Howdy all,
I'm taking the fam on an outback trip in about 5 weeks and so, over the Easter holidays, I've been working on our '97 Jayco finch. I have totally re-worked the inside with two permanent beds and storage in place of kitchen and dinette and we've had gas bayonets added and I've built a slide out kitchen with a smev 3 burner stove. I also added a toolbox on the front for the battery and put a gas bottle holder next to it.
So, having added the toolbox to the front, I had to re-locate a bed support holder for the front bed. I went from the bracket under the chassis to a piece of steel rod on the draw bar. Some of the best welding I've ever done in terms of technique but the worst in terms of looking/thinking before I welded. In my haste I left the battery connected and didn't look for the cables that were running through the draw bar I was welding on to!
Couple that with the fact that the 12V system (which had been checked some months before as part of the safety cert when we bought it) had NO FUSES OR CIRCUIT BREAKERS!!!! (and I was not aware of this) and things get ugly.
The problem did not become immediately obvious so I was still none the wiser when I packed up and wound down the roof for the night.
I came back to do some more work the next morning and began winding up the roof again. I was suddenly struck by a strange, unpleasant smell. This had me worried straight away and my worries were confirmed when I looked up to see a large, blackened and burnt hole in the canvas. The cable run to the ceiling had ridiculously high current running through it all night (or until the aH were spent) causing the cables to overheat, melt and smoulder through the canvas, half of a queen mattress, 2 sleeping bags and to scorch the ply bed base underneath. The addition of smoke damage to the other mattresses,sleeping bags and the ceiling made it a write-off.
The first thing I did was to disconnect the battery and double check the fire was definitely out.
In a lot of ways this has been a disastrous kick in the guts because of one (albeit a freakin big one) oversight on my part. However, I (and the fam) have been EXTREMELY lucky in a lot of ways.
1. No one was hurt (I can't imagine how horrific this could have been if we had been camping when this kind of short happened)
2. It didn't burn to the chassis because it was closed and the oxygen couldn't get to it.
3. It IS covered by our insurance (we got official confirmation today)
4. some of the bigger mods, such as the slide out kitchen, were not yet in the camper and are undamaged and not part of the salvage price to buy back. (We do lose all the gas fitting work we just paid for though)
I've also learned a lot of valuable lessons about welding, 12V systems etc.
The "falling on our feet" thing is that we think we have found a very similar van for a very similar price that we can hopefully, quickly, fit our bits and pieces back in to.
So lesson learned: LOOK BEFORE YOU WELD!!!
Jono.
