in good shape - brunnhilde part 20

My exploration state of the design for a strong box to carry the Honda EU2000i continues. The discovery that Honda makes and sells a line of silencer enclosure for their line of generators in Japan helps my design goals greatly.

My initial thought was to design a strong box to carry the generator outside of Brunnhilde discretely to deter theft. I am now wanting to have the cake and eat it too - that is to aim for being able to operate it inside the enclosure.

In my previous post of this series, I mentioned Sportsmobile offers an enclosure that can accommodate the Honda EU2000i generator. With a bit of research on the web I would later found out this enclosure is made by Aluminess, and the particular box in the photo below is called Galley Box.

Aluminess Galley Box

a Vanagon Camper sporting a Aluminess Galley Box housing a EU2000i

So there is a ready made enclosure for the Honda generator in which the dimensions are tailor-made for it, I just need to pony up the money to buy it right. Unfortunately there are a number of issues with this box for my needs. While it is light weight owing to the aluminum construction I see many down sides to it:

1. I think it is relatively easy to cut through, or just ply the door open
2. It requires structure support on the bottom of the box to mount, which diminishes the weight advantage of the aluminum construction 
3. High price - $495 plus shipping
4. As my goal is to be able to operate the generator inside the enclosure, the aluminum construction will be much louder than steel. Additionally with the cut outs for air circulation the enclosure will further weaken
5. I also have no use of the metal fence on the top side of the Galley Box

one example of the bottom support in an installation

Hence I am pursuing a steel enclosure. Initially I was attracted to the DeeZee 24"x18"x18" box. I called the retailer and were told the dimensions of the door opening is 1" less on each side of the outer dimensions. This means if I were to take her words as given it would be 22"x16".

from this photo, the dimension lost to the door frame looks more like 1.75"

Since it would be a $200 gamble if I just take her words at face value, I decided to post a question to people who have bought this box. I received the answer and it is 19 1/4" x 13 1/4". This means the door frame is 2.38" thick.

A lot of research based solely on the product illustrations I found one box that appears to be most likely to have a door opening large enough to fit the generator is the Delta Pro. Again, calling the retailer is as helpful as talking to a rock. I also searched for the importer to little success (too much than I care to write about here). I also know it all too well products like this the brand, model, and the representations means squat, as the importers often switch to another manufacturer.

To illustrate my points of why contacting the supplier or seller to obtain the missing dimensions is likely futile. Here is one typical supplier out of hundreds on Alibaba. This one have the best dimensional information. They have a table of the lines for North American markets, and European markets. The differences are imperial versus metric rounded to the nearest inches and cm respectively. You can see similarly sized boxes for the two market, with very similar weight. But the weight for the NA markets are obviously in pounds, despite of the unit in Kg shown.

Most US distributors be cannot bothered to create product photos of their own, nor the product dimensions. I reckon for a 24"x18"x18" 14-gauge steel box cost about $40 when purchased in quantity of hundreds.

Tentatively the Delta Pro appears to be the most likely candidate, short of custom build from scratch.

a bit of points of interest. I recently did a google search for Airstream Westfalia and look at the images. A few photo piqued my interest. They are the photos taken by Colonial Airstream taking delivery. I keep seeing the same pattern. It appear Colonial Airstream is the smart dealer that had upfitting the nice accessory that Westfaia had been too anal to include. A full length running board.

To see this glorious upfitted options, I recommend starting from page 9 and 10 - they are around the later years when they were sold new. The practice appears begins 2006 and onwards.