TOWING AN UPFIT T1N SPRINTER: YOU NEED TO KNOW THIS STUFF

The story I tell below, I already knew it.  And I knew that everyone who has experience with T1N Sprinter towing knows it, if they happen to be upfitted.  But here it is in detail for the record, so that it will hopefully save someone else some pain, anguish and expense:

1. T1N upfits can never, ever, EVER be dragged.  They have to be flat-bedded.  Whatever they have in their rear ends cannot be subjected to a near-ground experience, be it a generator, water tanks, whatever.  If it's a T1N upfit, by definition it's packed with stuff under there.  Just forget the whole idea of dragging it.  
2. Every time you call a tow, even if you are successful in getting a flat-bed on first request, you are probably going to get one which is almost unworkably small.  The one shown in the pics below can take up to a 22 foot vehicle and 10,000 pounds, and that's typically what they send in scenarios like the one I had today.  BUT - and this is the important part - inexperienced tow operators often don't know that they need really, really big shims to accomplish a successful tow of a 22' upfit T1N Sprinter.

It's that simple.  Shims, or you're screwed  - take your pick.  

By shims, I mean lengths of really heavy lumber, preferably hardwood because we are talking about one ton per tire, which can shallow up the tow bed angle enough to get this kind of job successfully done.

Let me walk you step by step through my mishap so that you can understand exactly what I mean.

So this afternoon, I'm heading east on TX-71 between Bastrop and Smithville when all of a sudden, my engine blows up, basically.  By the grace of God, I manage to get safely off the highway.

How many times have I seen this particular view?  Ugh.

If your T1N unexpectedly blows up for no apparent reason despite the thousands of dollars of bulletproofing you've done on it, the best thing you could do is get your lead mechanic on the phone ASAP.  For me, that is Joel Sell, aka Million Mile Sprinter.

I emailed Joel a 6-second video of the engine plus a description.  Clearly it lost turbo, but it didn't feel to me like a normal turbo issue.  The van was running rough like I've never seen it do, and I had even less functionality at my disposal than I would during a regular limp home mode (LHM).  I've driven a hundred miles in LHM.  It's ugly, but it can be done.  This thing I was confronted with today... I was never going to make it down the road. 

OK, so, Joel's recommendation was to flat bed it the hell out of there.  I concurred.  I got with my roadside assistance (I use Good Sam) and arranged for a tow.  

It actually showed up as a flat-bed, but not the larger size I was hoping for.  Technically, this size can haul a T1N Sprinter as I said.  It's just a poor idea to try.

You can immediately sense a departure angle issue. 

Incidentally, I'm not revealing the tow operator, because I feel bad for the guy.  He was a really nice guy and he tried his best, but he was young and inexperienced, and he didn't have the right materials in his kit.  I'll tell you what - he will be a lot more experienced when he wakes up tomorrow vs. waking up this morning.

OK, so, both the terrain and the substrate were favorable for the load-out despite the departure angle problem.  The van's skid plates dug in, but this part of it was do-able without too much drama, as you can see here.

Uh-huh.  You see the problem.  That angle is just way too unforgiving. 

In this next pic, you see what a T1N looks like on the back of this kind of flatbed.  It's really too big even if it's legal.

There's just too much hanging off the back of that tow truck.

Because I was remaining overnight with my van, Freightliner would not allow me within their fenceline.  Therefore, the tow operator had to deposit this load on the public street in front of Freightliner.  That's where things got ugly, because the off-loading environment was not as forgiving as the on-loading environment had been.

Uh-oh.

I say again:  I haven't spent the last 4.5 years on internet forums for nothing.  WE KNOW from experience that we need shims for this.  I went into the Freightliner business, and scrounged up what wood scraps I could find.

There's a little piece of wood, but that's not going to get this job done. 

Not this either, although that was a nice piece of hardwood dunnage.

Next!  Nope; not this either.

Here's a close-up showing the skid plates and how they were carving out their own little trenches in the asphalt.  On an ordinary day, I would have gotten down on the ground with my wrench and removed those skid plates.  But once the thing is in tow under someone else's control, for liability reasons, I can't touch it.  So we were stuck with this status quo.  

