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Welcome back, Paul. It's always boring around here without a Jensen build thread to look at and admire. That's a stumpy little van you guys have got there. It'll be great to see what you can squeeze in.

My two-cents-worth . . . Heater: Unvented cat heaters have some well-established drawbacks, but nothing else gets you cheap, quiet heat with no installation hassles. I suggest that most times you'll be happy with the results, assuming you provide adequate venting. Also, we have a Vornado...

Sadly, I don't. Mine 2500's a good bit that way,too. The cargo vans are that way when there's not substantial weight over the rear axle. And in common with all hauling trucks, the cargo vans also don't ride anywhere as nice empty as full. Interestingly, I'm soon going to be swapping in...

Oh, well, that's a really fine question, but a bit of apples to oranges. Stuart/Maureen's van has a passenger seat, a normal passenger side door, a front footwell for the passenger, more appropriate gearing and better suspension and ground clearance. Some of this might matter and some might not...

I had good luck finding a competent transporter for my sidecar rig using http://uship.com It's a very workable system, the two downsides being that you may get more responses than you know what to do with and some of the shippers will not have a lot of reviews. Pretty much guaranteed to find...

Thanks for the compliment. I admire your vehicles/fabrication/projects/interests as well. All impressive stuff. Best, Mike

Also, if you haven't already, go browsing at the Sprinter Store: www.sprinterstore.com. They have many useful Sprinter goodies, including information about the suspension modifications you might want to make. The standard mod for a T1N is Koni shocks and a heavy rear antisway bar; the...

You might get the impression looking at some of Steve's photos that there actually was room on the WABDR for these trucks. Ummm . . . not so much: And this isn't close to the narrowness of the non-WABDR hiking trail Steve referred to above that they bravely went down when escorting me...

The Michelin LTX M/S2 is sort of the go-to tire for Sprinter owners, with the LTX A/T also well-loved. Expensive tires, but they do great with the Sprinter suspension. If you haven't been there yet, be sure to check in at the Sprinter-Source forum: http://sprinter-source.com/forum/index.php...

I have no idea why, even in the Exide Megacycle brochure, the 20-hour amp-hour rating seemed to be secret information, but eventually I saw that one of the Amazon reviewers said it was a 100 amp-hour battery, so its capacity is in line with all the others.

You could do worse. Unfortunately, getting the best price on one is a total crap shoot. They seem to go on sale fairly often in a pattern I absolutely cannot understand. The $290 they want on the website today is toward the upper end of the pricing, though the cheapest price on line for the...

That's the exact one, Model #50131. I'd view those reviews as pretty positive. It looks like that model has 30 reviews, of which it got 26 five-star ratings. And I'm not clear why two of the one-star reviewers didn't take advantage of the 3-year replacement warranty. When you consider that...

Thanks for the post. It does, in fact, strike me as a pretty optimistic asking price for a twelve-year-old truck with 180K miles. Of course, it's not like these are plentiful, so if someone has to have one . . .

OK, WTH?! :( Using Google, I just went to the Sears Group 31 Platinum DieHard page: http://www.sears.com/diehard-platinum-marine-battery-group-size-31m-price/p-02850131000P?sid=IDx01192011x000001&kpid=02850131000&kispla=02850131000P and found that the current product is spec'd as a 100...

There's not really any Consumers Reports-type information on Group 31 deep cycle AGM batteries, but a few brands have gotten some reputation among marine users . . . Odyssey, Deka, Braille, Penn, Exide, Trojan and Concord/Lifeline batteries are some you hear mentioned favorably. Rolls-Surette...

I suspect that the current black plastic case isn't meant to be a work of art, but I don't know that many people would want/need anything more "expedition-proof." All the case does is house the battery and electronics and cover the controls and the connector ports, and it does that in the most...

Thanks for the kind words, Brett. It's good to have you posting--feel free to take over any of the consulting work here that you care to. As far as where to show the ArkPak to prospective users, the two obvious suspects are Easter Jeep Safari in Moab around (duh) Easter and our own Overland...

It'd be a project, but would give you an interesting and one-of-a-kind rig. I don't know how much you know about Revcons, but they are pretty unique for their lightweight aircraft-like aluminum construction and their low center of gravity. For a motorhome that big, it handled very well; I even...

You can. That's a big advantage of a "smart" charger, in that it will provide the float charging needed to keep an AGM battery at 100% without overcharging. That said, though, a good AGM's rate of self-discharge is so low, 1-2 percent a month for a new one, that it probably doesn't matter...

It's got nothing to do with Goal Zero . . . the rule of thumb for retaining good life for any AGM (absorbed glass mat) deep cycle battery is not to discharge it below 50%, which equals a voltage of about 12.2 volts. For flooded cells, the rule of thumb is not to go below 70%. Nothing horrible...