24 degrees in van when I got up @5 this morning. Insulation & Espar moved up a notch on on the priority list.
I think D2 - air. After spending 10 days in the van I think a D2 and some basic insulation will be perfectly adequate for what we're doing. Another guy on the sprinter forum pointed out that the 80/20 bolted to the steel walls is a direct heat transfer and is bypassing the insulation. I'm not that worried about it. The van was 24 degrees when we woke up this morning. I sleep like a baby in the cold.. I just want to be able to hit the button on the D2 and have it warm the van up to above freezing before I climb out of my -5 degree bag Overall, I'm trying to keep away from a "water system" as much as possible. I don't want to have to maintain it. Basically I want to put a 5 gallon water bottle under the sink and be done with it After 5000 miles and 17 states we're back home. The list of things to do is long.... With 16,000 miles on the odometer I really do this van.
I really need to put the van on back burner for a month and get some motorcycle maintenance done Other than making insulation/D2 installation a bigger priority, I'm going to order a tambour router bit and do some experimenting. Biggest plan change: I want a way to "isolate (hide) the sleeping quarters" .. i.e. make the bed disappear while leaving it setup. Other biggest plan change is I think I'm going to put another maxfann over the bed. We *really* liked the maxxfan and how well it worked. Camping in keywest pointed out how nice it would be to put air straight on us while relaxing in bed (in one fan and out the other).
Fuel mileage sucked. I even tried adding Diesel Kleen a few times to improve it. The best I saw was 21.4 over a 400 mile tank in southern Florida when we slowed down and spent some time exploring the everglades and key west. Today, crossing Nebraska & Eastern Colorado with a 30+mph headwind and the cruise control on at 75mph.. I averaged ~15mpg Due to the large number of miles traveled in a short time I had to keep the average speedup. We were normally going 70+. That and we couldn't get a break on headwinds lead to an overall average I'm guessing in the 17-18mpg range. Somehow we had a headwind going east ...and then the expected headwind coming back west. I suspect the fuel bill is somewhere around $1400 for the trip.
Awesome advice! Thanks! I also realized today: don't put the Espar's exhaust pipe under where the fueling occurs (as one pump overflowed and made a mess )
Sleeping in van 10 nights in a row = savings of $1000 in hotel bills. I only have to sleep in it every night for the next 20 years to make the van pay for itself.
Thanks for the advice on the glow plug swapping space. I haven't quite determined location yet.... Because I've luxury lined the bottom boxes, I think under the bed in a side box would be good for "not hearing it" while in bed.. That said, A guy on Sprinter forum put his under the passenger seat and it was a really cool/neat installation (and it would be blowing air rearward toward the sleeping quarter). That said.. I was considering putting the coach batteries under the seat.. i.e. tbd.
I don't remember if you changed your tires to a bigger size or not, but if you did, and are calculating your fuel efficiency by measuring distance travelled (on your odometer) by fuel consumed (at your fill up) you might be making an erroneous calculation. The bigger tires roll a longer distance with each revolution, and consequently, you think you are travelling a shorter distance than you may have travelled because of the fewer revolutions per mile. I noticed a "drop" in my fuel efficiency on my car going from a 225/50R16 to a 205/65R15. Although, in my case, the speedometer is dead accurate now.
That was also my reason for calculating mileage on the first day I got my van. On the second day I switched my stock 235-75 with 265-75. Won't be able to get another accurate mileage figure until I recalibrate the speedo.
Geek; I was going to ask you the same thing- are you calculating from your odometer, and is it accurate? With the bigger tires on my van, my odo is off quite a bit. But when I calculate mileage using the the gps odometer, I'm actually getting better mileage with the oversized tires.
That's a good point gents.. the bigger tires have my speedo reading 1-2 mph under actual now (it used to read over actual). I have no idea how much the odometer is off. The odometer in the van says we did almost exactly 5000 miles on the trip (within 10 miles?). I'll trace out the exact route on google maps (down to the turn) and see how many miles we actually did. I don't think it'll be that big of a difference though
My odo vs gps with bigger tires makes the odo about 5% low. So when I calculate I add 5% to the figure.