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Camping Support Trolley – Finishing Touches

Now the trolley is pretty much built, some burn-in testing is currently underway before it’s first trial-by-fire at Download Festival. There are a couple of minor issues that have needed fixing, since everything is enclosed in a pretty tight box.

Lagging
Lagging

The Eberspacher was the first point that needed sorting – the radiant heat from the hot air ducting was pretty much cooking everything around it – the inverter’s heatsink got to temperatures in the 50°C range. I pullsed some ceramic fibre lagging from a decomissioned domestic oven, and entirely lagged the hot end of the heater, securing everything with cable ties. Good stuff this, the inside of the box now hardly even warms up, nearly all of the heat going out through the vent where it’s needed.

The intake was also an issue, since these heaters adjust their power levels based on inlet air temperature, pulling the air from inside the box was infeasible, since within a few minutes the heater thinks the ambient temperature has reached 30°C, resulting in a shutdown. Another vent has been fitted in the back panel, drawing cool air into the heater’s fan.

 

Finally, meet FrankenCompressor:

FrankenCompressor
FrankenCompressor

I didn’t have the time to order a proper 12v compressor in time for this year, so after some rummaging around in the parts bin & came up with a couple of 12v car tyre inflator type compressor units. These are pretty crap for proper air compressor use, but they should survive just long enough to get me through this year. They’re mounted to a wooden board, with a large 120mm high-speed server fan mounted on the end, blowing a huge amount of air over the cylinders to help cool them down. Output is channelled through a couple of modified 6mm push-fit pneumatic fittings epoxied onto the factory hose barbs. Copper tubing helps cool the compressed air before the transition to poly tube.

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