Then things went from bad to worse, as this picture suggests.  Do you see how there is a GAP between the bottom of the flatbed and the top of the pavement?  That's because, without proper shims, the operator had no choice but to basically roll the tow truck out from under the T1N Sprinter.  This is highly dangerous, but given the materials at hand, it was difficult to identify an alternative in the moment

It was not going that badly, until he lost control of it.  Remember, the Sprinter has to have its transmission in neutral during this process.  And it's on this angle.  So, without his ability to keep tension on the tow line, that Sprinter is going for a ride under the power of nobody.  Which is exactly what it did.  It dropped off the flat bed, rolled backwards, and plowed arse-first into a Freightliner that happened to be parked at the curb behind us.  It literally bounced off the Freightliner and landed in the position you see here.

I have to have my husband evaluate this further, but at first glance, the score was Sprinter 1, Freightliner 0.  The Freightliner's bumper wasn't nearly as robust as the custom hitch carrier that my husband had welded up to be as strong as a proverbial brick shit house (excuse my language, but there's no other way to put it).  The bumper cover ended up askew.  Do you see how it's gapping at the far left, more so than on the right side under the headlight?   Uh-huh. 

Anyway, frankly I'm glad the Freightliner was there to serve as our collision post, because I'm not sure where my Sprinter would have stopped rolling otherwise.  

My front end (ground effects) was also damaged by the tow cable during this run-away event.  It's nothing that can't be fixed, but it's a pain. 

Fiberglass mess.

MORAL OF THIS STORY:  T1N SPRINTER TOWS NEED SHIMS IF THEY LOADED ONTO THE SMALLER FLAT BED TRUCKS.  WEIGHT COUNTS FOR ALMOST NOTHING IN THIS ANALYSIS - IT'S ALL ABOUT GEOMETRY.

When roadside assistance is paying the bill, the tow companies are going to want to send the smallest flatbed they can to do this job, and it's a penny-wise pound-foolish decision.  Whatever they save in equipment costs, they are highly likely to incur ten-fold in damages.  Unless they carry really long heavy wooden shims, stuff like this is always going to happen.  

Of course I knew that years before today, and obviously after today I'm going to consider transporting MY OWN shims, possibly under the chassis.  Because my van, you see, keeps breaking down.  No matter how hard I try, nor how much money I spend on it, it just keeps happening.  So far, at least.  Maybe when I finally get to Million Mile Sprinter later this summer, I can finally make some bulletproofing headway.

Oh, and by the way, I don't know what's wrong with it yet.  I'm camped out in front of a Freightliner that is unknown to me, in a city that is not mine, waiting until they open in the morning so that they can look at it. 

REPLACING A PILOT BUSHING IN A 2006 MERCEDES SPRINTER

By way of explanation for this blog post, I'd first like to reproduce my corresponding animated entry from Instagram:

Rant:  Multiple times, I have challenged both local mechanics and online forums (more than one!) to HELP ME CREATE A LIST OF EVERY TINY PART THAT WILL DISABLE OUR VAN WHEN IT INEVITABLY FAILS DUE TO AGE.  I would gladly pay someone to replace ALL such parts preemptively, if only they could be systematically identified!!  But all my efforts to date have been an absolute failure in this regard.  Seriously – I’ve taken this van to an MB shop and explicitly said, “Please replace EVERYTHING you think might fail, because one way or another, I will be doing those replacements, and I’d prefer to do them in one fell swoop right now.” With all the expertise I’ve tapped to date, every set of suggestions has totally missed the mark, including at MB.  Our latest headache is the failure of this $10 part that nobody called to my attention previously – but it isn’t even a $10 failure, it’s really a 3-cent failure because it’s the o-rings *ON* the $10 part that are the real problem.  This despite paying MB for a transmission servicing just 16 months ago!!  How do I surmount this barrier to efficient T1N Sprinter ownership? Maybe @millionmilesprinter will be the one who develops that elusive comprehensive list and offers that preemptive service to those of us who don’t want to keep repairing, and repairing, and repairing, ugh (fingers crossed).  

This replacement has been covered by numerous YouTubers and forum participants (the offending part is sometimes called a nag plug or transmission adapter housing - see here).  I just wanted to throw in my own pics and observations to round out the efforts of those who have come before me.

