Home made cooker unit installed...

As it is pretty quite on the VW scene at the moment, mainly due to being mid winter in the UK with cold rainy days and even colder nights, and as I haven't posted any pictures of my home made cooker unit I thought I would share my photos to give my readers something to look at until the show season gets underway. When I purchased my microbus in 2011, it had a complete microbus interior... 2 rear bench seats that were sun bleached from the Californian sun and that was it. I quickly purchased a Westy interior compromising of: 3/4 rock and roll bed, overhead rear unit, side unit, table and a buddy seat. All that was missing was the sink unit. I decided that I didn't want a sink unit, but would rather have a cooker unit, so I decided to build my own.

 

 

This is how the rear of my bay looked back in
2011 after having removed the 2 rear bench
seats.

I purchased some ply to cover the bulkhead,
which I stained to a similar shade as the
original Westy interior and fitted the buddy seat.
You can see the cut-outs in the rubber matting
where the bench seats were fixed down.

Having looked at numerous bay's and Splits
throughout the previous years I had an idea
how I wanted my cooker unit to look, and work.

Now I am no carpenter, nor do I have any
fancy tools and this is my first attempt at any
type of carpentry work, so it may not be
brilliant, but it's solid and does the job it was
designed to do.

OK, it is a lot wider than I had planned, but
this is due to the width of the cooker unit, plus
the gas hose exit's from the side of the cooker
and not the rear. When I varnised the unit
it really brought out the gain of the wood.
 

The top simply lifts up, and the front panel is
hinged so it lays flat when the top panel is open.
It has a door on the base of the unit, which
allows for plenty of space for cutlery and mugs,
and of course the gas bottle.

I always liked the 'spice rack' on the original
westy interiors so I decided to make something
similar on the inside of the door to hold some
condiments. I thought I would make this from
a different wood to make it stand out

This picture shows my original design where
the front cover doesn't fold flat. This design
was top heavy so I decided to hinge the front
panel of the lid. It also shows the coco-cola
bottle opener fixed to the bulkhead

Brand new cooker unit in it's new home.
You can see the difference in gap down the
right hand side of the cooker and the unit
this is to allow for the gas hose to exit safely.

The cooker is now fully tried and tested. Here
I am cooking the bacon at last year's Beach
Buggin VW show. The unit is now decorated
in various stickers and looks as though it's
been in the bus for years.


That is my home made cooker unit, which I have to say does an excellent job. I have no experience in this sort of thing, and made it all on my patio in the garden. It may not look very classy, but it does everything I want it to do and I am very pleased with it.