My name is Rob Peterson. I've been on this forum for awhile but haven't posted much. I joined this site back when I had a 91 big block E350 in the hopes of some day converting it to 4wd and building it into a cool adventure vehicle / tow rig. Long story short; life priorities changed, projects developed, some completed, some dissipated and I ended up selling my old van for something a little more respectable and reliable. That was about 5 or so years ago.
A little background on me; I'm an engineer by trade and have spent the first decade of my professional career in the off-road world, designing parts for Jeeps, Dodge trucks, and full on rock crawlers. A co-worker and I who had worked together for nearly 10 years at our old job got to the point where we decided we needed to try our hand at starting our own business. We both really loved the Sprinter platform but were disappointed in the lack of aftermarket components for them. So our goal was to start a company called Van Compass with one simple goal in mind; Bring high end suspension and off-road components to the Mercedes Sprinter world.
Since we are an upstart company, we feel forums are some of the best place to get feedback on projects we are working on. The more eyes we get on a project, the better the products we can design and bring to market. So we are going to do our best to explain the reason behind the rhyme on all the projects we are working on.
With that said, we figured it was about time to start a build thread on the affectionately named “Pita Van.” I’m told it started life as an On Star surveillance van. The gentleman I purchased the van from was in Fresno, CA and had a large Pita bread bakery. This little gem was one of 3 Sprinter delivery vans he had. Happily I was in the right place at the right time to score this 118” WB high top bread runner. Dirty, and neglected, the relatively low mileage short van was the perfect candidate for us to use as our development / test vehicle.
Phase one started with development of our Scout 2.0” lift kit. As some of you have seen already, this van was used to develop and test our 2” lift kit for the T1N platform. The lifted van with 33x12.5x15 tires went on several long road trips and was used extensively for nearly 5k miles straight in this configuration.
Phase 2 involved development of a fox shock package. With all initial prototypes being developed off this van, and final testing being done on my business partner’s “Tall Can” which is a 158” wheel base van, we are able to really dial in the mounting brackets as well as develop both a “heavy shock tune” for longer wheel base, fully outfitted vans and a “light shock tune” for smaller wheel base, utilitarian style vans.
Phase 3 and current stage of the van came about from a lunch meeting one of our friends in the off-road magazine world who has a deep love for 4wd vans. I had mentioned how I would like to develop a 4x4 conversion kit using all Mercedes parts, specifically, the running gear out of the Mercedes ML 4x4 SUV platform. Given that the ML uses a 4wd version of the NAG1 transmission, as well as a 2.64:1 low range transfer case, it seemed like we could get a lot of the parts we needed to make the swap happen and still be able to service it with off the shelf Mercedes parts anywhere in the world.
With Overland Expo West looming and that being the finish date goal in mind, we picked up a junk ML430 and set to work.
We stripped the ML of the front / rear suspension, transmission, t-case, front / rear differentials, front / rear drive shafts and cut out the suspension mounting points of the frame to use as a reference to develop our conversion brackets.
Step one was swapping the 4wd transmission in. We swapped bell housings from the 2wd Sprinter trans onto the 4wd ML trans. We retained the Sprinter torque converter as the diameter of the Sprinter’s flywheel is slightly smaller than that of the 4.3L V8 of the 430.
Step two involved removing the front suspension sub frame of the Sprinter and lots of head scratching. We temporarily welded some motor mounts in place and got to work with measuring, drawing and fabricating the conversion brackets needed to get the ML’s front suspension sub-frame in place.
With concept and initial design figured out, a couple hours on the torchmate and welding bench, we had the first stage of a rough bracket sorted out.
With the sub frame bolted in place as low as we could get it and still have adequate room between the differential and oil pan, we could start building upper control arm mounts. Again, careful measurements, lots of head scratching and a couple cuts through the “frame” and we had room to tuck the control arms in place. Matching the OEM geometry of the ML’s suspension, we were able to keep the van at just a 2” lift over stock 2wd ride height. So, 2” lower than a brand new factory 4x4 Mercedes van.
At this point came more tedious measuring, lots of removing brackets, re-installing brackets, test fitting motor mounts and sway bar mounts, measuring for shock placement and clearance. Tons of work, but the end result is a completed bench welded bracket that is basically your ML front conversion all in one piece. Sub frame, upper control arms, motor mount, shock mount and sway bar mount. Everything indexes off of 2 factory sprinter sub frame mounting points so it self-indexes in the correct spot.
Now on to the torsion bar mounts. I’m on the fence with the torsion bars and am curious to see how they do under the van. I’ve had plenty of torsion bar sprung vehicles and do like them for several reasons, but the main downside in this application is the loss of ground clearance. Because we ended up with such a low ride height, these hang down much lower than I would like them to be. I have plans for a front Fox coil over or air shock on the next go around, but we are sticking to our initial concept and keeping the Pita van 100% ML parts.
The torsion bar mount is completely removable and ties into the transmission mount. It is also the front gas tank mount. The gas tank did need to get shifted back to clear the t-case but all the original components still work. We just need to extend some wiring and hoses to get the fuel system all hooked back up again.
That brings us up to where we are at today. Right now we are painting brackets and working towards wrapping up the van to get it out to Overland Expo West in May. Fabrication is about 90% done. We still need to get the steering shaft hooked up and fabricate a rear gas tank mount. Then it’s onto the nitty gritty of hooking up brakes, fuel systems, wheel speed sensors and all that other fun stuff.
