Cheap and Quick Improvements to Make My RV Dash Better for only $35

well welcome back to the shop guys and uh because we haven't done enough videos on it yet let's do some more work on my 2001 Beaver Patriot Thunder the sun's setting in the Western sky there and I have a few things that I wanted to always do ever since I got this so I've driven this on a few trips now and I've had it for about a year a year and a half and there's a few items in the drivers area that I think could be a little bit better and serve the driver that's me it could make my Driving Experience a little bit better I just washed this thing because I'm going to be going on another trip but she sure did clean up nicely but it does seem like everybody enjoys when I share my projects that I'm doing on my RV and I thought you guys would enjoy this too and give some people some ideas if they want to do it like I said they're all going to be in the front area for the driver mostly now if I can be candid one of my favorite things about being an RV technician is that there's really no manuals for anything that you're doing uh you get to think outside the box and try different things just to see if it works now one of my biggest problems with the layout of the driver's compartment or the cab area for the driver is that even though I have these cup holders on each side they're kind of rink eating cup holders just for uh soda cans and if you followed me long enough you know that I like to drink big thirst Busters like this or these Polar Pops and yeah it kind of fits but it's a little bit top heavy and I don't know if you can see I don't have a lot of leg space right there and there's a styrofoam cup and this is a guillotine that wants to cut it in half and while I could use this one over here uh I also don't find this one any better in fact I think it's a little bit more of a diving board now the previous owner or one of the previous owners added this cup holder for the passenger which works perfectly and even this one on top which is not great for this but it does hold it so I want a better cup holder which may not be the best title for a thumbnail on an RV but that's what I'm doing now as a driver I also like to have a cubby hole for my phone uh ChapStick and other items and while I have these things over here they're kind of not very useful for holding anything that I need right at hand and this little flip box right there again not that useful when it's that far away from the driver I do have this center console right here and a lot of modern RVs do have a drawer right here but this is not a drawer this is a door I mean I guess technically it is a drawer because this does pull out right there but what originally was here was a DVD drive for the map for the radio because the radio here used to have a screen that would come out and come up and so that drawer down there had a DVD drive had a disc that you had to load in in order to do your navigation I don't have that drive there anymore so my original plan was to just take this door off take the hinges off drill a couple holes through this tab right there and then turn this whole thing into a drawer that you could open and close then I'd have to come up with a latch that holds it open because obviously a cup holder driving down the road is no good if it's just going to slam forward even though a lot of Manufacturers on Modern RVs haven't figured that out yet either but I'm going to try to figure it out but the last time I drove this I got to thinking that maybe if somehow I could latch this pull out drawer to the door itself that will keep the drawer from sliding forward and then when it's closed up it'll still look Factory and I haven't effectively changed anything or damaged anything now even though I made the Bold statement a year ago that there's no such thing as a classic RV that you have to keep original like you might on a classic car I don't ever want to do upgrades or modifications on an RV especially as beautiful as this one that I might regret or might not look good in a few years and then it's still pretty uh original I'm gonna try to do two things at once but that's not really the case because there's about four other things I want to do and since I'm considering doing that uh let me get this out of the way my Garmin map the slide out switch is right there it's really not a great location for this because this is the natural shelf to put stuff in and uh it's always in the way especially if you saw how my Garmin was there so I don't like the slide out switch being right there I think on newer models they moved it just to the side right there so I do want to relocate the slide out switch right there so when I move this I'm going to have holes right there that I don't want to see but if you notice I do have my Garmin map and my phone and charger would all be right there so I want to fill those holes with something useful and I think a USB charge point or a 12 volt Outlet would work out pretty well for me too and the last thing is right here you'll notice there used to be a 12 volt Outlet right there I don't know if the previous owner didn't like that outlet right there but they did Mount a 12 volt Outlet right over here which is not the greatest location uh so what I've been doing is I have this 12 volt plug-in that I can then plug in down there and now I can get stuff on the dash but I don't like the look of that this coach is too beautiful to have things draped around so I do want to fix my 12 volt Outlet right there uh add some sort of charge center right there so I can have something for my phone the Garmin or even a dash camera if I want to put one there and I don't really want to drill any more holes into the dash if I can help it this fabric does tend to shrink up over time and we don't need more holes in this Dash than we it's already there so I think that's everything and I think I came up with a solution for every problem I had and I don't think it's going to take me too long so let me show you what I came up with because even though I have the skills to turn this into a cup holder somehow or take out this and make a different drawer with built-in cup holders on it it's always easier for me to adapt an already existing product if we can so I went on the internet and I found