So what's the very first thing you do when confronted with the fact that your transmission has been leaking for an indeterminate period of time?  You check the oil level.  But guess what?  Mercedes Benz doesn't provide you with a dipstick.  Not if you own a T1N Sprinter, that is.

Why on earth would they not include such a basic piece of equipment?!

This is why.  "MB Workshop Only".  Which might not be such a bad idea if they were competent and could be trusted as a result.

It's because they don't want DIYers working on these transmissions.  But guess what??  I paid a Mercedes Benz shop several hundred dollars to service this transmission just 16 months ago.  Obviously they didn't do it properly if it began leaking fluid so soon.  

Listen to The Picard.

So then what do you do in a situation like this?  Well, having no idea how much oil leaked out of the transmission, you can't risk driving with too little, and you can't get it fixed unless you drive it to a place where it is fixable (I was not going to pay for a flatbed tow because of this fiasco).  So you take an educated guess.

Ultimately, our educated guess looked like this, which we found out several days later when an aftermarket dipstick arrived from Amazon.

Here's the description of that dipstick as it appeared on Amazon:  TRANSMISSION DIPSTICK TOOL w/INSTRUCTIONS & FREE LOCKING PIN Mercedes 722.6 Transmissions – Replaces OEM 140589152100

It takes a while to get the hang of this dipstick.  I can see why MB would not want uneducated DIYers trying to mess with it, because it's easy to get an erroneous reading.  But with enough iterations on both hot and cold engine states, you can get the "feel" of when you are getting a good reading.

It does not insert all the way in like an engine oil dipstick does.

OK, now on to the leak itself.  @MillionMileSprinter told me in an email that there was about a 99% chance that the pilot bushing was the source of the leak (with oil spread everywhere, we could not tell by looking).  So we ordered one of those.

Another reproduction from Instagram.  Why are we having to learn so much of what we know about our vans from a photo sharing site, for crying out loud?!  Theory says I should be able to pay one or more mechanics for that knowledge. 

By the way, failure of this $11 part is more serious than a loss of oil.  If the leaking oil wicks up into the transmission controller, it can put the Sprinter into permanent limp mode until fixed.  And of course, ours had to obey Murphy's Law and begin leaking in earnest shortly before a planned Christmas trip (we noticed it less than a week before).

Here's where that little device mounts on the curb side of the transmission:

Photo center.

It's a very easy job to swap this thing out.  Search for it on YouTube vids for more detail, but basically you rotate that thumb tab downward, pull out the black plug-like object with the wires attached to it, and unscrew the bushing:

Pop the new one in, re-tighten the screw, re-insert the wired module, and tighten down the thumb tab to seat it properly.

OK, so did the replacement of this $11 part solve our issue?  The proof is in the Christmas pudding:

Explain this crap - why couldn't Mercedes Benz have done this simple, simple thing 16 months ago when I paid to have the transmission serviced?

Either one of two things has to happen here in order to make the management of this issue professionally defensible:  Either Mercedes Benz has to include the replacement of such a common known failing part in their routine transmission servicing, OR, they have to tell customers, "By the way, it is not our policy to replace this $11 part on the transmission when we are doing a servicing for you.  You should expect that to fail shortly after you leave our shop."

Either one of those needs to happen to do right by customers.  But this example is just a symptom of a far wider phenomenon, and that is the paradigm of "We'll fix it when it breaks".  The paradigm is NOT what it should be, which is "We'll do what is logical and common-sense necessary to help you keep your van running reliably given that you are a paying customer."

As I said in my Insta-rant above, we are just not there yet.  Here's a screengrab from the resulting comment section, and I think this sums the whole situation up nicely.

"Local dealers are merely parts installers." Ouch.  But I have to wonder what the explanation is here.  This part commonly leaks on MANY Mercedes Benz vehicles - not just Sprinters (e.g., see here).  How could any MB shop either not know, or simply not bother, to replace this part as a matter of course?!

