Building the Escape Pod
You can turn your cell phone into an engine monitor with just a $20 gadget and a $5 app. This will tell you pretty much everything that a ScanGauge or Ultragauge will, and will also allow you to read and reset generic engine codes.
Rather than heating the whole van overnight, it’s cheaper and easier to just heat the bed. We bought a 12v heated mattress pad to sleep on. It works really well and doesn’t use too much power.
Continue reading “12v electric mattress pad for cheap overnight heating”
We have mixed feelings about this $85 dash cam unit. It does the job, it’s relatively inexpensive, and it has a rear view camera monitor built in to the mirror. However, the blue tinted mirror is weird and the video image can wash out in bright light. Overall, it’s worthwhile if you want a dash-cam and backup camera, but there might be better options if you want a dedicated rear-view monitor.
Continue reading “Dash cam and rear view camera in one unit – installation and first impressions”
North American Sprinters have had a factory 4WD option since 2015. It isn’t a go-anywhere do-anything transmission like a Unimog, but it’s surprisingly good considering the van is a long, tall brick that really isn’t designed for offroading.
Continue reading “Four wheel drive in a Sprinter – good, but not quite what you’d expect”
Normally the places we choose to camp are deserted. Nobody but the wildlife to see us pooping. Sometimes though we have neighbors, so we bought a $40 pop-up toilet/shower tent.
We love the chairs and table we bought for the van so much that we’ve taken out the bench seat and use the chairs inside instead. Sorry – no more passengers!
Continue reading “Awesome lightweight chairs and table that fold up very small”
It’s a long way up into the van. We added a handle in the sliding door area, but we were fed up with using a folding step stool to help us get in and out. We installed an electric step that is activated when the door opens.
We ordered a four wheel drive sprinter on the day they first came available in North America. The dealership completely screwed up, and sold our van to somebody else – probably on purpose. All I’ll say is, never use Wilson Motors in Bellingham, WA. They are dishonest and care more about how much money they can save than about customer service.
Luckily, they’d found a replacement 4×4 which kind-of sort-of was OK for our needs. We took it rather than waiting another six to ten months for a replacement to get built in Germany and then shipped across.
We didn’t end up with most of the options we’d ordered, like suspension seats or the Active Safety package, and the van we took home had several things we’d never have ordered – what use is an alarm system if you’re parked in a forest? Or alloy wheels on a dirt road? Or the crappy Becker GPS system.
Still, it was a crew van (one row of passenger seats, windows in the sliding door and behind the driver) and had 4×4, which was our primary reason for waiting so long for the van. Plenty of room inside for the conversion we want to do, and hopefully the 4×4 will look after us when we’re heading to remote mountain bike trails.
