The Fit-Out in Photos

I have had trouble working out how to write about the time we spent fitting out the UniMog. It turned out to be quite difficult to make fourteen weeks of hard work, detailed build, plumbing and cabling sound interesting!

For us, seeing it coming together bit by bit was satisfying, although when things went wrong, needed re-working or just took longer than expected, that satisfaction was replaced with frustration and, at times, giving up all hope that we would ever travel again.

But all those ups and downs, successes and frustrations, do not translate into exciting written stories, much as I tried.

There have been more than a few of you who have asked me for photos and updates on the build and many more who have made me promise to write about it in detail so that you can get pointers.

So having mulled it over for a while I have decided to do this as a photo montage rather than a chronological description – hopefully it will satisfy most people without boring too many!

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As we went along, everything that we did was first designed and put into CAD to ensure it was a perfect fit. From the layout of the solar panels on the roof, to the Victron solar installation in the garage to the bed frame and the seating area, nothing was left to chance

It was fascinating to then see the designs slowly become reality…

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So, what next? Excitingly we were ready to start making the first of the cabinets.

Most overland trucks are fitted out with plywood cabinets or something similar. I’m not a fan of that, all too often they look shabby and swollen within the first few months. Henry´s interior, however, is beautiful and stood the test of 3 years in Africa looking just as good at the end as it did at the start. My brief for the inside of the UniMog was clear – make it look like Henry, just on a bigger scale.

James had built Henry’s insides from scratch so knew what we wanted to achieve and between me, him and Lewis we considered, rejected and weighed up a number of options as to how to achieve it.

The final plan was to make the high level units out of aluminium sheets and bend them into shape. For the kitchen unit and the large storage unit, the carcasses would be made out of wood with aluminium front panels and shelves. So all we would see would be aluminium.

It was a good plan but it took a gargantuan effort to make it happen – not least because James would not compromise on quality or detail in any way.

First step – make the wooden cabinets. James and I sketched out what we wanted them to look like – size, number of drawers and cupboards. Lewis then drew our sketches up on the computer. Once we had approved them he did the detailed programming for the CNC machine. All that took over a week as the tiniest detail such as where the hinges and catches would go had to be considered and worked into the design before anything was cut.

After what seemed like an age the CNC machine was programmed, the boards fixed down and off we went

It was fascinating to watch!

Once cut it was still two day’s work at least for James to smooth off the edges, build the units and then glue and screw them into place

We had had a piece of corian worktop cut and bought a sink a few weeks before so tested them out – they were a perfect fit. I then set about staining the cut edges black to match the rest

It took a bit of jiggling, cutting and smoothing

But eventually both cabinets fit like a glove…

But, as ever, this was just a dry run and it all came out again for the next step – the aluminium

Weeks and weeks and weeks of work went into this. The high level units were designed and cut. Lewis hadn’t tried cutting aluminium of this thickness before and the first attempt didn’t go entirely smoothly…

But after a bit of work and a change of blade we were on our way

The panels were dressed, filed and prepped and the doors were tested to make sure they were a perfect fit

The high level units were then sent to the fabricators to bend into shape (the largest was bent the wrong way the first time so had to be redone from scratch, that was not a good time)

They were then returned to us for James to design, measure and drill where the hinges and catches would go.

The fronts panels of the kitchen and the large storage unit went through the same process except they didn’t need bending so James was able to do all of the work himself at the workshop.

Painstaking, detailed, precise work that needed to be perfect in order for the end results to look right

Even then it all had to come out again and be sent to the powder coaters – it took us a few days to decide on colours, the grey was easy but the blue took some thinking about

It took James in total around a week to build all the units once they were back, fitting the doors, hinges and catches. Then they had to be carefully carried in and bonded and fixed in place. But by the time they were in we were starting to get more than a little excited, the inside of our UniMog was starting to look as special as the outside…

We had also made an aluminium panel to finish the bed frame off which really looked the part

It felt as though we were almost there but in fact it would be another month before we finished.

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There were so many little jobs that needed to be done and these were far less motivating as it didn’t feel as though major changes were happening and yet it was all taking up time.

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There were some larger jobs still to do as well.

We needed an external grey water tank for the sink and shower and a black water tank for the toilet

The black water tank was a 20L jerry can and for the grey water we bought an off-the-shelf 50L tank. But both needed intricate brackets making to hold them in place.

Lewis’s brother has a business doing laser engraving and offered to make us a warning sign for people not to steel the black water jerry can thinking it was fuel!

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We had ordered a large awning for the side and it took another day to fit the brackets and get it secured on

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We had spent months trying to source a suitable door for the wet room but strangely there were no good options available. So in the end we had one fabricated by the same people who had bent the high level units for us and made the mud guards – Kevin and the team from Elite Enclosures were brilliant

We had asked Off-Grid Custom to make a hole in the wet room wall that was only big enough to get in and out as we did not know at that stage what the dimensions of the door needed to be. So once the new door arrived James set about making the hole the right size – another job I was glad we had his steady hand to get done!

The door fitted beautifully and once that too had been powder coated, filled with insulation and a fancy door handle and lock fitted it was looking good

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One major job that we did very near the end was to put the UniMog’s hat on. Like Henry, he needed a roof rack but this one had just one very important purpose – to carry the large and heavy spare wheel.

After 14 weeks inside, never seeing daylight, it was quite emotional seeing him coming out – even if just temporarily

The roof rack had been designed to our specifications by a UniMog specialist near the Lake District called AC Price

They had scanned the roof of a UniMog of the same model as ours to make sure it was a perfect fit and when we had collected it a few weeks ago we were impressed with the workmanship

It was lifted by crane and carefully positioned

James and Lewis then spent an hour bolting it on

Before finally the tyre itself was put in place

The finishing touches were a hand-crane for us to lift the tyre on and off which James stripped, tidied up and finally had powder coated in black

And the spot lights on the top

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The last two weeks of the build were the most frustrating of all and we were both getting a bit down. We had been working twelve hour days, seven days a week, never seeing daylight, for what seemed like an eternity and at every stage it felt as though we were nearly done

But somehow we never were and there was always an endless list of tasks still to do

The shelves were in and we had even started loading up some of our things into the drawers and cupboards but still we were stuck in the workshop

One thing we couldn’t leave without were a set of stairs to get in and out of the box – with a floor height of 1.4 meters above ground level, these were one of the most important things to get sorted. But also one of the hardest. We had expected to be able to simply buy a set but there was nothing on the market that fitted our requirements.

So James decided to design and build our own from scratch. He sketched out his ideas on paper then discussed the practicalities with our welder and fabricator. The steps were cut out of checker plate and bent. The rails were made out of aluminium box section and plates were cut to bolt them all together

The concept was for them to fold flat so that we could mount them flush on the back of the truck whilst moving

By the time they were done they were perfect…

Finally, finally, finally. We had not quite finished all the little jobs but the UniMog was complete enough for us to leave the workshop and remind ourselves what the rest of the world looked like!

Lewis set up his computer to programme the solar system and get everything talking to everything else

And as the control screen flicked into life it was a momentus moment – the UniMog lives!

We spent a happy afternoon over the pit in the adjacent workshop coating the chassis with Lanoguard to protect against rust

And then stood back to admire our work

If we had thought he was looking smart when he came out of the paintshop it was nothing compared to how he was looking now.

We had created something unique, something that would turn heads inside and out, something that we could indeed be proud to call home.

Hardly able to believe the time had come, the UniMog backed out of the workshop for the last time and disappeared over the horizon – on to our next adventure….