20190203 EDIT:  We checked the transmission control module to see if any oil might have gotten into it from the previously-leaking bushing described above.  Not a trace was seen.  This examination has been well-described by other sources, but here's a reference pic anyway:

LITHIUM LOAD TESTING A 200 A BOSCH ALTERNATOR

This blog post is a placeholder containing two video clips of our 200 A Bosch alternator.  We took these as we were trying to ascertain why our previous alternator's clutch pulley failed at 17 months of age (original blog post here; Sprinter Forum discussion commences at post #110 on this page here).  Was it caused by the dynamics of the lithium charging?  Or was it an unrelated failure?

It's very difficult to tell.  These two tests do not represent actual vehicle operating conditions, which would include high engine RPMs, cab a/c cranking and placing its own load on the alternator, other vehicle systems engaged, road roughness contributing to vibrations, etc. 

The results are utterly inconclusive.  There is evidence of pitch changes when the lithium charging loads are applied and removed, but no obvious thrashing of the belts, or visible vibrations, or anything like that. 

I'll have more on what we plan to do about this failure in future posts, but in the meantime, here are the views from below and above.

UPGRADING THE TOILET IN AN AIRSTREAM INTERSTATE

All I can say about this post is, crap.

Do yourself a big favor:  Don't Google the phrase "toilet meme". 

This gets Un-Fun Blog Post of the Year Award, so I'll keep it short and not-so-sweet.

On our way back from Canada a few weeks ago, we started noticing abnormal odors from the wet bath.  By the time we got to Houston and were moving the van into storage, not only were there odors, but small trails of water were snaking their way across the center hallway from beneath the cabinetry adjacent to the wet bath.  Another repair was clearly indicated, but initially it wasn't clear whether the toilet or the plumbing and black tank system were involved in the breach.  Here were the steps involved in resolving this.

(1) The first thing I did was flush the black tank better than it has ever been done before.  I musta ran 50 gallons through that thing.

(2) My husband de-installed the existing toilet, which was a Thetford Aqua Magic V.

That's the hole cut in the wet bath enclosure, and the black tank beneath it. 

The plywood edge should not have been left raw like what is shown above, so I sealed it with oil-based enamel paint, which just happened to have been red. 

(3) I then inspected the black tank thoroughly using both my iPhone, which I shoved in there to take pictures (it was clean), and we also bought an endoscope, which I ran to the dump line from above and from below.  The black tank in this model of Airstream Interstate is very tabular.  It is only a few inches high, but it must be four feet long, extending under the wet bath, under the refrigerator / microwave cabinetry, and all the way back to our lithium battery bank (in fact, the black tank holds up a couple of our peripheral electrical components).

I could see no evidence of damage or breach, so we moved on to the next step, which was to fill the black tank very full of clean water, and cap it so that we could take a test drive and slosh it around really well, to see if any water emerged.

This common 3-inch drain plug is available at any big box hardware store.

(4) No water emerged from the slosh test.  We therefore concluded that the Thetford was the only source of our problems.

Ah, the Thetford. What an extraordinary piece of crap. Never have I seen a worse design in the entire universe of RV products, and I'm not the only person who feels that way.  Almost simultaneously with our troubles, Roadtrek Life published this post describing his troubles with the Thetford, of which he reportedly had purchased three inside of six years (!).  Wisely giving up on the model entirely, he replaced it with a Dometic 300, but not before explicitly showing what is so horribly wrong with the Thetford.

The internal body of the Thetford, the space between the bowl and the outer wall, is fully open to the black tank.  Black water sloshes up into there due to road bumpiness and when you slam on your brakes.  And it deposits waste inside the body of the toilet, if you can believe that.

 At first I didn't totally register what Roadtrek Life was saying.  Frankly it was too horrible and too stupid a design to even contemplate.  Just as I had trouble comprehending it, so too did the readers of Air Forums (this thread) when I politely attempted to describe what was happening.

I finally got it when I visually examined our own Thetford.  And then I performed this test.

I turned the de-installed Thetford upside down on a step stool, filled that interstitial space full of water, and left it overnight.  And this happened.

Not only does Thetford's design allow black water to slosh up into the body of the toilet, the body of the toilet is not waterproof.  The hose water steadily leaked out onto the ground, as you can see here.  So apparently, it's only a matter of time before you'll have odors and then black water leakage with that model of toilet.

