T1N Dual Dually

Heading to Philly tomorrow to pickup a 2006 140" 3500 with dual sliders. The plan is to drive it back home, picking up a few items along the way. Not the longest trip anyone on this forum has had to do, but it will be 2500 miles and 36 - 40 hours of driving. Gonna try to do it in 3 days.

Items on the pickup list:

• The van
• Some new brake light bulbs
• Roof rack, I haven't seen what this looks like but it's free, so TBD
• 16" wheels off a newer sprinter
• Goodyear Duratracs, 225/75 R16 (I don't trust the current tires to make 2500 miles)

I'll be coming up with some build layouts in the next few weeks but the basic requirements are:

• Queen(ish) bed that will be in place 99% of the time
• Ability to remove the bed and frame easily for extra cargo space
• Bike storage - upright under deployed bed
• Ski/board storage under deployed bed
• Decent sized sink
• 12V fridge
• Ability to load / offload kitchen cabinets and water tanks via the backside of the driver's side slider

Cool, keep us posted.

Sorry for the lack of updates, I was either driving or sleeping (trying to avoid doing both at the same time). Made it back home with some of my first changes.

Here is a before and after on the wheels/tires. Picked up the wheels from a seller on eBay and went to a Discount Tire in Lima, OH. Those guys were awesome, I was running late and showed up about 10 minutes before closing and they still took care of me and my rust old van.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/zCGxVvPyx3UEjYyJ2

Some more tire pictures.

I'll have to do some minor trimming of the mud flaps, or just take them off, otherwise the fit is great.
The ride improved a bunch over the old stock wheels and vanco tires, part of that might also be due to getting away from the potholes out East.

Also of note, my van has a speed governor set at 75 mph. It was fun finding that out while trying to pass a truck at the crest of a hill. We got to the down slope, he started to go faster and I did not. The upsize of the tires took care of some of that problem so I was able to run the interstates out West without getting run over.

Some comparison shots of the stock vs. new wheels/tires. Hopefully these links work, let me know if they don't.




And where the flaps need to be trimmed.

Some other fun stuff I learned along the way.

- Heater control knobs are either broken or need to be lubed. My temp knob spins all the way around, sometimes catching on feeling like it does something. The mode/vent direction knob feels like I'm going to break it when I try to turn it. Found a post regarding such, comment #4. https://sprinter-source.com/forum/showthread.php?t=14443
- Radio and speakers need to be replaced. At the end of day 1 of the trip I bought a cheap bluetooth speaker and used that hooked to my phone for the rest of the trip.
- Need a new wiper fluid pump or maybe just a rubber grommet where the pump hooks into the reservoir. It made it through the trip, but I had a pool of wiper fluid in my driveway and nothing in the reservoir a few hours later.
- Head lights need to be refinished or replaced
- I have little or no idea how to work the locking and unlocking on the keyfob. If I hit lock once, it locks then unlocks all doors. If I hit lock twice quickly then sometimes, it locks then unlocks then after a pause locks all doors, other times it just does the lock once process. Add to that the driver's side slider has a different inside handle than the other slider so I have no idea if it is actually locked. Didn't find anything in the owners manual about how that works.

Sounds like your heater control needs a lube, or a possible rebuild. Some ebay services are reasonable for rebuilds. There is a thread on the power locks, they seems to be confusing to many.

The washer pump pulls up out of the grommet. Check if it's seated.

Go through the T1N checklist in the write-up subsection. Lots of things to inspect for reliability down the road.

Congrats!

JHays said:

Sorry for the lack of updates, I was either driving or sleeping (trying to avoid doing both at the same time). Made it back home with some of my first changes.

Here is a before and after on the wheels/tires. Picked up the wheels from a seller on eBay and went to a Discount Tire in Lima, OH. Those guys were awesome, I was running late and showed up about 10 minutes before closing and they still took care of me and my rust old van.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/zCGxVvPyx3UEjYyJ2

Click to expand...

Great looking tires.

It is funny to see Lima, OH mentioned - I grew up less than 30 miles from there.

The lock-unlock on the doors is because the van thinks a door is ajar. More likely, its the door sensor not able to figure out that the door is closed. There's a number of discussions about that here. Be sure to stick to the T1N discussions. The NCV3 door locks are also strange, but in a different way.

Planning to tackle some of the clean out of the van this weekend. The van is still in the drive home mode, so all my junk has to get emptied out before I can even get to the grime and rust.

Hoping to fix the door lock issue and get the driver's door adjusted so that it isn't rubbing against the front quarter panel when opening/closing. Thanks for the input on the door locks, found some good threads on the subject.
https://sprinter-source.com/forum/showthread.php?t=56327

I finally got around to trimming the mud flaps so the tires aren't rubbing. Very minor trim with a utility knife.
Before...


