Second life
Sun 5th November 2023   
This is the final episode of this adventure: The vehicle has been sold and is now living happily in France.

Let's rewind and explain all that!

  Refactoring
Wed 17th May 2017   
There are quite many similarities between writing software and building hardware.

In both case you cannot really do a good job at it until you actually get to know most of the requirements, which is why we generally use plans, models or prototypes: They help us understand what has to be done.

In this particular case, the issue was the way we built the storage containers at the back of the car.

  Creature Comfort
Sun 23rd April 2017   
In a camper van, comfort is important.

A comfortable bed, air circulation and blinds are definitely important, but it's often the small things that makes the difference.

  Meet the Carputer
Sun 25th September 2016   
If during your childhood you dreamt of having a car that could talk like in Knight Rider, you may soon be satisfied.

Considering how fast the technology improves, fully autonomous cars are not far ahead, but that's not going to magically transform a 50 years old car into a talkative friend!

  Høytorp meeting
Tue 16th August 2016   
The Rakkestad meeting was interesting, but there was unfortunately not many people present.

Fortunatelly this Høytorp Treffet 2016 was a totally different beast: Nice weather, a large assortment of diverse vehicles, a lot of people, and all in all a very entertaining experience!

  Custom Shaders
Thu 21st July 2016   
One of the important things in a recreational vehicle is comfort.

Many things impact comfort, such as the quality of the driving experience, the sitting, the noise, but when you want to sleep in a vehicle what really matters is to be adequately shielded from the sun and be able to breathe!

  Rakkestad meeting
Sun 1st May 2016   
When you own a relatively uncommon vehicle it's generally a good idea to try to get in touch with other owners.

I heard of the 1. mai treff for Volvo Felt on the Norsk Volvo Felt-register and decided it was definitely the place to go.

  The Bright Side
Sun 2nd August 2015   
If there's one thing I've learned from the Monty Python, it's definitely to Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.

I had my share of crapy moments, but it's important to try to put it perspective within the grand scheme of things.

  Scandinavian road trip
Sat 26th July 2014   
After some hectic week-ends spent converting the car to a mini camper-van, we were finally ready for our road trip around Norway and Sweden.

  Beds and Storage
Sun 6th July 2014   
Time to address the important topic of the storage and sleeping solutions.

The concept

One of the interesting things about the Valp, is that it's a perfect small utility vehicle: It's about the same size as normal car, but you can fit an impressive amount of thing inside.

Losing this just for the sake of a camper conversion used a couple of weeks each year does not sound very optimal.

  Audio system
Mon 23rd June 2014   
A decent audio system is part of the comfort of modern vehicle.

Components selection

Obviously, since we had nothing at all, we had to select and buy all the necessary parts:

  Fridge installation
Tue 10th June 2014   
Camping without fresh beverage or food is not nice.

Chosing the fridge

After having checked the various type of solutions available (portable cooler plugged on the cigarette lighter, absorption coolers than runs on multiple power sources, special fridges running on 12v, etc...) we finally decided that the best for us was to actually go for a good old standard 220 volt fridge, just smaller - so it would fit in our installation.

  Renewable energy
Mon 2nd June 2014   
So, we decided to try the solar energy to power our vintage camper van.

As for the general design of the camper, I dived back in the swampy fields of humankind's collective knowledge to extract information about hooking up solar panels.

I have to admit that I was not impressed.

I would have thought that this was a mostly solved problems, but it appears that the field is a giant mess of conflicting informations about do's and don'ts, so in the end I had to take a leap of faith and take sides.


  Camper conversion
Thu 15th May 2014   
Before starting any significant project, it's generally a good idea to evaluate the state of the art, and then only proceed:

There's probably some glory in spending time solving an already solved problem, but it's definitely not time effective.

  Engine top replacement
Fri 2nd May 2014   
Despite all our previous attempts the engine was not working particularly well, so I decided to do something I should have done a long time ago: Check the compressions.

  EU Kontrol
Tue 18th June 2013   
After our first drive on the parking we were quite excited, but still there were some issues to deal with: the exhaust had to be fixed and we had to find out why the engine would die on idle.

Even more important, we had two months to fix all the issues before having to pass the EU Technical Control.

  Fix it, fix it, fix it!
Sat 30th March 2013   
So the Valp was now parked on the parking: Time to get things going.

Is it dead?

The first thing we did of course is to try to start it. Nothing happened. The blinkers and windshield wipers worked so at least we knew there was electricity going on, but since starter engines are notoriously power hungry we decided to buy a battery charger, remove the batteries, and let them charge for quite a long while.

  Shopping time
Tue 26th March 2013   
Now that we knew we wanted one of these horribly cute off-road vehicles, I started to contact the various sellers to ask questions about their state and it quickly appear that you could classify the various available models in three categories based on their prices.

  Let's get a 'new' car
Sun 10th March 2013   
Been few months since I posted something, not because I had nothing to do, but because of a number of projects I committed myself to help with.

Today’s post is not computer related in any way, it’s about vehicles!

Commuting bliss

I moved to Norway about 8 years ago and have happily used the public transport system all that time.

  Welcome to L3314N!
Fri 1st March 2013   
This is still a work in progress, but basically you expect to find some information about the Volvo L3314N vehicle in general, and my own in particular!