It's kind of like a Revel, but not.

[rob cote]

So you want to read about another van build, huh? What makes this one so different from all the others? Probably nothing. But you like reading the same story over and over. That's cool, I don't judge. Strap in for some reading before we get to the pictures. If you want. Or just scroll down to the good parts. Literally no one will know. Except that dude over at the NSA monitoring you. Say hi.

So we are building this thing ourselves. By we I mean my wife, Mandy, and I. But mostly I. She works full time. Building this thing is my full time. I retired aviation supply chain because I was sick of it (other than a small group of people with whom I worked closely on the day-to-day). Overall industry though? Is like the opposite of me. Anyways, none of that really matters. But it kind of does doesn't it? Now you have an idea of me. "Oh this guy must be wicked smart or some shiz." "He's probably loaded because airplanes." We also sold our house to embark on this project, so there goes those two theories. You'll get 'em next time.

WHY are we building this thing in the first place? Well, we love to travel. DUH. And we want to always be travelling. We're frustrated by the one or two weeks a year we actually get to do it. It's like a teaser each time. I won't discount that it's important to have something to look forward to though when you're on that 40-hour grind hashtag bossbxtch hashtag rise and grind. Or whatever. But we have been dreaming for years of being able to travel full time. This isn't even the first step, by a long shot. But it's the first step that you guys care about, so that's where we start. So, the backdrop of this build, the design intent if you will (or if you won't, I don't care, I'm still writing it), is full-time living for two adults; one tall, one small; and one dog. He's half pitbull, half husky. Since I'm technical, it's 3/4+1/4. A pitsky. His name is Loki and he's almost 9. He always gets ice cream at a local ice cream joint on his birthdays. And we make him wear a silly birthday hat and take his pictures. It's this whole big thing. He doesn't even care that we're embarrassing him, because he's shoving his snout into the ice cream dish the whole time. That's all he knows. You thought I was joking:





Anyway, I got sidetracked there about dog; back to the point. We like the rough roads. Gravel, unpaved, whatever. We used to like hardcore off-roading; I mean, we still do, we just don't DO IT anymore. And this van is not the vehicle for that anyways, that would just be impractical (read: dumb). So the two main takeaways are: 1) it has to be easy to use and B) it has to be rugged. If it's awkward or clunky or just plain dumb, we are going to be annoyed living in it every day. And if it starts falling apart, I'm going to be disappointed. In myself. This is what we used to wheel in though, if you care:



Before that was the same thing in blue. After that was a 1st gen 2003 Tacoma TRD with all the fixins. But now, since we're not wheeling, we're starting with a 2020 Sprinter Cargo 3.0L diesel 4x4 144" wheelbase high roof. That's a mouthful. Handsful? Because I typed it. I dunno. Whatever. I'm sure you lot have never seen one before (that's a JOKE), so it looks like this:



The only options that I think are relevant to you guys, and you'll see why later, is the auxiliary battery, wood cargo floor, and heated/power comfort seats with swivel bases. I think the rest is probably fluff. Like a rear view mirror. That has nothing to do with this thread so we won't even talk about it. Or how silly it is that that's a $35 option on the build sheet. I never saw a rear view mirror as an option; I always thought they were standard, or maybe even required? Surely that's in the FMVSS, no? But that's not important here. So I'm not even going to mention it.

 

[rob cote]

So, let me tell you a frickin' STORY. This one's a doozy. And there's not many pictures. Sorry. Skipping over a lot of the planning details for now, we're installing Flarespace flares on this thing. Well, by "installing" I mean paying someone else to install them. That's the literal translation. And while they're in there, we requested a sliding window be put into the sliding door, and windows in both rear doors as well. LET THERE BE LIGHT! And also, visibility.

"It should take about a week," we were told. Sign on the line. Done and done. A background detail: we have a travel blog that we had been totally neglecting, (the link is in my signature if you care, and it's actually more up to date because this post contains information 1 year old now) but we requested some pictures of the process in order to share with our readers. They happily obliged. A couple days later, we received communication that they had lost electrical power and as such the timeline would slide to the right. And they were having trouble matching the paint color for the flares. A specialist would have to visit their site to get the paint dialed in. Okay, well you're the experts and we're at your mercy. You have our literal home in your possession so...

So, we had the van back in like a week plus a couple days, I think. The timeline is a little hazy. This is back in March? of LAST year, mind you. I think it was early March-ish. It's not super important right now. Unless you're like, really into dates. In that case, make one up. We dropped it off on a Monday, and I think we kind of assumed we'd pick it up that Friday, or the following Monday. The following Tuesday they shot over the pictures and said we could pick up the van. Awesome! But wait. No work has been done to the sliding door. And it looks like the window is in the passenger's side flare, not the driver's side, like we'd requested.



They admitted their mistake with regard to the window in (or, NOT in, as it were) sliding door. The window was in their shop, they'd just overlooked it somehow while doing the rest of the installation work. It was ready for pickup Wednesday, with an understanding that we would discuss the flare window situation further. We were pumped to dig into the meat and potatoes of the work on the van. We started with insulating the walls and stuff, since soon they'd be buried. "Soon". HA! When I opened up the sliding door to stuff a bunch of wool inside, I found water. Because, of course. Why wouldn't it be wet inside?; we had had a tiny sprinkle of rain the night before and the van hadn't moved. I followed the trail of water opposite the direction of gravity (read: upwards). The inside channel of the window in the sliding door was full of water. The window was leaking. I called the installer and the van was gone within the hour. I had to hustle to clean up the mess I'd made working.