After...


Also had the UPS/FedEx fairy stop by today. Butyl mats, stereo, backup cam and dash cam to install at some point after I get everything cleaned out.

Managed to get the floor and door steps pulled out this weekend, trying to get to a blank clean canvas. Only one major rust spot, otherwise this van is pretty clean aside from the coagulated coffee in/around the drink holder. I'll be taking the van to a body shop to see about the major rust spot as it sits right behind the passenger rear wheel and goes all the way through.



Rust spot

Most of last weekend was dedicated to a full transmission service (the plug adapter thing started leaking) and a brake fluid flush. I had a hell of a time trying to get a new Dorman plug adapter to sit, the o-rings were just a tad oversized as far as I could tell. I ended up calling the local Mercedes dealer and getting the official Merc part, which I could actually get to sit with a good push. I accidentally gave the parts guy the wrong part number, but as soon as I started telling him it was a transmission plug adapter... he says "you mean the thing that leaks all the time?".

For reference, the transmission service threads I found useful (and can all be found via the Common Maintenance sticky)
https://sprinter-source.com/forum/showthread.php?t=2557
https://sprinter-source.com/forum/showthread.php?t=7605
https://sprinter-source.com/forum/showthread.php?t=2476

I also had some time to take the van to a body shop to get a quote on cutting out and repairing some of the rust. About $350 for the spot in my last picture, floor near the wheel well. And another $300 for a 2' long gouge (looks like someone took a sawzall to the door) in my sliding door that someone tried to repair previously. I'm still trying to decide if those should be a DIY or just pay the guy to do it.

Consider swivel seat bases. Happy I got them. It opens the whole van up & points your thoughts in a different direction. I,m still designing/building/ collecting ideas too.

Good point Kayak. I'm still in the process of putting together a couple of plans in sketchup for what I want to do, but one of the first things I ordered was a swivel for the passenger seat. Still need to get the rest of the plan put together to see if a swivel on the driver's side will work.

On a side note, if you are still in the design/build phase there are some good videos on youtube getting put out by a guy named Greg Virgoe. He appears to be couple months ahead of us on his build but he's doing a good job of documenting some of his planning. I'm new to sketchup so his walkthrough has been pretty good at getting me started.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b47sF7l1yDM

After doing some extensive clean out and rust treatment I've started to put the van back together. I mentioned that I had ordered a swivel for the passenger seat, which got installed yesterday. The wife isn't quite sure about the additional height, it puts the airbag almost at her knees.

We got the swivel from Eurocampers, it appears to be pretty good quality. It's just the additional height that is a problem. So I'm looking at options like shorter factory seat bases or just returning the swivel. I'll try to grab better pictures but this gives you a good idea of the height difference between driver's side (no swivel) and passenger's side (swivel).

My swivels only raised the height by about 30mm (1 1/4 inch)

Pro tip of the day, use the seat adjustments to lower it down after installing the swivel

Took me about a day to figure that one out. The passenger seat was probably raised up to it's max height before I installed the swivel. Lowered the seat down and it is much better now, the wife approves.

Finished some things over the weekend.

- New radio (Pioneer DEH-X6800BS)
- New speakers (Kicker 43CSC44)
- Dash camera
- Rearview camera
- Rearview monitor

I still have to clean up the rearview camera install, it was raining and I was lazy. The plan is to drill a hole in the side of the upper brake light, then down into the van body, large enough to pass the cable through, seal with sikaflex/dicor. Right now I just have the cable running down in through the door seal.

Radio


Speakers
Trimmed 3 of the install tabs on the speaker, then used some VHB tape to hold it in place.




Dash / Rearview / Monitor
I have all three of these components run from an Add-A-Circuit tapped to the radio fuse spot. A wire (actually 2, 12v and ground) is run from that point up the driver's side A-pillar to the ceiling above the driver's door. All three components join the 12v and ground wires at that point. This allows me to have the rearview camera run all the time ignition is on, if I don't want to see it then I turn off the monitor.

On my '06 T1N just in front of the rear brake light on the roof there is a rubber plug that is painted over. I pried that out and ran my camera wire through the hole. Used a grommet and Sika to seal it up.

Thanks Ranch, I was wondering what that thing was. Much easier to run the wire there than do all that drilling, good thing I didn't get to that part yet.

Took Ranch's advice and used the port just forward of the upper brake light to run my camera cable. Then just pasted everything with some sikaflex, seemed to cure up nicely.



Been a bit since my last post, so I've managed to get a few other things done.

Butyl dampener mats installed on the wheel wells and various spots on the wall. Makes a huge difference, just need to finish putting up some on the ceiling and in the cab area. Cleaned everything with de-greaser and then wiped down with alcohol before sticking on the mats.




Next up is some exterior cleaning and accessories...