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An excellent point. I'm not saying that many of us could do what Steve did with the Bullet-XV, but check out the build information here: http://bulletxv.wordpress.com/2009/03/02/the-donor-vehicle/, and also here: http://www.expeditionportal.com/forum/threads/34294

This is an excellent point as diesel truck maintenance, and especially Sprinter maintenance, is relatively expensive. I read in some industry publication (which I sadly can no longer cite) that fleets were moving away from diesels to gas engine trucks because the all-in costs for diesels (more...

The battery bank installation predates my ownership of the truck, but that's largely a good thing, as John Bendit and his fabricators at Upscale did a much more sophisticated install than I'd have ever attempted. John used three Group 31 Odyssey absorbed glass mat batteries with 20-hour capacity...

I also suggest giving serious thought to the Kelty Carport. Not bugproof, but a lot of space that's pretty private. Takes a while to setup, and it has the mother of all "you-poke-your-eye-out" poles, but it's worth it. One advantage over a conventional awning is that it can be both a largely...

I'm quite happy with the Foxwing I have on the XV-JP. It's easy to use and provides, as you know, an enormous amount of coverage. There are three drawbacks, which may or may not affect you. The first is that the awning is impossible for one person to deploy in even a moderately stiff breeze...

Really sorry about the flu, Rod, but thanks for the very kind words. Please be sure to let us know if you have questions, and good luck on your own build.

Tentative congratulations, and please be sure to let us know when it's well and truly gone so we can stop pondering how good it would look in our driveways.

Just 120V. It's not that the 12V ten-liter unit I have in the XV-JP wasn't considered (it works pretty well), but it takes about $700 and as much as three months to get one. And there wasn't enough room for the big Isotherms, nor did I need that much hot water. So for under $200, it's easier to...

300 amp hours of Odyssey Group 31s mounted extremely nicely by Upscale Automotive are tucked up under the floor. That bank is connected to the Prosine 2000W inverter. The cooktop maxes out at 1500 watts. So the short answer is "Yes, there's enough to run the cooktop." That said, and as you...

Figuring that you're all really good at advanced planning, it's time to pass on the details of this year's Northwest SprinterFest, the annual low key West Coast get-together of Sprinter trucks, owners and interested onlookers. This NW SprinterFest, the ninth, will be held on Saturday, April 12th...

Thanks for taking the time to bump your Astro back into our consciousness. One of the Portal's great builds.

Thanks for spending the time to give us the detailed writeup and great photos. Very much appreciated.

Patience, Grasshopper. ;)

Good grief. A run-of-the-mill 1300L at Barrett-Jackson. Yippee, I guess, but for that price, you used to be able to get a pretty workable camper thrown in. Well, as they say, there's one born every minute and if the auction has two people who want it, who knows? A little odd to make a big deal...

A company called Fiberine, in Wilmington, CA, makes this penthouse top for Sprinters that raises the roof 34". What you can't tell from the picture is whether this roof, shown on a low roof T1N, could also be put onto a high roof. The way it sits, there doesn't seem to be an obvious reason it...

We can talk about this more later, but the biggest problem with the vehicle you found wasn't, I don't think, that it was a Class C RV, but rather that it was on a Sprinter chassis. Nobody is more a fan of Sprinters than I, but the View/Navion setup has serious weight-carrying limitations even...

Yes, there were. I put the remote controlled battery powered LED pucks at the same locations where John had previously installed small, invidivually switched lights of this style: Feel free to use that ceiling wiring for bigger lights if you want. Heck of a start for half-a-day's work.

The story of the upfitting of the no-longer Instant Overlander continues on the build thread here: http://www.expeditionportal.com/forum/threads/121227.

As you can read about toward the end of this thread, http://www.expeditionportal.com/forum/threads/113102-INSTANT-OVERLANDER-Mikey-s-Transitory-Sprinter-Camper, I've once again decided something needs to be more complicated and expensive. This time the victim is the 144" wheelbase, '03...

They are fairly serious conversions. The Salem-Kroger conversion adds a fair amount of lift to the Sprinter and it substantially changes the handling. My humble opinion is that you wouldn't want the conversion just to get out of the occasional bit of snow to save you from chaining up, as you'd...