a center console organizer with locking adjustable cup holders and it's already molded to do everything I need it has a little cubby right there for ChapSticks receipts and other things that you end up having in your pocket driving down the road on a trip I don't know if you guys can see there's two holes right there where we'll just screw right down so if I can just figure out a way to latch that to that drawer then I'll have a pull out center console doing everything I wanted with a minimal amount of effort but first things first this drawer is a little bit too short I close it it doesn't close all the way because way back there as a cross member for the rails now I could cut that to make it fit but I'd be cutting off most of it so I think if I want to modify anything it's going to be a plastic little console and I think there's just enough room that I can make it work by cutting off this back flap and the other thing I need to modify it's hard to see the ends of these uh screw recesses are not even with the side of this because this would have been meant for the floor the little hump on the floor in between the driver and passenger seat so I just need to even up the bottom too so that it's even with those screw holes so I'm kind of a firm believer in not Reinventing the wheel if you don't need to I've done no measurement whatsoever even when I ordered this I didn't know if it was going to be too tall to fit so what you guys are seeing is what my brain is thinking so I think we just need to got a marker so I always carry these in my pocket then all I'm going to do is use some tin snips and we'll cut that right along the line right there connect the lines on this side and all right nice tree try to make it look good we'll see how it turns out laughs this is an event that's actually not too bad cut off that and then it'll cut off that I don't know I'm going to be cutting off all of this still but I think that works out perfectly I think I'm staying near exactly where it needed to be remember the crossbar was hitting here so now I have to notch out this back piece I think there's just enough space back here between here and there that'll will be good enough I hope so all I really have to do is try to make this look acceptable I'm gonna go right about at the peak of there and right about there so I think that's that's about right I'm just gonna be cutting off all of this over here now the good news is the back of this won't be seen when the drawers open all right so I just have to finish cutting that off and yes I did forget to say these are just Aviation tinting snips nothing special whatsoever in fact these are probably close to 16 years old you guys have seen them in a lot of videos they're not very sharp either okay I think that's all my modifications let's see how it fits all right so that's as far forward as I can get it there all right we're still hitting just a little bit not hitting on this side but on this side just a little bit even though it probably would close I'd feel better if it looked good let me just modify that cut a little bit and then we'll put it back on all right cut off a little bit more trimmed it off trimmed a little bit right here and yes I could use a Dremel or a rotary tool but I don't trust myself with those all right with a little bit of modification I think that's gonna work but of course you need to make it look good still because this is a beautiful coach so I'll just use some 600 grit sandpaper kind of make it look a little bit nicer on the sides not that I ever expect anybody to uh take this off and judge me for my cuts they can't see but I'll judge me I got it cleaned up and I think we're pretty good all I have to do is screw this down and basically the job's done I didn't use any tape measures or anything but if there's anything I do know is that the sides of these will become catch-alls for things too and also I don't know if you guys can see I have some holes right there from the DVD drive where it was mounted before and I want this to look pretty good foreign manufacturer would do is just get some gray felt and just put it down there to make it look nice but I think great compartment felt is uh not something that should ever be on a beautiful High Line a diesel pusher like this let alone modern manufacturers will get away with it and I think that's an excusable that they're doing that especially when it's so easy to use this product right here it's just woven material this is a place mat it's basically just a screen material you can see through it and the stuff's pretty inexpensive it has fiber cords in it just like a normal screen would have and it's vinyl wrapped and I think it'll dress it up just a little bit now I'm not going to go through all the hassle of gluing this down because I don't think it's going to need to be glued down when it's screwed down so let me just go ahead and cut this to fit and then we'll we'll be done so I think we solved some issues so that's going to look just like that right there have cubby spaces on both sides and I think it'll look pretty uh pretty good the last thing you have to do is figure out how to keep it from sliding back in and attaching it to the door easily and driving down the road if I need to and so that it uh can unlatch really easily because when I step out of the seat right there my foot's going to want to go right here and I want to be able to get that out of the way really easily now I could go with the RV standard stuff like these Southco plastic latches if you have an RV you know how unreliable and often you replace these and these are like twelve dollars a piece now uh now my RV this Beaver has a lot of these brass latches but the spring-loaded ball bearings on them and these wear out too and they don't always latch very well luckily mine have done pretty well over time but they're using them on most the latches in here but again I want something simple easy and lining up all those latches there's not a lot of margin for error and then even with these when you go to close them you kind of have to jiggle them a little bit to make sure that they line up and I don't want to do that driving down the road and because I get exposed to a lot of different RVs and a lot of different ideas so I decided to steal an idea from a