Remember when I said this van would be perfect? It may still get there, but at this point that goal feels overly ambitious. We expected to hit the road on January 21st but due to a series of troubles our start date was postponed by over one week.
The main delay was Covid. Cameron started to feel unwell on Tuesday the 18th and by Thursday he was testing positive. Despite keeping my distance and wearing masks when we were in sightlines of one another, I also tested positive about a week later (starting Tuesday, January 25th). We were definitely not going to hit the road until both of us were negative.
Even though one or both of us were feeling unwell, over that week and a half of isolation we tried to keep working on the van. The heater system proved to be quite troublesome.
For close to a week, it seemed like every day we uncovered a new leak. First, they seemed to be because of the type of clamps we were using (worm clamps instead of continuous tension clamps). Then some of the brass fittings had trouble. Then, we realized the air handler itself had a leak, so we had to wait a few days for Rixen’s to send us a replacement.
As you can imagine, it’s quite frustrating to repeatedly think you’ve fixed a problem only to wake up the next day to splatter of antifreeze dripping onto the driveway. Good Cameron overcalculated when he sent me out to buy seven gallons of antifreeze!
There were at least two days when I thought “well, I guess we’re giving up on this project.” The first was a few days into the series of heating-related leaks when Cameron was in the van and I was working upstairs. I got a call from him shouting “you need to come down here NOW! Bring towels and a bucket!” I ran as fast as I could with a pile of rags to a scene of yellow fluid bubbling over from the furnace and Cameron trying to keep a yellow puddle in check. Not long after I left the scene Cameron came into the house on the verge of tears with a red swollen hand. He had tried to pull some hose from one of the pipe fittings and it suddenly released, smashing his hand into the metal frame. That stopped van operations that night.
The second project-stopping concern was a dead battery. Apparently, if you are regularly using the interior lights but not regularly driving your Sprinter it is possible to fully drain the battery. It’s scary when you press the start engine button and absolutely nothing happens – no noise, no lights, nothing.
We brought out the jumper cables and hooked up the van to the Toyota. After a few minutes Vanjie’s dash lights came on and things seemed to be promising. We waited about 30 minutes to fully disconnect, and as soon as we did everything went blank again. We attempted to jump it for at least another half hour with no further success. Cameron figured that since the van is so big, it might not be jumpable from a regular car battery, so he set out to buy a battery charger (we were testing negative for Covid by this point).
We went through the same process with the battery charger – after a few minutes the van seemed to respond, but once the charger was disconnected everything went dark. Of course we were reading the owner’s manual and searching online for a solution, but with very little success.
Eventually, Cameron opened the battery compartment directly, which sits under the driver’s seat, instead of hooking up through the auxiliary access point under the hood. He connected our inverter/charger as a trickle charger, but that would have taken more time than we had before we wanted to hit the road. He was finally able to start the van with a temporary connection to our battery isolation manager, which allows starting the car from the house batteries.
We let the battery charge for a few hours, and as it did the van seemed to go through a reboot: the windshield wipers activated unprompted, the windows rolled down on their own, and numerous maintenance messages came up on the dash screen. All of these were unnerving – you don’t expect your brand-new Mercedes vehicle to go through this level of crisis – but it seemed to do the trick. After three days of troubleshooting, we were able to start the ignition, drive the van around the neighborhood, turn it off, and then (and this is key) turn it on again!
Ultimately, we think the van’s battery had drained to the point that the battery charger didn’t think it was chargeable. Running the van for a bit brought the voltage up to the point that the charger worked.
This was Monday, January 31st, and we had already committed to spending that night in the van as a test with the hope of setting out for our modified Washington visit the next day. While the van charged we worked on adding extra insulation, walls, and ceilings (a much more difficult task than expected). We took a break to drive 45 minutes south to pick up our van fridge so we wouldn’t have to rely on coolers to keep our bunny veggies fresh on the road.
By the time we got back home (near 6pm) we found a fully working van (huzzah!) but we could not find Cameron’s wallet (uh oh). Turns out Cameron had left it at a Walgreens we stopped at to pick up at-home Covid tests, so that gave us an excuse to take the van down for a mini trial trip. I’m happy to say that we had no issues, but by the time we grabbed the wallet, dinner, and gas and made it back home it was nearly 9pm.
9pm is my bedtime, and I had a long tiring day, but we were committed to sleeping in the van. We didn’t need to do much set up, just bring out our sleeping clothes and toiletries, but we did need to bring down the bunny. In case you ever find yourself in a similar situation, I recommend not giving your pet rabbit free roam of a brand-new space moments before going to bed in that same small space.
Pancake was amped on adrenaline and curiosity. Anything in reach was hopped on and nibbled on, and although her space was relatively bunny-proofed, she managed to squeeze into the few areas that she shouldn’t go to. We kept getting up, adding another layer of restriction (mostly cardboard to block off spaces), turning off the lights, and then being started by some suspicious sound minutes later and starting the process over again. Needless to say, it took me a while to fall asleep.
Overall, it was a successful night. The rabbit settled down, and although it was a little cold we were relatively comfortable. As planned (if you can count Plan D “as planned”), we are now on the road for our first van trip. I’m working from the passenger’s seat and we’re making regular stops to ensure Pancake gets exercise and ample food/potty stops. Other than those, we won’t be making many stops to check out the scenery or assess any of the towns on my list that are along the route, but nonetheless there is lovely scenery between Utah and Washington. I’m sure I’ll tell you all about it in the next edition of the Goldilocks Project.
Packed and ready to go, only to have to wait another ten days.
Working late nights to try and get it all together in time.
This is our heating system. You can see there are a lot of fittings that all could cause leakage if not tightly clamped together.
Waking up to a wet spot under the van was a sure sign of another leak.
Trying to untangle the maze of wires below the drivers seat in order to access the battery.
On the plus side, the delay gave us time to better insulate the van. Based on the morning frost in this picture you can see what part of the roof was insulated overnight.
It also allowed us to pick up our refrigerator. The place we bought it from does van build outs – how cool is this shop?!
All's well that ends well. The interior is feeling cozy and perfectly satisfactory for a week-long test trip.
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