The window was removed for reinstallation. I think on the assumption that the seal was NFG. That seems logical to me. We got a call. The window was scratched during removal. So we got a temporary non-opening window while we waited for new glass to be delivered. Mint. On the driver's side flare situation - I'll save you guys a crap-ton of time, because I know you're wicked busy. Our best effort yielded an agreement that we'd pay for the additional window and half the installation labor. We're not good negotiators, don't judge. Oh well. It's our home, so we were determined to get what we want. We'd have to wait for the replacement driver's side flare. You can't just cut a window into a windowless flare.

Cool, so you can replace the sliding door window at the same time as the driver's side flare. Just one more downtime. The window arrived, and then the flare. In an extended-depth-with-window box; just what was ordered. Except it was a standard-depth flare. Sick. Remember when I said I left supply chain? I had flashbacks. Woke up at 2:30am in a cold sweat. Not really, that's being dramatic. For effect. It was just annoying. Flarespace rectified their issue and the correct flare was on hand within a couple days.

The flare was installed as well as the slider door window, and we picked the van up. Finally. It was all done. We could do our own leak test and verify everything. They "do a leak test". Allegedly. GIANT air quotes. I already found a leak without even looking for it, remember. So, I clearly trusted their test. I just wanted to replicate it. For science.



Know when the record scratches and everything suddenly freezes? Imagine that noise. Let's go back in time. Remember when they installed a window in the flare on the passenger's side? It was a driver's side window on the work order. And that's what got us into this whole mess; we thought driver's side window meant a window on the driver's side. It wasn't clearly explained to us until afterwards. They used the wrong side glass because it was available in their shop, whereas the right window had an unknown lead time (weeks? months? lightyears? who knows). "We do this all the time, it doesn't matter". Oh, okay. Except when you do that the seal faces into the wind. Which would be every time. So, imagine you're driving down the highway and it starts raining. All rational people park, right? No.

This was where I hit my limit. I'm glossing over a lot here, obviously. Each problem was a whole thing. Every time. I kinda snapped. But they ultimately agreed after taking the van for a whole day, that what I was telling them was actual factual. And they had a record of it. But they had to see it I guess. At their shop. The van is actually invisible when it's in our possession.

So this left us waiting for a passenger's side flare window to come in. No ETA. Apparently they're on a massive backorder. BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE! If you laugh now, we'll give you double the fun for the low price of free-ninety-nine. Not really double. It's just that the passenger's side window appears to leak even when the van's parked. I can't really tell whence the leak, so I'm not sure if it's an installation issue or the seal internal to the window. I haven't even told them because it's scheduled for replacement anyway, and I'm just too tired of it. One last thing. Still on my list to do to notify them because this they do need to know. The last flare that was installed, the second driver's side one? The paint is bubbling all along the top.

So yeah. This build is hilarious.

 

[iggi]

That's brutal.

 

[Stitebunny]

Might not be a bad idea to hint at what business this is to help someone else avoid the trouble.
A mistake or 2 is understandable. This sounds ridiculous.

 

[ITTOG]

Might not be a bad idea to hint at what business this is to help someone else avoid the trouble.
A mistake or 2 is understandable. This sounds ridiculous.

Not ridiculous, more like incompetence.

Yes a name would be helpful.

 

[rob cote]

If you're near Massachusetts and trying to install flares or windows, send me a message. I'm not here to publicly blast anyone, but I do understand the need to know before you go.

 

[Christian P.]

So, let me tell you a frickin' STORY. This one's a doozy. And there's not many pictures. Sorry. Skipping over a lot of the planning details for now, we're installing Flarespace flares on this thing. Well, by "installing" I mean paying someone else to install them. That's the literal translation. And while they're in there, we requested a sliding window be put into the sliding door, and windows in both rear doors as well. LET THERE BE LIGHT! And also, visibility.

"It should take about a week," we were told. Sign on the line. Done and done. A background detail: we have a travel blog that we had been totally neglecting, (the link is in my signature if you care, and it's actually more up to date because this post contains information 1 year old now) but we requested some pictures of the process in order to share with our readers. They happily obliged. A couple days later, we received communication that they had lost electrical power and as such the timeline would slide to the right. And they were having trouble matching the paint color for the flares. A specialist would have to visit their site to get the paint dialed in. Okay, well you're the experts and we're at your mercy. You have our literal home in your possession so...

So, we had the van back in like a week plus a couple days, I think. The timeline is a little hazy. This is back in March? of LAST year, mind you. I think it was early March-ish. It's not super important right now. Unless you're like, really into dates. In that case, make one up. We dropped it off on a Monday, and I think we kind of assumed we'd pick it up that Friday, or the following Monday. The following Tuesday they shot over the pictures and said we could pick up the van. Awesome! But wait. No work has been done to the sliding door. And it looks like the window is in the passenger's side flare, not the driver's side, like we'd requested.

View attachment 719171

They admitted their mistake with regard to the window in (or, NOT in, as it were) sliding door. The window was in their shop, they'd just overlooked it somehow while doing the rest of the installation work. It was ready for pickup Wednesday, with an understanding that we would discuss the flare window situation further. We were pumped to dig into the meat and potatoes of the work on the van. We started with insulating the walls and stuff, since soon they'd be buried. "Soon". HA! When I opened up the sliding door to stuff a bunch of wool inside, I found water. Because, of course. Why wouldn't it be wet inside?; we had had a tiny sprinkle of rain the night before and the van hadn't moved. I followed the trail of water opposite the direction of gravity (read: upwards). The inside channel of the window in the sliding door was full of water. The window was leaking. I called the installer and the van was gone within the hour. I had to hustle to clean up the mess I'd made working.

