.. so I started looking..


I really like the Milkrotik OS as it allows me to do VLANs and have automatic IPSEC tunnels back to my NOC.. 2 things that are absolute Must-haves for me on the road..



I have 2 tunnels established and my IP phones are connected to 2 different Hosted Voice controllers...



can the GL inet to L2TP client IPSEC tunneling?

can it do VLANs?
any idea what moden it uses? can you get to the modens virtual com ports to send direct AT commands to it for Carrier aggregations and such?

the docs i was reading shows it runs OpenWRT and not OPN sense. OPN sense has some nice plugins if this device supports them I might be in like flynn.. is OPN sense something new they have done or did you install a new firmware image to get OPN sense on it?


I could probably set up my tunnels with wireguard, however in the past i had issues with L2TP passthrough on OpenWRT.. I dont have any experience with passing it through on OPN sense.. DD_WRT had the ability to allow passthrough which was sufficient on those devices to get me connected.



,any of my clients have L2TP IPSEC servers so passthrouigh at a minimum is a must.. if i cant VPN to my client sites i cant work which defeats the purpose of the DEV bus..



I have a 4x4 MIMO antenna though not on a mast like yours.. I havent permanently mounted it, however on top of the driver mirror mast is where i have tested it.. gives me minimal extra wind resistance and it works great, i just need to mount it permanent and snake the wires inside someplace

 

[fo4imtippin]

Where did you get that mast?

I bought a diesel light tower to harvest the kubota diesel and genhead out of it. I never had the plan to have a mast until i had a "free" one. Thought about making a crows nest out of it. At some point, it should have a starlink, 4x4 mimo antenna and gmrs repeater antenna on it.

 

[fo4imtippin]

I really like the Milkrotik OS as it allows me to do VLANs and have automatic IPSEC tunnels back to my NOC.. 2 things that are absolute Must-haves for me on the road..

Yeah, i havent used it, but have seen its very highly liked and pretty cheap too. I have a whole ubiquiti setup at home that handles all my VLANs, VPN, and firewall. I used to like to tinker with my home network a bit more, but i have too many people in my house and just like the ecosystem. Im still debating putting a Unifi Cloud Gateway ultra either in front or behind the Gl.Inet device. I can configure it a few different ways to support this. Unifi has something called site magic that makes cross site VPN's very automated and i can run a Synology NAS in my bus syncing between home and bus very easily. Still trying to figure out the topology as i still have data caps on my comcast internet, so i would like much of this not to cross the WAN when parked at home, but want to use the bus wifi as backup WAN as my current backup WAN (tmobile) is now living in the bus. Since buying the bus, my home automation and network has really gotten neglected as I do it all day for work and just dont care to tinker as much. This device had adguard and wireguard and the failover priority which are my main things.

can the GL inet to L2TP client IPSEC tunneling?

I havent used Ipsec since my google Pixel 3 had it broken in their firmware and i upgraded all my stuff to wireguard. The GL.inet GUI has VPN client and server setups for wireguard and OpenVPN. I have set one up in DD-WRT, but i would imagine OpenWRT could set it up.

can it do VLANs?

So the GL.iNET gui doesnt. I think you can set them manually in OpenWRT, but there is only one eth port on the device. You could make both ports eth, and maybe assign vlans by SSID or the two eth port from OpenWRT.

any idea what moden it uses? can you get to the modens virtual com ports to send direct AT commands to it for Carrier aggregations and such?

It has the RM520 modem. Unforunatly it does not have the newer RM521 that has triple aggregation, but i read that it can be swapped. The firmware for that still has some kinks. You can run AT commands by SSHing into the router or they have a field on the GUI that has some presets or a custom command.

the docs i was reading shows it runs OpenWRT and not OPN sense. OPN sense has some nice plugins if this device supports them I might be in like flynn.. is OPN sense something new they have done or did you install a new firmware image to get OPN sense on it?

I was mistaken. It runs OpenWRT. OpenWrt 21.02-SNAPSHOT r15812+879-46b6ee7ffc / LuCI openwrt-21.02 branch git-22.245.77575-63bfee6. They have the GUI that GLi.Net built on top, and there is a menu to take you into the OpenWRT settings. There is still a whole plugin page and should support most things that OpenWRT does.

I could probably set up my tunnels with wireguard, however in the past i had issues with L2TP passthrough on OpenWRT.. I dont have any experience with passing it through on OPN sense.. DD_WRT had the ability to allow passthrough which was sufficient on those devices to get me connected.

Yeah, on my Ubiquti gear, i have many vlans that are mostly isolated or at least in a heiarchy. Servers can connect to IOT, but IOT cannot connect to servers. Along with guest networks, kids vlan with content filtering, etc. Im not sure what i all want in the bus. Currenly i have OpenVPN for PrivateInternetAccess setup and a full tunnel wireguard and a split tunnel wireguard. This will probably be suffecient. I may add a ubiquiti gateway to the LAN port and just do the tunneling on that for a ZimaBoard and Synology NAS.

I have a 4x4 MIMO antenna though not on a mast like yours.. I havent permanently mounted it, however on top of the driver mirror mast is where i have tested it.. gives me minimal extra wind resistance and it works great, i just need to mount it permanent and snake the wires inside someplace

Yeah. Waveform has a really nice/cheap new quad mini. Im torn on that one or Mobilemark LTMWG944. Its twice the price, but i would like to get the wifi antennas outside as well.


If you needed to test drive anything before pulling the trigger you can let me know. Its a pretty nice unit, but not sure it will do everything your microtik did, but you could put it in front of it instead.