Plan B

Why does Plan B always have to be more complicated than Plan A?   Probably because you’re setup for A and B doesn’t quite fit.  Anyway, Plan A had to be discarded today.  The trailer kitchen paintwork had dried in the hot summer sun which meant I could fit the two burner stove.  It’s going to be permanently mounted in the kitchen which meant it had to be disassembled.  Not knowing how it had been assembled on the production line resulted in me disassembling it more than was required <grrrr>.  Once I’d been able to access the interior I drilled a hole through the metal base near all four corners in order to screw it to the kitchen. 

Base of stove about to be fitted

That’s when I discovered in shortening the kitchen (to fit through the tailgate opening) the gas hose now wouldn’t fit down the hole I’d made.  I needed to do some lateral thinking and came up with Plan B.  The gas hose would be routed through the side of the kitchen instead of the base.  There should be sufficient room between the side of the kitchen and the trailer wall when the tailgate is closed.

New round hole on the side

The base of the stove was then screwed to the kitchen (Holes ‘A’ below).  Then I started reassembling the stove.  That was almost completed when I realised the two burners had been secured with screws through the base of the stoved. 

This meant the top of the stove had to be reassembled before it could be secured to the kitchen. 

After several minutes of thinking about the conundrum I settled on a modification to Plan B.  I drilled holes though the kitchen panel that lined up with the holes in the base of the burners.  Then I replaced the original short fixing screws with longer screws.  This means the stove is now secured by four corner screws and the two for the burners.  It will probably add to the strength of the mounting.

The mounted stove

The kitchen closed for travel.

The kitchen hasn’t been properly mounted on the tailgate as I’ll need to remove it to modify the tailgate hinges.