The window was removed for reinstallation. I think on the assumption that the seal was NFG. That seems logical to me. We got a call. The window was scratched during removal. So we got a temporary non-opening window while we waited for new glass to be delivered. Mint. On the driver's side flare situation - I'll save you guys a crap-ton of time, because I know you're wicked busy. Our best effort yielded an agreement that we'd pay for the additional window and half the installation labor. We're not good negotiators, don't judge. Oh well. It's our home, so we were determined to get what we want. We'd have to wait for the replacement driver's side flare. You can't just cut a window into a windowless flare.

Cool, so you can replace the sliding door window at the same time as the driver's side flare. Just one more downtime. The window arrived, and then the flare. In an extended-depth-with-window box; just what was ordered. Except it was a standard-depth flare. Sick. Remember when I said I left supply chain? I had flashbacks. Woke up at 2:30am in a cold sweat. Not really, that's being dramatic. For effect. It was just annoying. Flarespace rectified their issue and the correct flare was on hand within a couple days.

The flare was installed as well as the slider door window, and we picked the van up. Finally. It was all done. We could do our own leak test and verify everything. They "do a leak test". Allegedly. GIANT air quotes. I already found a leak without even looking for it, remember. So, I clearly trusted their test. I just wanted to replicate it. For science.


Know when the record scratches and everything suddenly freezes? Imagine that noise. Let's go back in time. Remember when they installed a window in the flare on the passenger's side? It was a driver's side window on the work order. And that's what got us into this whole mess; we thought driver's side window meant a window on the driver's side. It wasn't clearly explained to us until afterwards. They used the wrong side glass because it was available in their shop, whereas the right window had an unknown lead time (weeks? months? lightyears? who knows). "We do this all the time, it doesn't matter". Oh, okay. Except when you do that the seal faces into the wind. Which would be every time. So, imagine you're driving down the highway and it starts raining. All rational people park, right? No.

This was where I hit my limit. I'm glossing over a lot here, obviously. Each problem was a whole thing. Every time. I kinda snapped. But they ultimately agreed after taking the van for a whole day, that what I was telling them was actual factual. And they had a record of it. But they had to see it I guess. At their shop. The van is actually invisible when it's in our possession.

So this left us waiting for a passenger's side flare window to come in. No ETA. Apparently they're on a massive backorder. BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE! If you laugh now, we'll give you double the fun for the low price of free-ninety-nine. Not really double. It's just that the passenger's side window appears to leak even when the van's parked. I can't really tell whence the leak, so I'm not sure if it's an installation issue or the seal internal to the window. I haven't even told them because it's scheduled for replacement anyway, and I'm just too tired of it. One last thing. Still on my list to do to notify them because this they do need to know. The last flare that was installed, the second driver's side one? The paint is bubbling all along the top.

So yeah. This build is hilarious.

Sorry to hear about this trouble. I know this is not going to help you but perhaps it may help someone else.

Your story is one of the reasons why we bought a Transit AWD with factory windows.

We can sleep sideways without installing Flarespace, saving a lot of trouble and money. And we got one with factory windows in the back doors and sliding door. We only installed one window and it's a small Tern Overland model.

 

[rob cote]

While we were dealing with the back and forth of the van getting windows, not getting windows, getting flares and more flares, etc., I did actually get some stuff accomplished. But also before all that. I think it was the very firstmost thing we did - we installed a ladder and spare tire carrier combo. It's made by Owl Vans and it's sick. Get one. Hell, get two.

At the time of the build, and pre-build, we lived in New England. For those of you that don't know it, it's a region of the USA that receives snow in the winter. Are there any areas that straight up don't get ANY snow, at all, ever? But New England gets a fair bit. It's not like Buffalo or Minnesnowta by a long shot. Although one recent winter, the snowbanks were flush with the roof of our house; that was pretty wild. The point is that the snow accumulates on the roof of the van and I refuse to be the guy driving down the highway with a big pile of snow up there. It's dangerous. And in some places, it's actually a ticketable offense.

Since we picked up the van mid-December of 2020, we prioritized installing the ladder, even though we wouldn't be installing a roof rack for some time (or perhaps at all), or otherwise needing to access the roof. It was so clutch. We got a long-ass car-washing-broom type deal with a telescoping handle. This enabled me to basically push all the snow forward towards the windshield from standing at the top of driver's side rear door.

Installation was really straightforward. Simple, logical process, clearly outlined in video form on Owl Vans'es Youtube. So, you know I screwed it up. The first step for us was to swap out the hinges because we had the full-swing 270* jobbies. Replacement hinges with a nice black powdercoat were included with the ladder. By the way, Mercedes, what the *******?? You actually need three different drivers to remove the rear doors. An 8mm (I think?) inverted Torx (or an 8mm 12-pt socket if you're me), a T47 (I think? It's been a minute) torx, and a 18mm 6-point socket. Just, WHY? Anyway, so the hinge swap was not a huge deal with an assistant. I just did one at a time so I didn't have to take the door fully off.

