2016 Sprinter 4x4 DIY + CCV pop top build

[swedishSTile]

I was an avid backpacker, spending weeks even months a year hiking around the Sierra and California coast among other places. Then I got married and became a weekend backpacker a couple times a year and a car camper. Enter our first child and we bought a 2015 F-150 for camping so we could get off the beaten path a bit. I lifted it, locked the rear, Truetrac in the front, 34" All terrains and we went exploring. Then I bought a 95 E-350 7.3L High top 4x4 van and we went exploring in better comfort, but we were unable to talk to one another while driving. Something to do with that 7.3L. I loved the econoline. It was fast (relatively), powerful, obnoxious looking, loud and capable. My wife, sadly, hated it. Pretty much everything about it. It went up and down for sale a couple of times as my wife and I tried to sort out what we wanted and what she was willing to compromise on. Then we ran into a financial hiccup which decided the vans fate and a couple days later it was gone.
Get down the road a couple of months and we managed to sort out the financial hiccup and I got serious again with my wife about what we wanted. She wanted an RV at this point and I wanted a tent and pair of boots. The compromise was a too expensive sprinter. I caved. The sprinter was always interesting but lacked the real get out there capability we ( read “I”) wanted. My wife convinced me that the thought of being in the middle of nowhere with two kids and having one of them get hurt or sick was uncomfortable, so we ( read “I”) gave up on true exploration and we bought a 4x4 Sprinter. I have been slowly building it out over the last few months and am almost done.
My wife’s requirements were:
Porta Potti
Outdoor shower
Hot water
Heater
Ability to sleep 4
Quiet/comfortable/reliable
Refrigerator

My requirements were
AWD/4x4 and as many offroad goodies as possible.

I insulated everything, did my electrical work, built a galley which converts to a platform bed, roughed out my water system (I just picked up the last piece, a custom tank, today), did the flooring, added an espar heater and had bed cushions made. I can go into detail on anything upon request.

The van basics are:

Fully insulated
Compact Air Horn
Galley Cabinet with outdoor shower at rear of van, hot water service and sink
Isotemp Cruise 85 DC only refrigerator
Porta Potty stored in cabinet
Cabinet storage for food/cooking/camping items
Lower bed 72" x 60". Cushions are 4" thick and consist of 3" Q31 Foam topped with 1" of soft latex foam, wrapped in dacron and covered in microsuede.
2000W power inverter with recepticle at rear of van for coffee maker etc
184ah AGM 12V battery bank
220ah AGM 6V batter bank (not installed yet)
4X 100W Renogy Solar panels (not installed yet)
MorningStar Sun Saver Duo Solar charge controller with remote monitor and temperature sensor
Rear gally/bed LED puck lights
Front LED strip lights
Porta potty
under seat storage for clothes etc
Colorado Camper Van pop top
Carefree of Colorado manual awning with lights
285/70r17 Falken Wildpeak AT3W on Method wheels

Van will get
20 Gallon fresh tank in spare tire location
Aluminess rear bumper with delux galley box and tire carrier.
Power running board on slider/passenger side
Forthcomming agile offroad coilover front suspension
Agile tuned fox rear dampers
Agile or Deaver rear leaf springs


We call her GRETA Van Blau, some mix of germenglish and dutchenglish for Greta the blue van, where GRETA is Group Recreation Expedition Travel and Adventure. Its stupid, but the truck's name is Bobbie (what your head does when offroading in a 5000lb truck), which is equally dumb, and the last van was Frankie because it was a big green monster (after Frankenstein's monster)

 

[swedishSTile]

Some pictures of my work to date

Compact Air horn

Insulation work

Electrical Schematic. I still have to install the second battery bank and solar panels once the pop top is done but it is completely wired for those items already. The fuse panels feeds the fridge, four light circuits, espar, maxxair fan, and pop top.

Electrical box-still need to laminate this

Solar charge monitor

Espar and 2nd aux batter for bank 1. Total battery bank size will be 400ah.

Cabinetry roughed in and sub floor

Sink cabinet is on the left. YOu can see the shower box. Hot water will be from a 2.5 gallon electric hot water heater.

