Someone also put a photo up of his reel strapped to the rear doors and he also had a Combo van quite a while back on one of the forums.
How have you secured yours on Vdubdave if you don't mind me asking
wow spruse youve got a good memory that was my trial run that i did 3 years ago. A couple of weeks after that photo i bought a full steel rear door and made some bolt on steel brackets to slot the reel into, it takes a few seconds to put the reel on, and i can keep the van shut up all day, I've been using like that ever since.
The whole electric reel project is work in progress. (I've been close to buying the remote hd reel quite a few times) I do plan on concealing the motor & wiring to protect it from rain etc, but i may end up leaving it in the van and using a pulley system through the floor.
As for putting it on the other side of the reel away from the water inlet is purely because i didn't want to lose the handle yet, but its not a big job to swap sides.
I am going to make some small guards to prevent the hose from falling off the reel into the chain, but to be honest i have made it fall off on purpose quite a few times to see what happens, but the gap is quite tight so the minibore doesn't really get stuck in anything because its too big, microbore may get jammed up a bit more.