Then you just drill a hole on the latch side of the door with the template they give you. I touched up all the holes with paint afterwards to stave off the rust. New England is also the rust belt if you didn't know. We use road salt like Frank's Red Hot; put that ******* on everything. So, then you've got 5 holes to bolt the ladder to. Each hinge has 2 holes in it, and those get filled with ladder hardware. Pretty clever. Of course I put the ladder hardware in backwards unknowingly. When you close the door the first time, you find out. Course, it was like 3pm by this point, so it was almost pitch black. Not actually, but it was getting darker, and colder. Ever wrench in the cold? Don't. I hate it every time.



I think that was actually the only mishap at that time. We flipped the bolts around and threw the spare tire on and called it. Then we sat on the other pair of hinges for a while.

"Wait, what other hinges?" Yeah. It's not explicitly stated when you order the ladder. I assumed that it just came with one pair of hinges. And it's supposed to. But there was a packing error in our "favor". I didn't know it until literally months later. So, hang on let me get there. We put the passenger's side hinges on probably a month or so after the ladder went on. Mandy wanted them to match color-wise and I wanted to not do more panel adjustments and all that. She was right though, it looks way better with them matching. But keep in mind it was still cold weather all the time. So I never quite nailed the alignment of the doors. They worked, but I could feel slight drag on opening and closing. I didn't like it. But I didn't prioritize fixing it because it was always so cold. And we could easily just not use those doors. Mercedes gives you a whole bunch of them to choose from. We usually use the front ones or the slidey one.

Finally, spring sprung, and I was determined to resolve it and get both doors aligned perfectly. I wanted them to close like factory again. I started with the driver's side and it went pretty easily actually. I noticed that the top hinge had been sitting too low and was contacting the body. Something to be aware of if you ever swap hinges or whatnot. So I moved to the passenger's side and found the same problem. I could. not. fix. it. I loosened everything and lifted the door as high as it would go, until the bottom hinge hit the taillight, and still the top hinge was too low. That's when I really started to look at the bottom hinge.

It just didn't look right in the space. The driver's side hinge mostly followed the lines of the door and the taillight and bumper. But the passenger's side one just looked wrong. I just called Owl Vans to ask them for advice on adjusting the doors. At first, they were really not helpful, because they couldn't see what I was seeing. I forget who answered the phone, but they said, "Hang on let me get a van in front of me and I'll call you back." Okay. Few minutes later the phone rang "What are the letters cast on the hinge?" I read them out..."That's a driver's side bottom hinge." On the passenger's side.

Because of course it was. So, apparently if you're ever in a bind, it will work. Technically. Just not well. There was a series of calls then, which was a little confusing, because we were all confused. Basically, what happened was we ordered from a local vendor, not directly from Owl Vans. We checked the box for 180* hinges. There was an error, somehow, when they shipped the ladder to us and we received hinges for both sides. But there was ALSO an error in packing one of the sets of hinges, because a driver's side lower was in the box with a passenger's side upper. Owl Vans sent us the correct bottom hinge straight away, free of charge, on the condition that I ship them the one I had with the return label they provided. So ultimately, the vendor may contact us for their hinges back, because they're technically "short" a set, but it hasn't happened yet [still, one year on]. But everyone over at Owl Vans was super helpful. Big thanks.

Side note - does anyone here know where to get the little plastic inserts for the 180* hinges? We're missing one or two now. Not sure when or how they got lost.

 

[rob cote]

What came next; the chicken or the egg? Oh. So we had issues with the power sliding door. Some of you may or may not have suffered the same. There's some posts sprinter-source.com under VS30 Tech where it seems like several people are experiencing several issues. Not all the symptoms are the same, so I'm guessing not all the solutions are the same. But anyway, here's ours.

The issue was intermittent OF COURSE. The power sliding door would work most of the time. When it didn't work, it was a failure in the latching sequence. In case you don't have one of these vans, here's how it works. The door has a hoop on the rear edge, and the body of the van contains the latch. The latch has a motorized moving mechanism that I don't FULLY understand. But essentially, when the door slides forwards to close, the latch grabs onto the hoop on the door. Once the latch grabs onto the hoop, the whole latch mechanism is drawn in towards the centerline of the van. This squeezes the door snug against its gasket. Then, I believe there is a secondary latch at the top of the door which catches once the door is sucked all the way into the body.

For some reason, sometimes the latching sequence would break down. The process would sound normal, like all the moving parts are moving in the proper order. And there were no failure messages displayed in the instrument panel. So the van thought it was working correctly. But the rear edge of the door would stick out about 1" from the body of the van once it was done doing its dance. You could see daylight through the gap, so it wasn't even close to sealing properly. But if you weren't paying attention, it would look like it was closed. Sometimes, you could cycle the door again and it would latch fine. Sometimes I'd have to cycle the door several times to latch properly. It was totally random. Gently pushing inwards on the rear of the door from outside would make it latch normal.

So we went to the dealer. Of course, they couldn't replicate the issue even after cycling the door dozens of times. They thought, well maybe the door is just barely out of alignment, right on the edge, so sometimes it's fine. They adjusted the door and whatever adjustments are on the body. They floated a theory that perhaps if the ground isn't perfectly flat, it was causing the body to flex just enough that it fell outside of the alignment specification. Since the shop floor is flat, they couldn't replicate it. Sure, there's some logic there. "Call us if it happens again". More like when.

