How it happened.

It all started a few years ago, while we were fairly new to 4wding, I bought this little battery operated shower before our first Newnes trip, thinking that as we will be away for the weekend, it would be a nice idea if I had some means of being able to have a shower. Unfortunately that weekend was bitterly cold, so the shower stayed packed in the vehicle & it was not used, as it would have taken too long to heat up some water in the billy, only to use for a shower.

We continued to carry this shower for a few trips & apart from just using it as a water pump to pump water from a creek into our water containers in the back, it stayed unused.

Then earlier this year, we started going on some trips where the temperatures were comfortably in the 40s (Celsius of course) & after a hot day driving around Barrington Tops (NSW) one of the people in the convoy made comment that he is looking forward to a nice shower at the end of the day.

As I was quite used to now going away for a weekend & not having a shower, I didn't really care, so originally was not going to have one. Stella decided she would have one & she said if I don't, then I would be not allowed in the tent that night, so I bit the bullet & gave it a go.

This shower was great (a twine) which ran off the engine, giving water pressure & temperature much like that I am used to at home. After that, I knew I had to have one of these, so I started setting myself a budget & a time on when I was going to do it (I am no millionaire you know)

Before I could set a budget, I had to know what these things are worth, so I started shopping around & found that working around the $500 mark for everything would set me up nicely.

Once I had that figure, I was told that the best time to get these is around the time of the 4wd Expo, as the resellers often have "Show Specials" & mark the price down by about 20%, bringing my estimated price down closer to $400.

Then a few weeks before the expo, some of us were discussing shower units on the 4WD Monthly forum, when Darren from the Offroadshop mentioned that they sell these units & that the price is highly competitive. I initially was a little sceptical to this & thought competitive would be around the $500 mark, as with other suppliers. That was until I had a look & to my surprise, his price was lower than any of the "show" prices I had seen, and that included the extra for freight from Melbourne, so the deal was done & I bought this unit through the Offroadshop.

I took delivery of the unit a few weeks ago now & as I have been quite busy with trips etc, did not really get a proper chance to look at it until just over a week ago.

Then I had a look at a few potential mounting points, to which I had a few more questions from the guys, to which they happily helped me out as well as giving me some tips about how to install the unit with temperature control from within the shower, rather than in the passenger compartment of the vehicle.

 

How it was mounted.

After looking around the engine compartment of the vehicle, I thought about a few potential locations where I could mount the heat exchanger & pump & in the end came down to 3 possible locations.

These were above the turbo, between the engine & the radiator, just above the fan & the last was between the brake master cylinder & the windscreen washer bottle. After confirming with Darren from the Offroadshop that the unit will take the heat produced by the turbo, I was about to mount it above the turbo, when I realized that there was a problem & that was that if I mounted it there, it will be touching the bonnet when it closes & I was concerned that this could cause problems later, so this spot was abandoned.

Next was the bit in front of the engine. This was easy to move on from when I thought, what do I do if I need to replace a fan belt......... So the only place left was between the master cylinder & the windscreen washer.

What a great spot this turned out to be, as it gave easy access for me to route the hoses & the electrics without fouling up anything else. Easy access to mounting screws on the edge of the guard & from the power steering reservoir mounting bolts.

Next was the pump. As this was the next largest item to be mounted, as well as needing access to power, the location to mount this was made quite easy & I mounted it behind the drivers headlight on the lower part of the mudguard (still under the bonnet). The power switch was mounted to the mount for the heat exchanger & all electricals were routed to the battery outlet which was available about 150mm from where I mounted the pump.

from there, I did all of the plumbing, starting with the clear water lines (shower water).

I started with the install of the line from the pump to the heat exchanger. This was to be routed under various bits in the engine compartment, with care to not crimp any of these hoses. In the pic, the outlet hose on the pump is crimped, but that was before final adjustments.

After that, I mounted the suction line from the pump, through an inline filter, purchased from Big W for about $5

Then from there I installed a short section of hose, ran it through the grill & attached a basic hose connector, to allow me to be able to attach a standard hose to it, whether it be sourcing water from a creek, or from a tap. At the moment I have attached a garden nozzle, so bugs and so on do not get into the hose.

Now for the Green water system (coolant / heater)

I decided that I wanted to have this controlled separately to the vehicle's heater, so I had to use a t piece to join the hose for the unit to the heater hose, just before it goes into the current heater tap for the vehicle.

From here I made it pass through a heater control tap which is connected to a choke cable to allow me to be able to control the temperature remotely (eg in the shower). The tap was sourced from AutoPro at West Gosford & the choke cable was sourced from SupaCheap Autos of West Gosford. Unfortunately they never returned my calls on the mechanical tap, hence the reason for me sourcing it from AutoPro.

From here, the hose joins to the heat exchanger, where it heats up the clear water & then passes back though to where it joins the cooling system of the vehicle with another t piece just before the water pump.

The hot clear water exits the heat exchanger via a heat resistant hose (another extra) I sourced from Bunnings Warehouse of West Gosford. This was added to allow me easy access to be able to attach the shower attachment without any hassles.