Extras and Upgrades

If anyone who has built an Overland Truck like this ever tells you its finished . 

They are lying. 

These projects are never finished and there is always something that needs changing, replacing, upgrading or tweaking 

This page will be where those upgrades alterations are shown.


Shower Lift Pump 

My waste water tank is mounted high up in the chassis at the rear of the vehicle . It holds about 80 litres. 

The problem that most constructors encounter is getting water to drain freely, especially when the tank is mounter high to allow road clearance.  My grey water ( Sinks showers etc ) flowed fine through a 25mm ( ID) flexible hose from the sinks . However, the fall from the shower to the tank was insufficient for the shower to drain. It was quite common that water would pool in the shower, especially if the vehicle was parked slightly nose down 

To combat this a small collection tank, from Seaflo, was mounted at a lower point under the vehicle. All grey water drains via this tank.

The tank was modified before fitting. The first thing I did was create an outer box made from 35mm GRP sandwich that this tank would sit in . This not only provided some insulation, but would also protect  it from road debris. 

I also added a drain hose in the bottom of it that is attached to a tap . 

The reason or the drain was that in freezing conditions water entering this tank could then drain straight out into an external tank and not get pumped up to the main grey tank where it would freeze . 

The clearance on the prop shaft is a lot greater than the photograph suggests. 

The Seaflo pump is operated by a float switch within the tank and only comes into operation for a few seconds every minute. 

At first this worked fine, but I soon discovered that the internal float within the box became clogged up, on a regular basis  with the inevitable shower residue and became unreliable.

The whole system was eventually removed and replaced with a Jabsco Shower / Bilge pump. 

This is activated for 30 seconds at a time by a proximity switch within the shower. 

Washing Machine 

Whilst using our old motorhome for long periods, we discovered that washing clothes can become a real problem. Some campsites offer washing machine facilities, but the high street laundrette is a rarity these days. 
Spending hours with buckets and wringing clothes out wasn't our ideal solution. 

We fitted a small but fully functional programmable washing machine ( Euronova 1100 ). It is secured in place with Strong brackets.

Modern washing machines are cold fill and the machine has a sizeable electric element that heats the water to the desired temperature. I, however, have connected the water feed to our hot water supply via a thermostatic mixer tap. This means I can fill directly with water of the right temperature and the program moves straight on past the heating stage. The motor's power  consumption for the washing and spinning is manageable, and can easily be run from the inverter if required.
The water feed is isolated by a solenoid valve for safety.

Toilet

The toilet is a Thetford Bravura. It is full size and sits directly on top of an 80 litre black tank. This Tank is emptied from below the vehicle using a standard Thetford cassette that slides onto an downward pointing outlet. A full tank would take 5 cassette loads to empty it.

Door Locks

The original Cab door locks were pretty dated and not as secure as we had liked. In View of this we fitted extra modern dead locks.

Rear Leaf Springs

Due to the age of the vehicle, the rear leaf springs were re tempered and an additional spring was added to each lower stack.

Cab Air Conditioning 

Air conditioning was added to the vehicle cab. We didn't want a roof top system as it would have to be offset and would be directly over the passenger's head. Instead, we opted for a traditional 3 part system that consists of a belt driven pump mounted in the engine bay, a twin fan Condenser that is mounted, forward facing, on the roof of the cab and lastly a 3 speed fan Evaporator that delivers the cold air directly inside the cab from below the dashboard.

Headlamps

Knowing that our journey would take us on un paved gravel roads, we fitted clear headlamp protectors. These were made from the same material that is used for machine guards. They are easily removed in a few seconds.

Bull Bars

The addition of the original MB Bull bars changed the vehicles appearance drastically 

Alternator

The original vehicle used very little electrical energy. headlamps and fans etc. 

With the addition of air conditioning and extra lighting etc, it was decided to upgrade the original 50 amp alternator to 100 amp version 

Cab Window Tinting 

The original Cab windows had very little tint . A double layer of tinting film was applied to both the side windows and the windscreen. This not only provided a light tint ( 70 % light Tansmittance) , but also gave us protection from UV light. The layer used were Llumar AU85 UV SP HPR and Suntex Carbon XP 70.

Battery to Battery Charger

The Original Battery to Battery , DC to DC Charger, never worked correctly and proved to be totally unreliable . This was eventually replaced with a Victron Isolated Orion TR Smart 24v to 24v 17amp unit that has been more suitable.

Inverter

Our original Votronic Inverter started to malfunction after 8 years of constant use and this was replaced by Victron Pheonix 24v 2000w bluetooth model.

Additional Fridge

During the cabins original construction, we created a below floor locker that was accessed via a flush fitting hatch in the centre of the cabin.

We soon discovered that this locker, being made of thick GRP sandwich was alwaysa cool place to keep food such as vegetables. We often thought about upgrading this to a full functional compressor fridge. We eventually did this using an Isotherm Kit. The compressor was mounted under the bottom step in the entrance .

Shower Tray

The Original wooden shower tray, which was lined with a vinyl flooring started to fail after 9 years. A replacement was fabricated in Oaxaca, Mexico, in 2022 by Acero Inoxidable de Oaxaca.

Batteries

The bank of Four  Victron Gel Batteries, that provided 260 Amp Hour of power,  worked perfectly up until the end of 2024, when they started to lose charge faster. 

They were replaced by two Epever 200 Amp hour 12v  Lithium LiFePO4 batteries in series. This provided a betrrery bank of 200 Amp Hours at 24v . Although the overall capacity was now 60 Amp Hoursless, the useable capacity increased dramatically as the new batteries could, if required, be discharged by 80%. This gave a useable capacity of 160 amp hours.

In addition , the new batteries gave us a weigh saving of nearly 100kg.