So I called them, I dunno, two days later? "It happened again." So I brought it back. Again, they couldn't replicate the issue. It was like "we believe you, but it's hard to diagnose because we can't see it." Honestly, I forget what they tried this time. But it didn't fix it, so do you guys even care? I let them know about the issue as soon as it reoccurred. I scheduled a third trip. Mind you, I tried to pair these up with recall notices as well, so I wasn't making the trip for nothing each time, at least. They floated a new theory that perhaps because I'd been working on the van, the battery was too low to properly cycle the door. I shot that down immediately, because the engine started afterwards. I will not be convinced that it takes more power to move a sliding door than to start an engine. Plus, after they said that, I had a failure to latch while the engine was running. So. Yeah. I took angle measurements against a level to show that my driveway is ~2 degrees. I said if the sliding door can't work on a 2 degree incline, I do not want it. We never even wanted it in the first place, but we took what van was available with all the other stuff we DID want.

Anyway. Third trip. They found me in the cafe. Bad news - we can't replicate the issue. Shocker. Good news - there's a fault code stored. B18D162. They didn't specify which control module had it stored, and the format is one I don't recognize. I found nothing when I searched the internet for the code. They said there was a software update available for whichever control module, so they applied the new software. It's been fine ever since, more or less. This is a full year later - it rarely, but occasionally fails to latch. We just cycle it once, or push it shut from the outside, it's not a big deal because it's so infrequent. I don't know what the patch notes on the software revision said, so I don't know if it was an update specifically to fix the issue I was having, or if it was coincidence. But I'll take the win.

Meanwhile all that was going on....

The frickin' door was rattling. I thought it was the screens on the aftermarket windows for a while. One day I'd had enough. I was like, Mandy you have to look at the door while I'm driving, go stand back there. Figure out what's moving. She was like "the whole door is moving". W H A T. We swapped positions and she drove. The inner skin was definitely moving relative to the outer skin. The factory uses a soft rubbery kind of panel adhesive to bond the two together and it clearly failed in several areas. So, I think it was on the second trip to the dealer above ^^^ they sent the van to the body shop while they had it, and they applied new panel adhesive all over the place. What they used is quite different, and appears more like an expanding foam type of product? But whatever, it doesn't rattle anymore so I'm down with it. It was so annoying.

Alright, I think that's it for wordy, pictureless, boring, background kind of posts. Moving forward will hopefully be more illustrative.

 

[xleratin]

Whether or not I find your van Building interesting, I will continue to read this thread because it's more entertains than a novel!

 

[rob cote]

Whether or not I find your van Building interesting, I will continue to read this thread because it's more entertains than a novel!

Glad you enjoy! I guess I'll keep going. So anyway. That's basically all the BS out of the way, I think. It was a struggle in some ways. A lot of roadblocks or downtime would crop up right as I got into flow. And a lot of the early work is stuff you can't even see, too. So, of the times I could do stuff, by the end of the day it would look like I hadn't done anything. That was kind of frustrating and rewarding at the same time. It's weird.

The timeline is totally wonky for most of the stuff I wrote so far. But I think I can keep it chronological from here on. It's just that the flares and windows are a story that kinda needs to be told all together to fully understand it. Same with the sliding door issues. And the ladder experience. Now let us go back to March 2021.

We ordered a DIY headliner shelf kit from Vancillary. Probably the most expensive piece of paper I've ever owned. No, that's not true, I have a degree. The most expensive piece of paper I've ever thrown out. But totally worth it. For the money we paid, it saved me SO much time measuring, cutting, trimming, re-cutting, etc. And yielded a better result.

The first thing they have you do is bolt up these brackets they provide. They just use the factory "oh *******" handle hardware:



I missed a lot of work with my camera, I guess. Well not exactly. I took video. I'll put the link to that video at the end if you guys care to watch it. I didn't use Vancillary's method for cutting out the shelf. They say to tape their stencil to your shelf material - in our case 1/2" thick plywood - and then cut it out. I've tried this before, and as soon as you cut through the tape your stencil gets loose and it's a pain in the butt. Instead, I cut out the stencil on the line, and then used a very light coat of spray adhesive to glue down the stencil to my board. Then I just followed the line with my jigsaw and BAM! a shelf was born. Not really. There's a second piece that forms the rear edge of the shelf; a sort of lip, so stuff doesn't just fall off and bonk you on the head. That piece is pretty straightforward to cut out, it's just 2 parallel cuts, and then chop off the corners roughly at a 45.

The hardest part was wrapping it all up. Fabric work always stresses me out a bit because I like it to be as perfect as I can get it. For this particular project, I used two different materials. First, I applied a 1/4" thick squishy foam sort of material. I don't know what it actually is, but it was marketed as "headliner". I put this on all sides of the shelf. On the top, it will dampen any noises coming from hard objects stored on the shelf. On the edges, it fills in any gaps from my imperfect cutting job, and on the bottom it softens the blow every time I smash my head into it. This still happens on the regular.



That was obviously in-process. As you can see, it's a very light grey color. And as you can't see, it's not super durable. Take my word on it. Since the underside will be subject to daily life, we wanted something that could withstand the abuse. Also, Mandy didn't care about the color, but I wanted something much darker so it would basically disappear in our peripheral vision for when we're driving. I was concerned anything much lighter than the factory headliner would be distracting. So we decided to cover the bottom in black duck cloth. I wrapped it around the edges so it ends where you can't really see it. It was the cleanest way I could figure out how to terminate it. You can see it if you look for it, but you have to be tall enough.