new Mars Playbook on a lot of their ceiling packages they use magnetic latches to hold this great big heavy thing up in the air if you pull on them hard enough it'll hinge down and you get access to the air filters so I think I'm gonna go with magnets and I found these rare earth magnets right here I don't know who that manufacturer is but it's just two pieces and it takes quite a bit of force for me to pull those apart and I think if I have two of them that'll be more than enough to keep the door amounted to the tray here and I can pull on it really easily so let me get this mocked up if you notice I don't have a lot of space right here but I have more than enough space for these latches so my plan is something simple as to put these on the bottom side right here and this place right there and then when it closes it's completely out of the way it's not magnetic right here so I won't be attracting anything if I were to drop it I think this is going to be the only part that takes any real planning so all I'm going to do is make a mark right about there because I don't want the latch to be over the hinge because this is steel and it will I want to stick to that and I don't need that at all and I think if I just put the latch underneath right here and right there I think two of them will do but if not I'll put a third one in the middle and it definitely shouldn't be that big of a deal because I think this was a five piece that it came with so I have a lot of extra ones if I need it and it does come with the screw and Hardware's for it too so let me get those installed and the news just keeps getting better these are die cut double-sided tape stickers so you can just stick them on the back peel off that there's my mark right there just put it even there's one all right and there's two now hopefully all I should have to do is get the strike plates right here put the uh die cut double-sided tape on it the bottom of here bend it up and pull that I think that's pretty much gonna work I'm gonna pull this down hopefully look at that they're on there so I know exactly where they go and they clear everything I think I'm gonna like this all right with the senator I just have to make sure the screws I'm going to use aren't going to go through it doesn't look like they're going to I could free drill but this is plywood back here so it should be okay one [Music] okay so here we go approval contact open that up pull it out put that back up and look at that doesn't rattle down holds it in place and more importantly that holds my cup I can and other tchotchkes off the cable adapters so that works and it really pleases the way it turned out I think it looks pretty good yeah I mean I know this looks like somebody just added a plastic uh cup holder to a dash but it's all closed up it looks Factory still like it didn't affect any change this was not a very useful drawer to begin with and now it's quite useful for me driving down the road these aren't sticking out and I'm not hitting my knees on them if we can be honest this is a fiberglass Dash with a double stitched uh cover on it most modern dashes on most modern RVs are all plastic and they squeak and crack anyway so I still don't see too many modern RVs with the useful center console anyway so this I think is going to work out really well for me but I do have a confession to make remember how I said I'd like to think creatively sometimes and being an RV technician allows me to do that well my idea didn't completely work out and I think it's important to come clean to you guys what I had to do but it's not that big of a deal so these magnetic latches that I used for what I wanted them to do and they are breakaways so if I do step on that it will just pop down really easily there's no lashes I have to worry about uh the only real downside to uh magnets I guess is that they don't have a lot of uh friction to them and so it held it just fine but this would still just slide back out of the way but now if you look at it pushing with all my might and I can't move it to slide back but if I just pop down very very simple now first because I don't know if you can see there's a pretty good angle right here it wasn't latching very well on just the one plate and so I just doubled up the plate to extend that out engage the magnet a lot better but it still would slide back pretty easily it was a concern I had as I was building it and I'm sure you guys had that concern too but that's why we get to think creatively but if I just slide you guys underneath you'll see my two shames one my first location where I put these magnets didn't work out so I did pull them back just a little bit just because I didn't want to see them where they were located right here remember you could see them a little bit I didn't like that but two there's a screw right there and a screw right there so when I lift this up right there and I push back those screw heads they stick down just far enough to engage the lip of here I think it's kind of clever I'm not a huge fan of making Transformers but this took me all of maybe an hour of worth of Labor and I was filming this all too so at the end of the day I think it saved me a lot of time compared to making a drawer and then finding a way to latch the drawer without causing issues too and this is very reversible if I would have made this a drawer that pulled out if I were to stand up or and brush against it like that I could break everything and the drawer itself would have just been a little bit taller and then I just sort of had holes cut into it for cup holders and it wouldn't have been adjustable like these are really pleased that ultimately that the concept pretty much worked for me and if I were to step up and accidentally step right there it breaks away and goes away very easily but I think I have time to do two more things today maybe three more things today let's see if we can't do them real fast of course to do what I need to do next have to take this off anyways and by the way to take these off you just lift off from those tabs over there right there and you're gonna Slide the whole thing out very easy and now when I flip it over you should be able to see what I was talking about those screw heads are just sticking out just a little bit they don't engage anything