Day 1 : Holy bankroll..

The Scumrunners have collectively raised over £118k for JDRF.  Well done everyone.

Day 1: A costume drama...

Finally we have a full costume team photo.  The doctor theme in full effect.  From right to left: Zoidberg (Futurama), Dr.Cox (Scrubs), Dr. Nick (Simpsons), Waambulance medic (Adam sucks :))

And so it begins

Right thats it.   Everything is packed (we hope) and we're off to dover.  More updates to come... stay tuned.

Last minute sponsor update..

Those of you paying attention will have noticed a fairly epic spike in our charity raising.  We have now surpassed the £1000 mark all thanks to Aquadition Ltd

Thank you so much for the money and it all goes to a good cause.  Having exceeded this mark Gregg now has to follow through with his threat to shave his beard when we beat £1000.  We will be posting video of this when we do it on the launch day.

For those of you still to donate, please give anything you can via our just giving page by clicking the JDRF logo on the right or clicking here:

Anything you give will go direct to the charity, along with 25% gift aid.

Thanks everyone.. this is going to be awesome.

Preparing to prepare the preparations

This update we have some last minute prep work and modifications.  There were a number of things that were "nice to have" that we wanted to do if we had time so over the last few days I have managed to sort most of them out.

First up, a non-slip mat for the passenger side dash.  One thing we noticed during the test run was that the dashboard is quite slick, things slid all over the place.  So now they wont.  Sorted.

Next up, the center console.  I built this following the run as we needed a better way to mount the CB, somewhere to store bits, and additional cup holders :)  I added carpet and non-slip mat to finish it of.

Next item on the list, the CB speaker.  The internal speaker is small and very quiet, so we have attached an external one.  This is now "mounted" to the center of the rear seats, facing forward meaning everyone can hear it loud and clear.

Next we have the health and safety.  We had a fire extinguisher, but no-where to put it.. now we do :)

Lastly, we have the tech-controller.  As you may have noted in an earlier post, we have an automatic relay to turn on / off the power to most of the car when the engine switches on / off.  That leaves us with a small issue.  We cant use the lights without the engine running.  So to get around this I have wired in a set of bypass switches.  Not only that but have also rigged up a set of sealed lead acid batteries as backup that can charge while we are moving so we don't even need to use the car battery, reducing the risk of accidentally running it dry.   The USB ports were just some spare units i had for another project, so I fitted them into the dash as more ports are always handy :)

Just a few days left now, if you haven't already donated, please visit our Just Giving page and drop a few quid.  Its all for a good cause.

A sticky situation

Due to availability of people, and the order in which the stickers arrived, the sticking of the van has spanned two weekends.  First pass was Gregg and I, applying the non-serious stickers.   

Trial and error (without the error)

Its been over 18 months since the last time we went camping, and the long-distance survivability of the Previa is also an unknown quantity, so we decided it was worth going for a test run.