Finally, it gets installed on the brackets that we put in at the outset. This part's pretty simple, you just slide it in and bolt it down. If you have the "acoustics option" or whatever the heck it's called - the big styrofoam chunks at the rear of the headliner - installation is a bit tight. The front of the headliner is very slightly wider than the rear by design. I scratched our foam hunk, but don't really care. I don't even know if it's staying there [spoiler - it's not]. If you want to avoid this, you can just pull the foam out, or probably cover it with a piece of tape for the installation of your shelf. Here's what it looks like installed:



Iron out your duck cloth first. As you can see, I missed a tiny spot right in the middle of the vertical piece. The most obvious location, of course. That's van life. The shelf is frickin' SWEET. I was worried it would be a lot of work for tiny storage space AND make it a huge pain in the butt to get into the cockpit, but it's none of those things. I do have to duck more to get into the front seats, but I'm already past the learning curve. Mostly. I still occasionally lightly hit my head on it but at least it doesn't hurt because it's padded! I highly recommend to pad it for this reason. Mandy's much shorter than me at 5 feet tall, and she can stand all the way upright under the shelf. And we've taken the van for some long weekends visiting family or camping or whatnot, and we can easily store all our clothes up there, plus all the stuff for Loki, and there's still room left over.

The shelf does sag slightly in the middle along the front edge. I noticed when I installed it, before anything was put up there. I did some digging into my options for securing it more ruggedly; there's not much. It's possible to secure it through the headliner. The headliner appears to be made of string (??) pressed together with glue of some sort, so I'm not confident it will offer much strength. And it seemed like it would be really difficult to measure to the right spot to add a bracket or whatnot, because there's no good reference; it's all curves. So for now, I'm just monitoring it and it seems to be totally fine. If it gets worse, I think the move will be to just redo it in 3/4" plywood. I honestly don't think it will be necessary. But I just wanted to put that out there. 1-year update: the sag has not increased at all, and is really not noticeable. Oh and here's a video if that's more your thing:

 

[rob cote]

Alright let's get into the meat and potatoes of this build, shall we? Meat meaning electricity, and potatoes of course being more electricity? IDFK. Ultimately, we decided not to install solar panels on this rig. We wanted to. We planned to. How cool is that - you can literally turn sunlight into electricity, by just sitting there doing nothing. Alas, we would need about three times as much roof area in order to make it work with our power budget. Maybe not quite that much, because of conservatism in the budget, but that's the ballpark we're in. Then of course there's the added stress of cloudy days, the depths of winter, etc. to have in the back of your mind. So it's bittersweet, I guess. On the one hand, we love the passive energy creation that doesn't require the use of fossil fuels. On the other, it alleviates some worries and makes us more free.

"So, what, you're just not going to use any electricity at all, now?" No! We opted to install a second auxiliary alternator. Well, it's the first auxiliary alternator. But it's the second alternator installed in the van. The first one was there when we got it, of course. I installed a 280 amp unit from Nations Starter and Alternator. It's a 2-belt kit (not 3-belt). The alternator install was pretty straightforward. There wasn't really any fabrication work involved at all. Just remove some bits, and install different ones.

After the mechanical installation came the electrical installation. This was a bit more challenging in the way that free-form art is. It's just like...open-ended. Where do you run each wire? Nobody knows. I mean, some people know where theirs are. But it depends a lot on where you want to direct the charge. Does it go to your starting battery? Does it go to a battery isolator? Does it go only to house batteries? Where are they located? You get the picture.

I totally mislead you guys. Let's back up now, shall we? Long BEFORE I did all that, I installed our house batteries. In the first post, I mentioned that we have a factory auxiliary battery. Now you'll see why that matters. IF you have one, and you're looking to upgrade it a little, the 170Ah lithium battery sold by Renogy fits in that space, damn near perfectly.



The foam cover thing bulges up just slightly, but you wouldn't notice if I hadn't just told you, would you? So underneath all that is a fair bit of work, but nothing crazy. I just added (4) 1/4-20 threaded rods and made a tie-down plate type deal to sandwich the battery to the factory battery tray. The battery case has a slight taper, so theoretically it could squeeze out, BUT, the battery case also has some tabs molded in that hook the edge of my tie-down plate, so it can't actually slide out. So we're all good. You can't really see it, but trust.



I obviously painted it and all that after the picture, because that matters on parts you'll never see again. Hopefully. So, that's one of them. We effectively tripled the usable storage space under the passenger's seat by swapping out that battery. Because 92Ah lead acid ~= 46 usable Ah, vs 170Ah lithium which is ~= 170Ah usable. Depends who you ask. But that's not enough. What I don't have pictures of is the link to the other batteries. But, it's kind of boring. Imagine a fat black line and a fat red line underneath the floor. That's pretty much it. It's two 4/0 cables. You can picture it, I belive in you.

Against the inside of the rear door on the passenger's side, I fit two more of the same battery. The tie-down is through the floor of the van body, similar design concept to the one under the seat.



Ignore the water tank for now, will ya? I'm getting there! So that's pretty much it for that part. The cables linking the batteries together are all 4/0, because of the length of the run and the current capacity of the alternator. Those things are a real treat to work with. Let me show you. I don't have any good shots under the hood that aren't too revealing. So I'll show you that part in a minute sit tight. But I have these of the cable routing inside. It was...uh, let me say "not fun".





