MB 1120 Coming to America! Purchase, Build and Now Travel!
- Thread starter VerMonsterRV
- Start date
dermal fauna
New member
Hi there, I'm thinking of copying, more or less, your subframe for my Bedford RL, thanks for all the information you put out there. I wondered which mounts and springs you ended up going with, and how many and spacings etc, also did you kind of tune the springs in along the length? This info might be already in your blog, but I couldn't find it.Yup, unfortunately most of my computer time is at night and I am usually half asleep. I mean, I even make mistakes using Firefox auto spell check
I am pretty sure the mounting system is good. At this point I was just trying to figure out the amount of down force needed. I mean, the way I see it the entire habitat is pressing down, not even sure what the springs are trying to accomplish. The springs I have found are stainless steel so should be good resistance to corrosion. I also doubt they would ever break as they will only come under load when the subframe leaves the chassis. And there is a 3/4" bolt through the middle of them.
Thanks loads for your time.
Richard
VerMonsterRV
Gotta Be Nuts
Our chassis already had the mounts from the firebox that was on it. I matched the mounting points on the new subframe. I am thinking now I should have used stiffer springs as the box moves more than I would like. I may change to stiffer ones once I get other projects completed.
So we are back in the States. It was a bit hectic with the crossing as we decided to help a Spanish friend back into the USA. This involved him flying from Mexico to Las Vegas and Heather driving his Spanish tagged Sprinter from Tecate Mexico to Vegas. It all went off pretty smoothly but between covid tests, flights, border crossing, hotels, Uber, insurance and documentation on permission to drive the van there was a lot of prep work. We are now camped in Alabama Hills in CA!
So since we have not done anything strange for a while I have started down the path of buying a V-STROM 650, fitting it out as an adventure bike and shipping it to Spain. See our new friend has a adventure bike back home and it sounds like fun to spend the month of September touring around. Plus he has offered to store it for us in his garage so we can return next year. We loved our time in Europe when on the boat and want to return. So, anyone have any first hand experience with this?
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Victorian
Approved Vendor : Total Composites
I toured all over Europe when I was still living in Germany. It's very easy to do. You will love it. Camping in European campgrounds suck... Too many rules and no privacy... Off the grid camping is illegal in most places. Other option would be to stay in B&B (Fremdenzimmer, ferienwohnung) . Those places are usually very nice and cheap. This means you can travel light. Cheers and have fun!
VerMonsterRV
Gotta Be Nuts
Thanks Andreas, while in Europe we wintered over in Valencia. Flights were very cheap so did a trip with stops in the UK, Netherlands, Prague and France. We has a blast and stayed in either Airbnb or smaller places using booking.com. Rough plan is to spend a month in Spain, store to he bike then next year take another month and move towards Germany and store the bike there. Really helps traveling like we have (both sailing and overlanding) as we now have a lot of European friends ?.
dermal fauna
New member
There's plenty of space to wild camp all over most of Europe, just move on if you're asked to and leave no trace.
Victorian
Approved Vendor : Total Composites
Eastern Europe yes. In Germany it's illegal and people will call the cops if they see you. It's pretty hot topic at the moment in the German camping scene. Spain, Italy and France are mixed. All pending where you are staying. A lot of places got over run by campers that left a mess. Hence the authorities and residents trying to get you to move on. Same is slowly happening all over North America too.
dermal fauna
New member
It's about 20yr since I've been, maybe it's changed, there's a lot more people with camper vans these days.
VerMonsterRV
Gotta Be Nuts
Well the motorcycle idea is on the back burner. With Covid things are still a bit limited for shipping, so we will just rent a car while there. We are planning on the month of September, should be good fun. Maybe when the world opens up a bit more we will put the motorbike idea into play.
So I got a question for the group, we have been noticing a vibration for a while now but have been unable to track it down. Well today I replaced all the belts with heavy duty ones (the others were the only ones available after our water pump failure). During the belt change I grabbed each pulley to see if there was any play. I ended up finding a bit of fore/aft play in the air/power steering pump pulley. probably between .5 and 1mm. I am guessing this is not ideal. Anyone have any thoughts?
And no post is complete without pictures, today was maintenance day...
Epic campsite near the oldest trees in the world
And these are some of the oldest trees in the world, over 4,000 years!
And since we were in the neighborhood we thought hiking Mount Whitney(for non North Americans it is the highest peak in the lower 48 states at 14,500') would be fun. Well we had hoped for a couple day backpack trip and even got lucky with a last minute permit... Then the weather forecast turned rather unpleasant on the exact nights we were supposed to be camping at 12,000'. So we did the next best thing, grabbed a day permit and did the 22 mile with over 6,000' elevation gain hike in 14 hours! It was the perfect weather day and an incredible hike. Of course we were all a bit slow the next day!
Well, that's it for now. With any luck the road to Yosemite will open and we can continue hiking there in a couple of days.
