New Speedy

With only about a two week delay, we finally picked up New Speedy, our "new" 2005 Roadtrek Adventurous RS on May 17th. Since then it has been back to the Campers Inn mechanics, M&S Auto Repair, twice to get the glow plug system repaired (even two weeks late, Campers Inn hadn't gotten anything done).

The new Roadtrek is a Dodge/Mercedes Sprinter and had only 43,000 miles on it. It seems to have only been used to travel back and forth to Florida and many of its systems, like all the appliances, had never been used. Judging from the lichen growing on the roof and the inspection sticker that had expired in 2015, it hadn't bee used at all for at least a year, so there was much cleaning to be done...and a few unplanned improvements to be added to our already long list of things we wanted to add.

The first thing we did was completely re-clean the interior. Although it was supposed to be delivered in a clean state, it seemed merely a surface wipe-down. Ellen tackled the heavy duty interior while I started on the exterior, particularly the roof as we were planning to add solar panels.

Our next task was to tear out the old, dirty, smelly carpeting. This improved the interior aroma quite a bit. After a couple of false starts, we found a nice, thin, berber-style, gray carpet at Lowe's and proceeded to cut it into the rather complicated shape that was needed in the front part of the van. The rear section was a nice simple rectangle. We even added some binding along the open edges in the front that were not there on the original.

The second big project was to build a cabinet. The van came with two second row seats, at least one of which we did not need, but we did need extra storage space. We removed the seat on the right side, by the sliding side door. Originally, I'd planned to build the cabinet myself, with the help of our friend, Harry, who has a pretty decent shop, but with the two week delivery delay and the need for a couple of trips to the mechanics, I employed our neighbor, Jeff, who is a custom cabinetmaker to build the cabinet, leaving only the installation of shelves and the top to us. I did, however, add shelves to the hanging locker, as we had done in the old Speedy.

This freed up time for the third big project, the solar panels. I was able to fit 250 watts of solar on the roof...just barely. The roof is much more crowed that on the Dodge van since the air conditioner is mounted on the roof and there is now a TV antenna up there as well. I was able to fit a 100 watt panel between the AC and the skylight vent and a 150 watt panel next to the TV antenna in front to the skylight. We used the same mounting technique as before with adjustable mounting feet that are attached to the roof with a permanent adhesive. With Harry's help, I positioned the panels and attched them to the roof.

It was on to the wiring. In Old Speedy, I was able to run the wires from the roof through the built-in AC housing into the van. This was not an option on New Speedy. But we already had a hole in the roof. The previous owner had installed a satellite dish which was broken and we had Campers Inn remove. It had been wired through the roof into a cabinet designed for a DVD. I was able, with a lot of effort and angst, route wires from the electrical compartment where all the power sources come together to the cabinet (a few holes drilled and a wire chase were required) and connect to the solar wiring from the roof.

At the same time, I also installed a trimetric power monitor in the same cabinet. We had one in the other van, mounted on the wall behind the second row seat, but there was no reasonable way to mount in that location in the new van. The DVD cabinet (our new technology cabinet), has a glass front, so the monitor display is readable without opening the cabinet.

It took much longer to install all of this than to write about it.

The last big project was adding a water filter to the cold water line. We had one in the old van that came with its own tap. When we replaced our two hole sink faucet with a single hole faucet, we had this extra hole in the counter and a cabinet under the sink which made adding the faucet and filter relatively easy. The new van came with a single hole faucet and there is no cabinet under the sink as that it the location of the oven. We our cue from Harry & Sally and ended up putting the water filter inline with the cold water line to the sink and mounting in the space between the sink and the widow behind it. It reduces the flow somewhat on the cold side, but seems effective.

The end is in sight with respect to repairs and upgrades, with only the addition of shelves and the top to the new cabinet. Ellen has been varnishing the door an trim and we hope we will be finished with the cabinet in a couple of days. A little cleaning and painting of rust on the generator and mountings for the GPS, Phone and iPad and we should be ready to move in.

That is going to be a story in itself since the cabinet layout is much different from the old van. After five years of traveling, we could load it up in a couple of hours. It might take us a few days to get New Speedy sorted. Only nine days until we are scheduled to leave for Alaska.