It came out sweet though. I trimmed away some of the back side of the factory tool kit to clearance the cable, and then after that, it just fit inside the factory wire troughs, provided. So you can't really see it in those pictures. Sorry not sorry. That was kind of the point. OH. And then, something I think I actually have zero pictures of, is the alternator regulator.

I'm aware we have "dumb" batteries, but we opted for a Wakespeed WS500 anyways, as sort of a future-proof thing. In case we one day have smart batteries. I think it handles even dumb batteries a little bit better than other regulators, because it monitors temperature as well, but I could be wrong. So far it works great. It fit perfectly inside the battery tray under the passenger's seat. I just used velcro to stick it in place. The only thing I had to do custom was to drill a little peep hole in the side of the seat base so we can view the LED on the regulator if necessary. So far, it's only been blinking green which means all systems go. But it can be used to diagnose issues if it's blinking red.

Oh and one last thing someone's bound to wonder about. The rear battery grounds are connected to the passenger's seat base battery ground, which is connected to a 500A shunt from Blue Sea Systems. The shunt is located just inside the access door on the side of the seat base, and is connected to the factory ground point under the seat. I asked Wakespeed how best to handle the grounding (common, or each to the chassis, and where should the shunt go, etc.), and this configuration was their recommendation.

 

[rob cote]

We worked at insulating spaces as we went through the build. It kind of has to be a parallel process. You can't just insulate the ceiling, because the ceiling itself holds the insulation in place. But you can't install the ceiling until all the wires are run. And so on, until you realize you have to install the refrigerator to insulate the ceiling.

Really, the whole project is a massive order-of-operations problem. Just constantly asking myself, "can I do this yet?", then doing the thing, only to undo it for something I overlooked. It's an experience, for sure. I'm trying to be good, it's just really difficult. So, if you're ever wondering why a completed conversion cost so much...

Anyway, we're using Havelock wool batts. It's pretty great. I've insulated homes here in the US before. We typically use fiberglass batts which suck to work with, even though it's fairly easy. Wool is all of the ease-of-installation with none of the itching-for-hours-afterwards. It also just smells faintly like a farm which is way more pleasant than the fiberglass stuff. It tears about as easily and doesn't have a paper backing to have to cut. For straight cuts, I've just been using a fresh pair of scissors. A lot of the time, I just need a small piece to stuff into a hole, in which case I just tear it by hand.

I can't really show you a finished picture because you have to wait for the whole project to be completed. But here's some progress photos.





I was able to get a ton of insulation above the factory headliner. Not literally; it would collapse. But there was a lot more space than I anticipated there being. We also noted through the winter that the floor gets super cold. We have a factory wood floor, as I said before, but it doesn't do much insulating. So we opted to sacrifice about 1-1/4" of ceiling height, and built an array of "joists" underneath the floor. I marked where the joists contact the steel floor, and removed paint in those areas. I applied a subfloor construction adhesive to secure the subfloor in place against the van floor. This gave enough room for a layer of wool to go down in between all the oak boards. Then we laid the plywood floor back down on top of the joists.





Eventually, I'm going to need to spend some time shaping a filler stick across the front and rear ends of the floor. I don't like the gap this created. But it's not priority yet.

 

[rob cote]

Alright so then I bit off almost more than I could chew. Typing this over breakfast feels too ominous. Let's say I took on a project that was overwhelming. In itself, it wasn't awful, but I was actually installing it in parallel with the alternator and it was a lot all at once. My logic was that both components had control wiring that needed to pass through the firewall, so it made sense to do them at the same time.

So, we live in New England for now, right? And it gets cold in the winters. And our plan has always been to spend at least one winter here in the van full time [HAH! More on that later]. We'll need some heat, obviously. This will seem like overkill when I put it like that - a whole heating system for one measly winter?? That's not the only reason for the heat installation; we'd have found another solution. But anyway, who cares about the why, you're here for the how, right?

Let's take it from the top, shall we? We ordered a kit from Heatso that includes a host of parts from all different manufacturers. The heart of the kit is a small hydronic (hyrdronic, not hydroPOnic, we're not growing "tomatoes" in here) furnace made by Espar, or Eberspacher if you're European I guess? I dunno, apparently the company has two names or something, not really sure. This furnace burns diesel fuel to heat coolant. That's it. Pretty basic. The other main components are two heat exchangers. A water-to-air unit - just like what's inside the dash of any modern car - made by Kalori, and a water-to-water plate-style heat exchanger made by Kelvion. The rest is just bits to put it all together. Here's everything:



There's a whole mountain of other support equipment included as well, like a coolant pump, lengths of hoses in various sizes that are required, plumbing fittings, brackets, hardware, control circuit wiring, etc. etc. It's really well put-together, and I believe the only things I had to source outside the kit were a fuel line adapter to tap into the factory auxiliary fuel connection, and longer coolant hoses. For the record, 3/4" and 5/8" hose works (although they're probably supposed to be metric sizes; I used what was available locally).

The principle is simple - the furnace heats the coolant which is pumped through the heat exchangers, then the heat exchangers heat air and water. The installation is not so simple. The furnace has its own installation manual. But the furnace wiring is tied to the air heater wiring, which has its own installation instructions. The water heater has no installation instructions at all. The furnace is designed to be controlled by one of a handful of optional thermostat/control units. It's kind of left to the end user to determine a few of the connections, although a lot of it is technically documented. It's just cumbersome to figure out where, when it comes time to actually do the work.

