Building the Escape Pod
A while back we made ourselves some DIY fork mounts for the back of the van. They worked well for our bikes with quick-release front wheels. When we got bikes with 110mm through axles, we upgraded the fork mounts too.
Continue reading “New fork mount bike rack for our L-track”
If you have a Crew or Passenger van, it’s likely that you have the rear door panels installed. These have handy storage compartments in them.
If you want to insulate behind them or install a rear view camera in the license plate area, you’ll have to remove the panels.
Just recently we realized that we never described how to do this on the site. We’ve had several people ask how to take the trim off the door handle area, so here’s the missing information. Continue reading “Removing the rear door panels on Crew and Passenger vans”
We made some window shades for our van a while back using Low-E. They work great but they are a pain to store. We decided to make them fold so they’d take up less space.
We tried stitching them with a sewing machine, melting them with a soldering iron, just smooshing them together, but the best overall technique was to use a hot iron on the fold lines. This is how we made it work.
Continue reading “Making foldable window shades from Low-E foil-faced foam”
We were concerned that every composting toilet reviewer had somehow lost their sense of smell at the same time they started using the unit. How could a bucket full of poo NOT smell bad? Well, either we both lost our nose function too, or the composting toilet we installed really doesn’t produce any nasty fumes.
We bought five different types of LED lantern to test out which worked best in the van.
We found that we needed a couple of small lanterns for when we want to get up in the middle of the night rather than switching on the main lights inside the van. Because they are portable, we also use them outside the van when we’re hanging out after dark.
Here’s a list of what we tried, and which worked best for our needs…
Continue reading “LED lantern comparison – we did so you don’t have to”
Our axe and shovel had been rattling around inside the rear storage compartment for over a year before we worked up the courage to mount them on the wall.
We thought that the Quick Fist clamps we’d bought would easily rip out of the 1/4″ plywood walls but they seem to be holding pretty firmly.
Continue reading “Quick Fist clamps for mounting items to the van”
The Sprinter’s “Audio 15” stereo system has an interface from the mid-90s, and speakers that sound like they are made from wet toilet paper. Sane people would just replace the whole lot, but we experimented with keeping the head unit and seeing what a difference good speakers would make.
When that didn’t give us quite enough improvement, we swapped out the head unit for something that produces clearer sound and connects better with our phones.
This is an overview of the different articles we’ve written about our attempts to get good sounds inside the van. If you’re trying to do the same thing, start here.
Continue reading “Upgrading the stock Sprinter stereo – overview”
Our bed is 42″ off the ground. We used to have the factory bench seat right in front of it, but now we’ve just got a blank space. We needed some way to get up and down from the bed platform.
No matter how much you insulate the rest of the vehicle, The glass in a Sprinter van is a massive heat gain/loss area. We bought a sun shade made specially for the windshield and made ones for all the other windows from Low-E foil faced foam with magnets around the edges.
Continue reading “Window covers – insulation where it’s most needed”
The front end of our bed platform is right above the passenger bench seat. We added foam pipe insulation to the platform to protect our noggins from getting whacked.
To make it look fancy, we covered the pipe insulation in black vinyl. It’s not exactly the same color as the seat upholstery, but it looks just fine.
Continue reading “Foam pipe insulation for bed-to-head protection”