I might have gotten a little carried away, but the first shakedown trip for the van was a two week trip from North Carolina to the national parks in Southern Utah. I went with my two brothers and my dad who is 86 years old. We had been planning this trip for about a year, and it was originally going to include a rim-to-rim Grand Canyon hike. But a forest fire on the north rim killed that part of the trip. So, we focused on the national parks in Southern Utah and Colorado.
My brother, John, drove his Toyota Sienna minivan, which he had fitted up to sleep two people in the back. My van was used as basecamp and slept my Dad and myself. We camped out six nights – once at a Love’s truck stop and five times in various campgrounds. The trip was a long one with 94 hours of driving and 5,600 miiles. You can see from the trip computer screen shot below, that I got just over 13 miles to the gallon on the trip. The van didn’t like to go fast, and really sucked gas when I picked up the speed.
I did test out the top speed on a lonely stretch of state highway in eastern Colorado. I was able to get the van up to 98 mph, but that was as fast as it would go. 🙂
In general, I was very happy with the van and how everything performed. But, here are the items that I’ll work on improving.
The worst problem was that the shelves in the storage cabinet kept on dropping. There were a lot of bumpy roads, which didn’t help. The shelf pins would come loose from the walls. It was better on those shelves that were cut tighter to the shelf walls. I stopped in Colorado and picked up some longer bolts, but they didn’t help much. So when I returned home, I drilled a hole in the shelf boards and put a small machine screw through the shelf board and the shelf pin, then secured it with a wing nut. This should prevent shelf drops, but makes it a little harder to move shelves. Here is a piccture of the fix.
The second biggest problem that I had was that my sink leaked. The problem was avoidable, I just hadn’t tested the sink enough. I had purchased a faucet for the sink that had two connections to it, one for hot water, and one for cold. With my sink setup, I only connected one hose to the hot water fitting. Well, if I turned the faucet on with the faucet handle anywhere else but 100% hot water, the water leaked out the cold water fitting and onto the floor. I was careful to only use the faucet at 100% hot water, but I also bought a fitting to plug the cold water fitting on the faucet in Utah. I didn’t actually install it until I returned home.
Next biggest problem was that my fridge stopped working about two days before I returned home. But, when I got home, it was working again. I didn’t do anything. So, I’m going to have to keep an eye on it and maybe do some research to investigate possible causes.
One night, the heater gave me a new fault code, but I pulled the fuse and it reset itself. No problem.
I checked for loose bolts after the trip, and didn’t find any. Everything stayed very solid.
Some of the improvements that I will make are to install some felt pads on the cabinet doors to reduce the noise from them slamming against the frame. I will also install a night light back by the toilet that will be on a motion sensor for when someone has to use the toilet at night. I had already run a wire for a light above the toilet, and I will use that for this new light.
Overall, I was very happy with the van build. I’ll spend a few days making some of these fixes, then take it out again to test them. I also want to test some of the items that didn’t get tested; hauling a bike, and more cooking of meals.
One more blog post in the next few days on the overall stats from the van build. Stay tuned.