Furthermore, of course, nothing tells you where each component goes in your build. So there's a lot of sort of free-form assembly. Hours spent trying to find the best location for things. So I figured this was a good way to show you one way that works, and I think mine's a little different than a lot of them out there. There is no right answer, obviously, and everyone's design is a little different. If this works out for one other person, then cool. It would be awesome if I can save someone a little time trying to figure what to put where.

I started with the furnace on the inner fender well on the passenger's side, with the coolant pump attached to the furnace using included hardware. Oh, one other thing I forgot isn't included in the kit that I used is rivet nuts. Heatso includes a ton of good quality flanged M6 bolts so I wanted to use those as much as I could. Installing M6 nutserts is not for the weak of hand. I had to lean on some friends to get them all crimped into place. But it was worth it.



Then I ran the fuel line. Mercedes makes this part pretty simple. I think this is fairly common knowledge, but for anyone who doesn't already know, there's an auxiliary fuel tap installed from the factory on the fuel tank which is capped off. The cap removes with no tools; it's like a squeeze-lock type deal. And the mating connector is readily available online. I think ours came from Dorman, I'm sure others make the same part. You slap that guy on, and then slide your fuel hose on the hose barb and you're off to the races. I installed the fuel pump for the furnace on the driver's side fender well and ran hose A to B, just up the driver's side frame rail, by the steering shaft. From the fuel pump to the furnace, the logical path was across the top of the firewall, over and down and around and through. It's a little indirect, but I just tried to follow factory wire paths asbestos (AS BEST AS) I could. One thing I've noted which I thought was pretty clever - the auxiliary fuel pickup will starve before the main engine fuel pickup. When we got low on fuel one day, the furnace would not fire up, and gave a fuel error message. But there was still enough to run the van. So that worry is gone. The heater runs out of fuel at about 1/4 tank, or a little under.

Combustion air path for the furnace was pretty simple. I put the intake hose up in the corner of the engine bay next to the firewall and the inner fender. It's a very light plastic tube so it holds itself in place. I didn't bother to secure it with anything, because it would have been rather difficult, and unnecessary effort. It can hardly move because of the way it's bent. It's higher than the engine intake, so I think we're good. It shouldn't ever drown. The exhaust runs down the inner fender towards the engine and the ground. The muffler is secured to the subframe. A subframe? It seems like there's multiple subframes in this machine. I don't even know what is called what under there. Some structural business going on under the engine. Call it whatever you want. There's a hole in one of the subframes that conveniently perfectly fits the included rubber isolators for the exhaust tubing, so I stuck it through the hole to hold the exhaust tip in place after the muffler, and pointed it at the ground.

After that, I worked on the wiring installation. Getting power to where it needed to be and whatnot. Trying to figure out which wire went where and how it as all supposed to work. We opted to include the EasyStart Pro controller, since we will eventually be seeing high altitude cold weather and we want the heater to work as much as possible. So it turns out that it mainly works like a timer; when you want hot air or water, you turn the system on and tell it how long to run for. We weren't in LOVE with this, but it would have been fine. I stumbled across some work by forum member keithr in this thread and copied his efforts. If you don't feel like leaving this thread to read another (let's face it, why would you?) I'll summarize. They added an additional temperature controller and wired it to turn on the EasyStart system automatically at the temperature setpoint. Go there for specifics if you need them. It wasn't terribly difficult to setup because of all the legwork previously done by someone other than me. It works sweet and the additional temperature controller was only a few bucks on Amazon. Someone more savvy than me could probably find it cheaper or make their own. The cool thing is that since the furnace wiring controls the air heater - which can be set to Auto - we theoretically never have to touch any controls once we're setup in order to maintain a minimum temperature. If we want hot water when the system is not running, we just push one button on the furnace controller and wait a couple minutes.

So that was really the bulk of the work, and I realize this is super long now. After the floor was insulated and screwed down, I had a good idea of where the heat exchangers should live, so I was able to secure those in place and then run the coolant hoses point to point and close that loop. I learned that you absolutely must install a coolant reservoir, or something will bust open when it's pressurized as it gets hot. Essentially, you need a cushion of air. I was between junkyard visits when I originally wrote this, still on the hunt for a coolant reservoir/expansion tank that's the right size and shape to fit the available space. What was included in the kit won't work for me. It was a little while after I originally wrote all this, but I ultimately installed a coolant reservoir from a Prius. It's tiny, but big enough for this system, and has been working great.



One final thing I wanted to put out there, since it seems to be working well, but is not documented anywhere, is how I secured the water heater. I found some neoprene at a fabric store and realized it can withstand the coolant temperature. So, I wrapped the heat exchanger in neoprene to insulate it a little bit, hopefully marginally increasing efficiency, and helping to keep the surrounding area cool. I can't frickin' sew, so I just used super glue to make the seams. It seems to hold up just fine, even with slight tension in the fabric. Neoprene stretches pretty good, so if you just pull it slightly before you stick it, it gets rid of all the wrinkles and makes you look like you know what you're doing. I made some simple hat-channels out of sheet metal that were the appropriate width and height to go over the heat exchanger and strap it down to the floor. And that's pretty much it. It's super basic, but it works. There were no mounting provisions on the heat exchanger that I could discern, so that's what I came up with.

 

[RVflyfish]

Loving this thread. Educational and entertaining. You have a gift man.