While the truck is being built, friends are wending their way through Asia.  Temperatures of 43C are making life uncomfortable and a fan is essential.  There is thought that heat from the fridge is possibly also adding to the internal temperature.  While the roof up has lots of windows, with the roof closed temperatures are building up.  Vents?????   Anyway we have started with a Sirocco fan at the end of the bed.  Reviews seem to be good and we had already heard of these fans when looking at caravans.  They have a timer and the gimbal arrangement means it can be turned in almost any direction and if necesary folded back against the wall.  There are 12v  and suction mount versions.
Features

• Gimbaled design
• Three speed push button control
• Ultra quiet, long-life motor
• Four preset timer settings (2, 4, 6 or 8 hours)

Specifications

• Current Draw: 0.23A at 24V (high speed)
• Dimensions: 10"(W) x 12"(H) x 3"(D)
• Colour: White

So . . . white cabin and shiny white fibreglass box on the rear = nice freezer truck.
We have been trying to think of features and colour to take the edge off or break that impression.  The rear bar is hammertone and there will be aluminium extrusion to cap all the joins and of course along the roof edge.  So now we have a white fibreglass box with aluminium edging. We don't have any opportunity to colour the fibreglass panel itself so the most that can happen in that area is stickers or vinyl wrapping. 

Having considered painting of the cabin to give some colour but of course also equals cost, we have retreated to simply having a black and white truck and to make it obvious that black is a trim colour as opposed to a colour that happens to be associated with a truck eg black tyres, black plastic mud guard.  So the lower trim  - including around wheel arches will be the hammertone finish leading back to the rear bar (the bull bar will also be hammertone when we get to it) .  The vertical trim and the edge of the roof will be powdercoated black.

Trying to get some picture of how it will look . . .

The rear wheel carrier has returned from the shop having been finished in hammertone - crane attached.

So we thought that with all this power available and an inverter to supply 240 v we would finally be able to just plug in a jug for a cuppa tea.  It's not that we didn't know they were a big suck on the power so we looked around and found a small Tefal jug (2200 watts) with a sealed element that was capable of boiling small amounts of water - a cup if necessary.  We have been using in the house for some months now having put our good kettle away. 

Nope! no jug.  The inverter on the specs is 1500 watt and to go to a larger inverter creates two problems. Firstly, the larger inverter will not fit in the space left in the battery box. No problem it can go in the so far unused space under the 2nd seat. Sure . . . if you want to pay over $1000 more to get the bigger inverter.  Expensive cuppa - drat. 

Today we found an even smaller jug - a Design Go Travel Kettle - at Ray's Outdoors.  Not cheap at over $50 but only 650 watts.  Not 2 standard cups either - holding only 400 ml - but packs up nicely and has auto cut-off.  Boils 400 ml in about 5 mins.

Visited Gemhunter for a progress meeting and to see ZaTruk in the flesh. 

Much faster than we were imagining.  The floor frame has come back from being painted, the floor laid down, the walls cut out and so they start to take shape.

Because we are aiming to keep the profile of the truck as low as possible, we were from the start, fixed on flexible, stick-on panels.  We were aware of the Unisolar brand with apparently several dealers readily supplying the product.  Part of the research about batteries veered off on a path towards Lithium Ion, then MPPT controllers etc.  That took a while. Then the issue arose of 12v or 24v and we calculated that we would have an uneven number of panels if we went with the Unisolar and only have  just over a max of 180 watts on the roof.  Around this time, quite by accident I stumbled across an old news item on a web page that suggested that Unisolar had gone bankrupt!  Is that the same Unisolar as the panels being sold here in Australia?  Turns out yes and they are not merely bankrupt but entirely defunct. They are still being sold as dealers had bought up stock.  When I questioned the retailer about warranty - of course there is none - hie view was - better to buy what was a good product without a warranty than a less quality product with one!  It's a not unreasonable thought but we continued to look for alternatives.

There are products but none seemed to meet our requirements.  So I looked at the marine industry and found the Italian Soliban panels - very thin, very efficient and have no junction boxes etc to increase the profile height of the paenl   . . .  but you don't have to speak Italian to translate "molto costoso".

Fortunately, in the course of speaking with our builder - John, he mentioned that the electrical wholesale dealer that supplies a lot of his accessories, also sells the Voltech brand of solar panel.  Comparison of the Solbian and Voltech panels indicated that they were very similar in specification although the Voltech panel had we were told a 10mm high junction box sitting on the end of each panel.  Maybe we can get around that and you don't have to speak Italian to understand that compared with the Solbian panels the Voltech are "molto più economico".

With the Voltech panels - which we are guessing are from India? - we could fit 6x100 watt panels on the roof and  . . . I can go back to speaking English.

Gemhunter had originally suggested that they could build the roof with a slight curve.  This would take away the "freezer truck" look - hopefully and also help to further strengthen the already strong panel.

Today John rang and said that he had would have to abandon those plans.  It was too difficult to manage the 4x2m panel while the cutting and re-glassing was being done.  Instead he thought he could locate an aluminium extrusion purpose built for pop-top roofs.  It has a curved profile and will act as a frame for the roof panel.  A lower section of frame will hold the top of the wall and allow for a seal between wall and roof.