Chilli, The funky green chillin' machine!

Chilli hasn’t been running too well lately and decided not to start on the return journey of our last trip. After some fiddling with the wiring it became apparent that the temp 2 sensor of the injection system was not functioning correctly. So a new one installed and a perfect excuse for a trip to Wisemans Bridge beach for a BBQ. Lovely to have the far end of the beach nearly to ourselves. It won’t be like this in the summer…


Chilli behaved himself but I think a fuel filter change could be a good idea. I do drive our splitty a lot more than Chilli as I’m not so precious with it, but Chilli is so much nicer to drive than the split. After the crappy last few years we’ve had I’m hoping we will get out and about much more this year

 

So while looking under the rear of the camper I noticed a small hole in the exhaust. When I restored chilli a few years ago, this exhaust was hanging around so was put to good use but it was second hand and used. So I picked the replacement up at a swapmeet a few years back and it sat in the corner of the workshop…

 

Until today when I had a spare hour..

And the price ticket makes me happy too! Just goes to show that bay ownership isn’t always expensive! I think I might leave the sticker to remind myself!

 

All done..

 

We’ve just won the hayburner competition for a retro drive away awning! Get in!

It will be the perfect accessory with 2 growing kids!

 

Awesome

 

We can’t use the old cliche “we never win anything “ again!

 

Bought a new mat for the rear from madmatz. Slightly darker than the front with darker edging, hopefully to help hide the kids muddy feet!
Usual good quality and service from Mark and the team at Madmatz. Cheers guys!

 

West’est Fest Pembrokeshire.

Met up with our local club Aircooled Pembs at the Westest festival. It’s just down the road from us so nice to support the show.

Weather wasn’t the best but the rain held off for the show and shine.

Chilli managed to score a top 3 trophy too.

 

New compressor fridge. 30 litre outsunny from Amazon. Will fill it up later and see how it performs. Have also got my hands on some folding solar panels which should help with keeping the leisure battery topped up.

 

So to address a long overdue problem we have just bought a decent 30L fridge after some good recommendations on here (thanks guys). We chose the out sunny compressor fridge and luckily it was on sale with Amazon so seemed a no brainer! It can go all the way down to -20 apparently which should be plenty to chill then beers….

so the next problem was powering the beast and keeping it fed with plenty of electrons. By chance a friend was updating his van and luckily I had an amazing deal on a pair or folding solar panels and a Victron charge controller.

I decided that a totally portable set up would suit us better so it can be moved between the westy and the splitty. The solar panels are connected via trailing leads which means they can be away from the van. The inverter is connected to the battery with croc clips. I managed to get it all connected up this morning and so far it looks promising

some pics

 

The victron app seems to be pretty good and the setup of the charge controller was easy. Just had to change some settings to accommodate the lead acid battery. I’m currently sat in the van in the shade listening to some cool tunes with the cooler at -2 while the solar panel is out in the sunshine. For the first time I’m not worrying about the battery going flat.

 

And just for fun I plugged the other panel in and wow! 14 amps of charge!

 

All packed back in the van.