other than right behind that lip right there and right there so very easy to get to this heat exchanger for my Aqua Hot if I need to still and get to the wiring behind the dash there and even the blower motor which is nice all right so if you guys remember I wanted to relocate my slide out switch to make it a garment Mount out of the way and why I'm at it I also want to do something about the top of this obviously this is a natural place to set things you know like keys adapters and more keys anything else that's in your pocket and so it's got beat up quite a bit I know I could take this all off sand it and refinish it because it is real wood but I'd prefer not to do that so I'll try to figure out something to do on that too like I said if I remember correctly people did end up moving the slide out switch anyways it's not the greatest location for it and it's just going to be three wires it's pretty simple slide out switch momentary off momentary we'll just want to relocate it from there over to here no there's no direction on the switch itself so I don't really have to care about any of the wires other than the middle one which is going to be marked because all the switch is doing is switching either this one to that or this one to that this is the common that we need to worry about I'm going to risk it all by trying to take the switch out of the plate here just by pushing on the tabs here pushing it through I say risking everything because it's a 22 year old switch and those plastic tabs tend to wanted to break even so now with this I can lay out where I want it to be over here probably gonna be right about there I'll measure it out and then I'll just Mark where the switch is going to go for all the Woodworkers out there I have good news this is wood veneer cabinet grade plywood I'd look back over here you can see right where the holes cut out for that vent the layers in that plywood so I don't have to worry about being too high and cracking the wood so I'm just gonna probably go about an inch or so down from the top and I think it'll look better centered on the panel itself and not using the end grain here of the face of that cabinet over there so I can hang this and get that make sure it doesn't get crooked because I know you guys don't like it when it's crooked pretty much Trace out over the switch get this all right so I just have a 5 8 spade bit on here it needs to be a little bit taller than this on the top so those uh plastic tabs can actually extend out and lock into place [Music] just because I have it I'll just be using my oscillating tool to even up the uh the hole right there but definitely if it were me and I didn't have that with me I would just be using a utility knife and hitting it with a hammer to even it up [Music] oof all right and then we just put the other two it's just like that and I guess we try riding the slide out and put this back in that's a little bit better looks pretty good now hopefully nobody should have a hard time finding that and it won't be hidden behind here but remember where we were doing this anyways I wanted that mount uh USB port right there all right so sometimes go forward you have to go backwards I spent like the last few hours maybe tracing out all the electrical that was added to the dash and I think I got it figured out and cleaned up unfortunately there was a lot of extra wires and splices that I didn't need anymore uh so these last two wires right there are the ones going to the 12 volt Outlet over there and then right down here these two wires are the factory 12 volt wires that were supposed to go to this 12 volt Outlet right there pay no attention to that one that one's not being used that's just instrument lights the back lights for the uh gauges and the switches up here so let's go ahead and put this back together now but okay I have new wiring right here this should be about 10 or 12 gauge wire so I'm going to keep this old Outlet right there because I think it's doing just fine I'll just rewire the harness so that it's long enough and we're just going to daisy chain it so we're gonna go from here to here to down to these connections right there all on the same 12 volt circuit we shouldn't overpower this thing it's uh 12 gauge it's wired up to it and it has a 30 amp breaker to it so we have all sorts of power so on the 12 volt Outlet side is what I'm going to go with this is the Marine style one not a huge fan of it just because it has a lock nut on there I'm gonna have to back off but this is going to fit in perfectly right there which works out really well because my end at my Garmin Navigation this isn't just a 12 volt plug on it it's a smart plug and then if it doesn't have this plug on it it doesn't have a some of the features that the Garmin might normally have I think traffic updates and I don't remember it was some subscription service so I gotta have it as a 12 volt Outlet down there luckily it's the perfect size that's why I had to take the nut off so I can then put it on now I don't know if you guys appreciate how thick all the Cabinetry wood is in this thing I told you they built them really well foreign of extra splices when they did all this that's a positive lead and that's going to be non-insulated so that would have shorted out against anything so this is what they should look like right there got this USB charger right here it's I don't know some no name is the one I found online it's got this cool little clip door on it the only thing that concerns me a little bit is that this green is supposed to light up but I couldn't find one that wasn't lighted but I wanted one that was just the right size some of the other ones are a lot bigger bases I didn't want to put a huge base on right there it only has that connection right through there I think that will just barely cover everything that I want to cover and it'll look pretty good and honestly with the green lights it'll be easy to find at night I know some of you probably asking does it have fast charge to it it says it does have fast charging over voltage over current over charge protection and reverse polarity so all I really need to do is take that harness that was going to that 12 volt Outlet in the dash I'll run it down here doing really well I could theoretically use some Wago