So I got a question for the group, we have been noticing a vibration for a while now but have been unable to track it down. Well today I replaced all the belts with heavy duty ones (the others were the only ones available after our water pump failure). During the belt change I grabbed each pulley to see if there was any play. I ended up finding a bit of fore/aft play in the air/power steering pump pulley. probably between .5 and 1mm. I am guessing this is not ideal. Anyone have any thoughts?
And no post is complete without pictures, today was maintenance day...
Epic campsite near the oldest trees in the world
And these are some of the oldest trees in the world, over 4,000 years!
And since we were in the neighborhood we thought hiking Mount Whitney(for non North Americans it is the highest peak in the lower 48 states at 14,500') would be fun. Well we had hoped for a couple day backpack trip and even got lucky with a last minute permit... Then the weather forecast turned rather unpleasant on the exact nights we were supposed to be camping at 12,000'. So we did the next best thing, grabbed a day permit and did the 22 mile with over 6,000' elevation gain hike in 14 hours! It was the perfect weather day and an incredible hike. Of course we were all a bit slow the next day!
Well, that's it for now. With any luck the road to Yosemite will open and we can continue hiking there in a couple of days.
VerMonsterRV
Gotta Be Nuts
Time for a quick update, we did continue on northward hiking here and there along the way. We are now in Oregon visiting family and catching up on some truck projects. We are also able to meet up again with Sandie and Karsten in Ewald https://www.ewaldontour.net/. And unfortunately it was also time to say goodbye to Evan, as he is preparing to fly back to Spain for a visit (which we have tickets booked to visit him on September there).
So here are a few maintenance pics
Karsten told me the snub nosed trucks had no built in way to center the tires on the studs (the LN2's seem to be made to center automatically). So they need to occasionally recenter the wheels to stop the vibration. Now that is a torque wrench!
Ivan decided his factory speakers lacked a bit of bass, so this is mid install of a 400 watt 8" powered subwoofer that he mounted just behind the drivers seat.
And my biggest project, although we love the ride of the new parabolic springs we ran into a problem with them in Baja. The second leaf wrap was coming in contact with the front spring bracket. The wrap cracked and went on down the road, luckily it didn't end up in someone's windshield. DFF offered to send us 2 new leafs with the wrap cut off (when the wrap broke off it left the slot the rubber bushing open, I was concerned the bushing would fall out and then the leaf clack away). When I replaced the front springs last year it took me 4 days, this time I seemed to be more motivated and I got it done in 1.
We also added a 4k dash cam with hardwired USB cable (I also hardwired our TPMS USB). And we added a fixed mount dual band radio, we ended up using the handheld radios with Evan a lot while traveling, so figure a fixed mount would be nice. No charging and better sound. Oh yeah, Heather thought our cab stereo was lacking a bit of bass so we also put in a 400watt 8" subwoofer. It is mounted right behind the driver's seat near the floor.
So in the next few days we are heading to Montana to meet up with some plane owning friends that are having a fly in. We'll be there in the truck this year but one day...
So here are a few maintenance pics
Karsten told me the snub nosed trucks had no built in way to center the tires on the studs (the LN2's seem to be made to center automatically). So they need to occasionally recenter the wheels to stop the vibration. Now that is a torque wrench!
Ivan decided his factory speakers lacked a bit of bass, so this is mid install of a 400 watt 8" powered subwoofer that he mounted just behind the drivers seat.
And my biggest project, although we love the ride of the new parabolic springs we ran into a problem with them in Baja. The second leaf wrap was coming in contact with the front spring bracket. The wrap cracked and went on down the road, luckily it didn't end up in someone's windshield. DFF offered to send us 2 new leafs with the wrap cut off (when the wrap broke off it left the slot the rubber bushing open, I was concerned the bushing would fall out and then the leaf clack away). When I replaced the front springs last year it took me 4 days, this time I seemed to be more motivated and I got it done in 1.
We also added a 4k dash cam with hardwired USB cable (I also hardwired our TPMS USB). And we added a fixed mount dual band radio, we ended up using the handheld radios with Evan a lot while traveling, so figure a fixed mount would be nice. No charging and better sound. Oh yeah, Heather thought our cab stereo was lacking a bit of bass so we also put in a 400watt 8" subwoofer. It is mounted right behind the driver's seat near the floor.
So in the next few days we are heading to Montana to meet up with some plane owning friends that are having a fly in. We'll be there in the truck this year but one day...
Sitec
Adventurer
Hi Jon. Good to see you are still enjoying the travels! Looks great!! If you see Karsten with the snub nose (bull nose over here) tell him he has the wrong wheel nuts for that truck... He has the later wheel nuts with attached washers on it suited to yours and our trucks, wheras he should have the earlier slimmer nuts with tapered spring washer that fits into the countersunk hole on the wheel. If he uses later nuts, then he'll be forever chasing vibrations. The early trucks rely on the studs with taper spring washers for allignment. 
