Day 108: Erwin and Formica

Things seem to be going slowly this week and there is little visible progress on the van. Though I am making slow but steady progress in preparing for the installalation of the leisure wiring and for the installation of the kitchen. The Formica arrived today, its in a huge box with very little in it, though it is good thing that it can be rolled all be it not very tightly, as I would hate to try and handle a 3m x 1.3m x 0.7mm sheet unrolled without damaging it.

Much of today was spent trying to solve a problem that I have been putting off for a while; For the CBE power system to function correctly it requires a signal wire from the van's existing wiring that turns on and off with the ignition. The biggest issue is that so much of the van doesn't actually turn off immediately when the ignition is turned off, rather there is some form of delay, or it does turn off but can be turned back on but again with a timer which will turn it off again.

Whilst hunting through the Internet I found Volkswagan's Erwin website. Erwin is an acronym for Electronic Repair and Workshop Information, and the site contains service manuals, wiring diagrams, service bulletins, and repair sequences for most of VWs vehicles. The only problem with the site is that they charge for access, however I stumped up the Eur 21.00 fee for 24hrs access with print capability and printed out most of the manual for van.

Reading through the wiring diagrams I thought I had found the ideal point to pickup the feed under the driver's seat. However on examination it turns out that the feature isn't installed on the van so the wire isn't there. Thus it was on to my second choice, the cigarette lighter, however even with the service manual for guidance it took a good half an hour to extract the ashtray and get a pull through in place, though the nice thing about the cigarette lighter is that it has standard spade connectors so I should be able to tap in my feed without altering the standard harness