lever lock connectors right here my problem with these is not that they're bad it's that they don't hold on to these tiny little wires exceptionally well so what I'm going to use instead are going to be what I call Bell nuts but these are just going to be uh they call them closing connectors I find these pretty good for putting two or three wires together at the same time these ends are already soldered I don't like to crimp to soldered ends to do is cut the soldered ends off burst because we're putting a lot of them together going a little bit longer with the stripping's a little bit nicer Spade connectors on this now I've already mapped out this circuit so I know that black is ground and red is positive but don't ever trust the wire colors on any of this thing what we're going to do now is twist those together some people call them speed nuts it's doing the good Power crimpers and I'm going to crimp it together there's one all right let's see hey I got some green lights you guys see the green lights see if I like that now I just have to feed these back in okay I think that's gonna look pretty good all right so one last things I need to do is run a harness to my 12 volt Outlet right there not that I really need it there but there's a hole in the dash and I might as well make it useful so I'm just going to run it through there under the dash over to this hole and I find it just as easy to put the two of them together and use a yellow Buck connector for one connector you just need to make sure the insulated section is wide enough to fit two wires in it just like that all right I'll do the ground the same way all right I got that hooked up I'm getting ground on the outside power on the inside now I personally have a bad habit of securing wiring before I test everything out so what I'm gonna do is test this out first and I'll plug this guy in down there hey we got power there oh look at that we got power there and that means I should be able to put that there I got power there we got power again so all of the things I wanted to do as power is done I just need to clean up my mess a little bit so let me just uh clean up my mess underneath here so it's not so ugly all right I think I got it all tied up out of the way okay hey look at that it did clear it closes we got power there got power hooked up to there secured out of the way and of course 12 volt Outlet right there so driving down the road I have power there for whatever I need a USB adapter if I wanted to and charge up a phone or something else and then I still have my Garmin map as a backup in case my phone is lying to me and I still have this which I can use again for a backup camera on the dash there or of course it's going to be hard to show you with me holding my phone when I put my phone in my phone charger right my phone holder right there I'll be able to charge the phone driving down the road or of course if I have a passenger they can plug in right there and put it on the dash but speaking of that this ledge is still kind of damaged and uh chances are pretty good somebody's gonna put stuff there because it's a good countertop to do that on so I have one more idea because we haven't done enough on the dash yet uh I have extra material just cut that out okay I just have to cut the length that I want it to be I think I'm pretty pleased with that looks a little bit better than nothing I would have extended it that way but that's just not going to stay on there it's going to just keep falling off and driving me insane but I think this is about as perfect as it gets for what I want all right so I think I'm really pleased with what I've gotten accomplished so far I feel much safer as a driver if I need to plug in something right there I can plug it in probably won't need this anymore it kind of looks gross anyways but if I wanted to I could I could put it over here on the window but the suction cup and have really good access to my map and my phone holder I can charge it off my charge point up there and it's going to be very easy to see at night but most importantly I don't have to have these cup holders open anymore which is nice too because the AC would blow straight onto like a warm cup or the heat would blow onto a cold cup not to mention the amount of room that I don't have right here with my knee this whole setup that we started from the beginning I feel like this is going to be pretty good as a driver very safe and if you are asking that's just a way to hold my phone have a pop socket on the back of my phone holder it would just go right there and of course I went a little left off center so I could still see the speedometer okay but now I don't nearly need that there because I have my phone holder with a charger but I do have that option still if I'm trying to get by here and that's in the way I can pop that down with my foot that back you don't have to worry about breaking it [Applause] still extremely pleased with my basement compartment lights these are working fantastic for me [Applause] this has been on all day as I've been working and all night as I was working and we're still at 56 percent and I just switched over the solar to charge this one up after that one's fully charged so even as it still could run another 15 hours and yes I will be putting links to everything in the description so if you guys have any questions about what I'm using that's where you guys should be able to find them I also think it'll be hard-pressed to uh tell me this isn't easier than making a drawer you're taking this on a few trips now there's a few yeah after having but one of my biggest problems with uh but one of my biggest problems with this but that's where I decided so I decided to steal an idea from a new Mars Playbook or of course I could or if I didn't want to use that gray stuff I could always use the Factory's favorite Ozark material as a headliner but I mean this is 2023 only trash companies are going to use ozite material to make a high line a luxury RV look good especially inside Cabinetry so I decided to steal a play so I decided to still uh so I decided to still

Channel: AZ Expert

Views: 45,079

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Id: jBfrtgCG5FU

Length: 37min 10sec (2230 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 27 2023