We still have a ton of work to do, and this is all a rough first go of it but so far I'm pretty happy with how it is turning out and can't wait to get it on the ground for a test drive.
-Rob
A little background on me; I'm an engineer by trade and have spent the first decade of my professional career in the off-road world, designing parts for Jeeps, Dodge trucks, and full on rock crawlers. A co-worker and I who had worked together for nearly 10 years at our old job got to the point where we decided we needed to try our hand at starting our own business. We both really loved the Sprinter platform but were disappointed in the lack of aftermarket components for them. So our goal was to start a company called Van Compass with one simple goal in mind; Bring high end suspension and off-road components to the Mercedes Sprinter world.
Since we are an upstart company, we feel forums are some of the best place to get feedback on projects we are working on. The more eyes we get on a project, the better the products we can design and bring to market. So we are going to do our best to explain the reason behind the rhyme on all the projects we are working on.
With that said, we figured it was about time to start a build thread on the affectionately named “Pita Van.” I’m told it started life as an On Star surveillance van. The gentleman I purchased the van from was in Fresno, CA and had a large Pita bread bakery. This little gem was one of 3 Sprinter delivery vans he had. Happily I was in the right place at the right time to score this 118” WB high top bread runner. Dirty, and neglected, the relatively low mileage short van was the perfect candidate for us to use as our development / test vehicle.
Phase one started with development of our Scout 2.0” lift kit. As some of you have seen already, this van was used to develop and test our 2” lift kit for the T1N platform. The lifted van with 33x12.5x15 tires went on several long road trips and was used extensively for nearly 5k miles straight in this configuration.
Phase 2 involved development of a fox shock package. With all initial prototypes being developed off this van, and final testing being done on my business partner’s “Tall Can” which is a 158” wheel base van, we are able to really dial in the mounting brackets as well as develop both a “heavy shock tune” for longer wheel base, fully outfitted vans and a “light shock tune” for smaller wheel base, utilitarian style vans.
Phase 3 and current stage of the van came about from a lunch meeting one of our friends in the off-road magazine world who has a deep love for 4wd vans. I had mentioned how I would like to develop a 4x4 conversion kit using all Mercedes parts, specifically, the running gear out of the Mercedes ML 4x4 SUV platform. Given that the ML uses a 4wd version of the NAG1 transmission, as well as a 2.64:1 low range transfer case, it seemed like we could get a lot of the parts we needed to make the swap happen and still be able to service it with off the shelf Mercedes parts anywhere in the world.
With Overland Expo West looming and that being the finish date goal in mind, we picked up a junk ML430 and set to work.
We stripped the ML of the front / rear suspension, transmission, t-case, front / rear differentials, front / rear drive shafts and cut out the suspension mounting points of the frame to use as a reference to develop our conversion brackets.
Step one was swapping the 4wd transmission in. We swapped bell housings from the 2wd Sprinter trans onto the 4wd ML trans. We retained the Sprinter torque converter as the diameter of the Sprinter’s flywheel is slightly smaller than that of the 4.3L V8 of the 430.
Step two involved removing the front suspension sub frame of the Sprinter and lots of head scratching. We temporarily welded some motor mounts in place and got to work with measuring, drawing and fabricating the conversion brackets needed to get the ML’s front suspension sub-frame in place.
With concept and initial design figured out, a couple hours on the torchmate and welding bench, we had the first stage of a rough bracket sorted out.
With the sub frame bolted in place as low as we could get it and still have adequate room between the differential and oil pan, we could start building upper control arm mounts. Again, careful measurements, lots of head scratching and a couple cuts through the “frame” and we had room to tuck the control arms in place. Matching the OEM geometry of the ML’s suspension, we were able to keep the van at just a 2” lift over stock 2wd ride height. So, 2” lower than a brand new factory 4x4 Mercedes van.
At this point came more tedious measuring, lots of removing brackets, re-installing brackets, test fitting motor mounts and sway bar mounts, measuring for shock placement and clearance. Tons of work, but the end result is a completed bench welded bracket that is basically your ML front conversion all in one piece. Sub frame, upper control arms, motor mount, shock mount and sway bar mount. Everything indexes off of 2 factory sprinter sub frame mounting points so it self-indexes in the correct spot.
Now on to the torsion bar mounts. I’m on the fence with the torsion bars and am curious to see how they do under the van. I’ve had plenty of torsion bar sprung vehicles and do like them for several reasons, but the main downside in this application is the loss of ground clearance. Because we ended up with such a low ride height, these hang down much lower than I would like them to be. I have plans for a front Fox coil over or air shock on the next go around, but we are sticking to our initial concept and keeping the Pita van 100% ML parts.
The torsion bar mount is completely removable and ties into the transmission mount. It is also the front gas tank mount. The gas tank did need to get shifted back to clear the t-case but all the original components still work. We just need to extend some wiring and hoses to get the fuel system all hooked back up again.
That brings us up to where we are at today. Right now we are painting brackets and working towards wrapping up the van to get it out to Overland Expo West in May. Fabrication is about 90% done. We still need to get the steering shaft hooked up and fabricate a rear gas tank mount. Then it’s onto the nitty gritty of hooking up brakes, fuel systems, wheel speed sensors and all that other fun stuff.
We still have a ton of work to do, and this is all a rough first go of it but so far I'm pretty happy with how it is turning out and can't wait to get it on the ground for a test drive.
-Rob