 

[swedishSTile]

Window Shades from ripplewear. I have a complete set. They are AWESOME

Bed platform and finished cabinets, also finished floor

The little clip at the edge of the build out step pulls up and the step slides out to reveal storage

 

[swedishSTile]

Some pop top images

TIRES!!!!

 

[swedishSTile]

RE-shaped fenders (using a heat gun) to fix tire rubbing

The Maxxair delux fan has a major design flaw. The rain shroud hits the vent lid when going over any kind of bump. NOT good offroad or on a crummy highway. I fixed it with some window glide stripping and a couple of zip ties

Finally some first trip shots

View from the top bunk on out first shake down trip

I still have a lot of finish work to do. I need to install my solar panels and finish my water system and then figure out offroad bits and final suspension, but its getting there and we are enjoying it.

 

[bdog1]

Looking great. Is everyone happy now? Can you elaborate on the matress? And perhaps the window shades?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[brianjwilson]

Nice! What tire size are you running?

 

[temporarydweller]

Wow. Such a nice build. With views like that, I'd be kicking the kiddos out of the top bunk for sleeping. Nice use of the step area for a storage cubby.

 

[swedishSTile]

Looking great. Is everyone happy now? Can you elaborate on the matress? And perhaps the window shades?
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Well, my wallet is most certainly not happy. However my wife is, so in turn I am. I get to get outdoors, my wife gets to come in comfort and enjoy her time as well. My oldest daughter thinks the van is her playground, so she naturally LOVES it, and my youngest is too young to know.

The mattress came from amazon. I got the idea from a user on the sprinter forum (LooseRocks). It folds up so I can fold it in half and turn it sideways in order to bring the top down. With the CCV top you need 3-4 inches of clearance on either side of the mattress for the top hardware. The CCV mattress is therefore only 48" wide. This one is 54" and therefore the top cant be closed when it is extended. However folded in half and turned sideways is perfect and makes the bed much more usable. I bought this:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01N2VRBP3/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

The window shades are heavy cordura with temptrol fabric on one side and heavy duty magnets to hold them in place. They are made by a forum member on the sprinter forum (rt1rac) who also has an ebay store (http://stores.ebay.com/ripplewear). If you message her on the forum or on ebay she can give you her number and give you discount pricing on a full set or custom colors or whatever else you want. Her name is Sue and she is awesome, as are her products.

We really like the shades, they are so easy to just throw up and they really help keep the heat and sun out of the van. We keep the rear set up all the time because it really helps the AC do its thing.

Nice! What tire size are you running?

285/70r17 (33x11.5). I know a couple of people have gone bigger than this (295/70r17), however I would not recommend it. My sidewall lugs rub the dust boot on the strut and I am maybe 2mm from rubbing the metal behind the front mudflap plastics at partial lock and full bump

 

[UHAULER]

Very nice. I think many of us with an offroading background want a van with 6" lift and 35" tires but in real life a van like yours would probably be the better choice for most people.

 

[swedishSTile]

Very nice. I think many of us with an offroading background want a van with 6" lift and 35" tires but in real life a van like yours would probably be the better choice for most people.

Yes, at the end of the day my wife was right (somewhat to my chagrin), I dont want to be 10 miles down a boulder strewn road with a broken axle shaft or leaf spring or stuck in the mud with my two little girls in the van. In reality this van will get us far enough away from campgrounds and RV parks that I will be glad do spend the extra time relaxing with the family rather than crawling down some impossible road in a more capable vehicle.

Sticking and unsticking a vehicle is part of the fun and challenge of offroading, which makes offroading not a family sport in my book. My plans for the van are some winter camping, some yellow post camping, accessing primitive campgrounds and getting to trail heads which are inaccessible in an RV. Small things too, like, we went to visit a ghost town called Bodi outside of Mammoth lakes and it rained while we were there. The last part of the road is pretty crappy and the 2wd frontier in front of us was having a pretty miserable time. Just having the extra ease of some ground clearance and AWD makes a lot of adventures less stressful.

