As exciting as watching paint dry...

You may have been wondering why no updates for the last two weeks. I've been busy on home projects, but also have been painting the interior of the trailer. I started by removing the bed and painting it, then put a couple of coats of on the interior panelling. I used oil based satin polyurethane. It gave the Luan a rich deep red color and the pine has a soft amber color to it. I think it looks good, and I'm looking forward to getting the upholstery done soon.





The next step is to build the cabinetry in the nose section. First I had to install the AGM (Acid Glass Mat) battery.




The AGM battery is a good choice for this application because it has a lot of storage in a relatively small (Group 27) sized casing. It weighs 61 pounds. Best of all, it is a sealed battery with no vents necessary. This makes it safe to have installed in a cabinet inside the trailer, rather than venting it to the outside. I wanted to not vent it, because with the battery in the cabinet with a vent it would have collected a lot of dust.





I searched around quite a bit for a decent mounting system for the battery that would be very sturdy without being too large, since I want the cabinet to be as small as possible. I was lucky to find a marine universal group 27 mount at Ace Hardware today. It is very sturdy, using 4 screws to hold the mount to the floor, and two stainless bolts that run from the mount up to a full perimeter frame that holds the battery down very securely. I used four stainless 1/4-20 machine screws to through-bolt the mount to the floor. The two front screws also pass through a steel plate in the frame, so they are way overbuilt for the load. I used large stainless washers on the back two that pass through the plywood floor with no steel plate. Secured with nyloc stainless nuts, the battery is very secure.





Tomorrow, I'll start to enclose the battery. Hopefully, I'll make enough progress to share more pics!



Gil