General: The thinkbikes.com Van

This was first going to be a test post, to see if the bug of attaching an imaging while starting a new post was fixed (which it is). But I'm also going to use this discussion to document each change we make to our new van.

This is a 17 seater mini-bus, that was originally a school bus. We've ripped out all but 8 seats, so we have room for the demo rig, bikes and 8 people. We have a small trailer that we carry too, which has the PA and other bits and bobs in.

Dave has worked pretty hard on this and changed the cam belt and given things a fine tune. I had the happy task of ripping the seats out, which took longer than expected due to a threaded bolt, and some really awkward angles! We took it on its first drive yesterday - 7 hours of motorway travel. It was peachy.

The reason I've decided to blog this, is we are going to pimp it out slightly, from a technological stand point. Firstly, we are going to remove one of the twin seats and replace it with a single seat, which are going to weld into new spots on the floor, for a single row of 4 seats (leaving a total of 7 capacity). Then we are going to board up the "van" portion of the van. This means we can reclassify it as a van instead of a minibus, which should bring the insurance down. Eventually it's getting resprayed in the thinkbikes.com colours too. We're also going to fit a solenoid based cruise control, to save the driver's legs.

Internally, we are going to fit a TFT display and MythTV powered media center, for watching films and listening to music. I'm going to use a notebook for this, so that I can run it straight from 12V (or worst case a DC-DC converter to say 19V). Being a notebook, it'll act as a UPS, so we can leave it switched on for short stops. I'm hoping to find a broken notebook on eBay - i.e the screen is smashed. Not a problem as we'll be using an external display. The head unit in the van is pretty poor - but should be good enough to power some newer speakers and take input from our machine.

We're also going to integrate some inverters (for mains power), USB hubs for charging phones and the like, and a bank of cigarette lighters for charging things like cameras.

I'm intending on using a 750GB external hard drive (possibly NAS) for storing videos and music on and integrating a wireless hub - so other notebooks can connect and contribute. If I can sort out an HSDPA/3G internet connection, this would double up as a distribution for the internet too.

We spend a lot of time travelling while doing our demos and training, so it makes sense that we're comfortable!

7 inch? Come off it. I'm thinking a 19" widescreen. It's got a really high roof, so we can fit it just above the windscreen and it makes for a good viewing angle for everyone in the back.

OK, who drove it in to the tree?

PC - but it may well be HD resolution.

The next level is a tattoo Scopse!

Make sure you post some piccies of the renovation in progress!

Nah, the driver doesn't mind distraction But I'll mention it.

I'll see if I can get Dave to send me the photos of it now it's all prepared. It should have had its primer coat this evening!

I've realised it's been a while since I've given you an update on the thinkbikes.com van. The painting was finished quite a while ago - we decided not to bother painting the bumpers, although they are due a "back to black" and the trim put back on. I'm quite pleased with the finish - it's not perfect close up, but from a distance it certainly has the desired effect. Dave turning up at the house today with the trailer on tow,had the professional, branded feel I've been looking for. We've not got all the stickers made yet, but we've rushed these on there for the mean time. And by rushed, you'll notice on the rear it says "mountainbike" instead of "mountain bike", which I find really irritating! That will get replaced

At a demo today, I pulled out my N95 (which has now been firmware upgraded from v11 to v20!) and took some shots. The van is already really dirty, but you get the idea.

The internals of the van haven't changed yet - we've yet to board up the rear section, so annoyingly it's still classed as a mini-bus. We've installed a new head unit (many thanks to Crazy Pete for donating that), and we've got plenty of other changes on the way. Running a business is most definitely about priorities, and on route entertainment just isn't high on the list!

This particular event was at a sports college in Suffolk. We did a demo at 9am (I had to be up at 4 to get there and set up on time), and then spent the majority of the day training a variety of people from differing backgrounds and ages. I was surprised to only get one girl, and I have to admit - she did struggle a lot more than the boys (which would explain the relatively low standard of female riders in the world), but she did make big improvements in her time there and I hope she's come away wanting to learn more.

It really is amazing to watch the riders improve so quickly. With someone standing there to tell them exactly where they are going wrong. The improvements they made, took me months, if not years of trial and error when I originally started learning the sport. Without someone pointing it out - you can spend months making the same mistakes over and over again. A better ride than you, won't necessarily be a good teacher, or understand the techniques enough to point you in the right direction.

Generally speaking, at the events we do, we'll get 200-300 people at a time, but this was probably the largest crowd we ever had at around 850 people at a time (the photo above doesn't show it particularly well). This was a different experience. With a crowd that large, and of really enthusiastic young people - they were very easy to work up into a frenzy and that really got the riders going. Andy got particularly lucky, with the loudest chant I think I've ever heard!

I guess now would be a good time to say, try a thinkbikes.com training session!. I've spent quite a bit of time trying to improve the SEO on the web site and I appear to making a positive impact on traffic. Getting a sitemap for the hundreds of dynamic URLs made a big difference - doubling the number of pages that Google Indexed. I won't go into too much detail on the changes I've made - but at some point, I'll apply some SEO magic to Spode's Abode - which is not performing as well as I'd like.

You know what - I felt the same thing when I saw the colour swatch. But I reckon once I get some silhouettes of riders on there - it'll stand out

Yeah. Big enough to cover say the window portions of the back doors.

Well...

I took the background colour on the website, which is Pantone's "Process Black". I then converted it to the nearest RAL colour as this is what our painters could get easily. And that is apparantly what that is. I'm not sure if there was a mistake made or something, but either way - I think it stands out. At a demo a few weeks back and I was looking around and all I saw was white vans - the brown really stuck out and the orange stickers can be read really easily!

The word on the grapevine is that there was a minor incident involving the driver's window. Spode? Care to fill us in?

Yes. A 4X4 came round the corner too fast, knocked our wing mirror. Then the glass came out of the wing mirror and flew through the driver side window!

We need to replace the window, the mirror and even the aluminium caster holding the wing mirror on!