 

[luthj]

Very true, for many of us, the idea of hauling our tricked out camper vans deep down some 4x4 track sounds appealing. But at some point the reality of doing with with family, or just a very expensive camper van doesn't make sense.

A 4x4 sprinter has good clearance, acceptable approach/departure angles, and enough traction/articulation to get you deeper than you should be. Heck, my 2WD sprinter will get into spots that makes me cringe thinking about it.

In the end, you want a vehicle that will let you access some of the cooler spots, and that can handle low traction surfaces. Good ground clearance and angles, combined with 4x4 will do that.

A lot of the really good stuff requires a hike in anyways, and being able to get clear of maintained roads and pavement will get you away from most of the crowds.



Your wiring diagram shows 2 separate batteries, and possibly a third bank. You should read up on matching battery types and resistance in parallel banks. Failing to do so will certainly reduce the life of all batteries connected. Having different battery types in parallel is even worse, and can result in cross charging, and dramatically reduced battery life. Even 12in of wire difference between the two batteries (total wire lengths) can result in uneven charge/discharge loading.

Nice work on the maxxfan. They have a rubber gasket that supposedly stops the rattling, but I never got around to installing it.

 

[swedishSTile]

My banks are completely isolated. Each bank has matched batteries with equal length runs of cabling connecting them to one another. One bank consists of two Group 49 AGMs, one under the hood and one under the passenger seat. My biggest challenge is not resistance steer, its temperature differential between the two batteries.

In my experience 12" of sufficiently sized wire in a parallel bank isnt going to have nearly the effect on performance and longevity as a too hot battery. My set-up is not as ideal as my OCD engineer brain wants it to be, but it fits within my space constraints and will give me an acceptable amount of use for the cost.

 

[brianjwilson]

My banks are completely isolated. Each bank has matched batteries with equal length runs of cabling connecting them to one another. One bank consists of two Group 49 AGMs, one under the hood and one under the passenger seat. My biggest challenge is not resistance steer, its temperature differential between the two batteries.

In my experience 12" of sufficiently sized wire in a parallel bank isnt going to have nearly the effect on performance and longevity as a too hot battery. My set-up is not as ideal as my OCD engineer brain wants it to be, but it fits within my space constraints and will give me an acceptable amount of use for the cost.

On my Tacoma I used a blue sea ACR, with three matched agm batteries. The starting battery was under the hood and the two house batteries under the rear seat. Charged from the alternator and the 300 watts of solar on the camper roof. I sometimes worried about driving somewhere and shutting the engine off, and the solar controller topping off all batteries to the same voltage. The batteries inside the truck enjoyed the air conditioning, while the other was hot under the hood. I ended up disconnecting the ACR often with the dash mounted switch to prevent overcharging/overheating the under hood battery.

I like the idea of using the space under the hood of the sprinter for a battery, but I don't want to have the same issue again of having batteries at substantially different temps. This time I'm going for one big AGM inside, at a relatively constantly temp and a ctek charger with smart pass. The hope is to make it a little more idiot proof (you know, for the wife haha) and no worries about switching anything on or off etc. Then I'll mount an air compressor under the hood where it will stay out of the elements better than an underbody mount.

 

[luthj]

My banks are completely isolated. Each bank has matched batteries with equal length runs of cabling connecting them to one another. One bank consists of two Group 49 AGMs, one under the hood and one under the passenger seat. My biggest challenge is not resistance steer, its temperature differential between the two batteries.

In my experience 12" of sufficiently sized wire in a parallel bank isnt going to have nearly the effect on performance and longevity as a too hot battery. My set-up is not as ideal as my OCD engineer brain wants it to be, but it fits within my space constraints and will give me an acceptable amount of use for the cost.

Okay, so you obviously know what your doing. At least you have temp compensation! I have seen so many setups without it, it's sad.

If one battery is consistently hotter than where the probe is, there may be value in adjusting your charge and float voltages to the lower side of the recommended range? High charge voltages with sealed batteries may be worse overall, and there is also a small risk of thermal runaway.

Managing multiple banks must be fun. But sometimes it's the only way to make everything fit.