This image above does not show a toilet, but it represents an analogous problem. Except the space suit helmet is air and water tight, unlike the Thetford. 

(5) The question then became, what do we replace this disgraceful Thetford with?  I called my marine wholesaler contact and asked for advice (I'd bought our Vitrifrigo fridge from him).  For a simple gravity toilet, he recommended the SeaLand 500 series, hands down (SeaLand was acquired by Dometic so the terms tend to be used interchangeably).  He noted, however, that many smaller RV and boat baths have insufficient room for mounting a 500 series toilet (PDF with specs and instructions here), and that did prove to be the case with our wet bath.  Therefore, we were stuck with the cheaper 300 series, specifically the 311 (Roadtrek Life had even less space than we did, and reportedly installed the 300).

This is a view of the underside of the Dometic 310/311 (I can't get full clarity on those model numbers), and my finger is pointing toward a plastic shield that the Thetford lacks.  That's what stops black water from penetrating the full body of this toilet model.  Compare to Roadtrek Life's annotated Thetford pic above. 

The Dometic 311 fit our available space, but it is not the quality that I'd hoped for.  Multiple reviews report that the 310 and 311 tend to develop leaks at the seam between the porcelain bowl and the plastic base (e.g., see reviews at Amazon).  But given our fit constraints, we couldn't find a better, higher-quality choice.

^^ This is what I was feeling like when I was reading low-ended gravity toilet reviews.  No model was reported to be free of problems. 

Furthermore, the Dometic 311 is not the dimensions I'd prefer in a perfect world.

You can see how close the rear hinge is to the back wall.  There's no way we could get a larger and more expensive toilet model in this space.  But that's not the only size issue - it's not as short as I would prefer, either. 

It's slightly higher than the Thetford.  At 5'6", I'm taller than the average American woman, but even I can't place my feet on the floor when I'm sitting on this thing.  That's not a comfort issue so much as it is a durability issue.  I know that this is not necessarily recommended, but my husband and I use the toilet when our rig in underway at highway speeds (we drive up to 760 miles a day - using the head on the fly is a necessary evil under those conditions).  Now that we know how cheaply made all of the available fit-able gravity toilets are, what I'd prefer to do is not put my full weight on the seat while the rig is in motion, lest we hit a pavement crater and start slamming around.  My weight on the toilet at that point would almost certainly add to wear and tear stresses and shorten its already-suspect lifespan.  But if I can't reach the floor, then I can't easily take most of my weight off the seat.

Sigh.  What a pain.  If we go to all this trouble and spend the money, it sure would be nice to have a problem solved long-term, and a reliable outcome at the end of a project such as this.  I don't think that this model of toilet represents an auspicious completion, but at least it's an improvement over that God-awful Thetford, for the time being.

I like to keep my neighbors guessing.  "Um, did she just put a giant stuffed bear on the van toilet...?"   Yyyyyeah.

REPLACING THE FRIDGE IN AN AIRSTREAM INTERSTATE **AGAIN**!

Starting in March of 2015, we tried to troubleshoot our Airstream Interstate's original Dometic 2351 3-way absorption refrigerator, and you can read about those misadventures here.

Upon conceding failure with that troubleshooting, we replaced that Dometic 2351 with a new Dometic 2351 and you can read about those additional adventures here.

Twenty months after we installed the new Dometic 2351, it again went on the fritz.

The Dometic 2351 does not come with a built-in thermometer, so we made one, just as we had with the first unit.  For that reason, we knew immediately when something went wrong.  Internal temperatures were sustaining in the 44 - 55 degree range even when the outside temps didn't rise above the 80's, which of course is unacceptable.  To be absolutely certain of what we were seeing, we also used a conventional thermometer to take its temperature, and the two agreed very well.  

We followed procedures specified in Dometic's own Diagnostic Service Manual (PDF) to try to diagnose this second break-down.  That included bypassing the thermostat in two different ways (my husband's DIY hot-wired resistors are visible near photo center above) to cause the fridge to run "full blast", to see if it would get colder.  Which it did not.  

Somebody shoot me.  I'd like to say that I can't believe we wasted our money on a second fridge of the same type, but unfortunately I have to believe that.  Back when we made that decision, we had only one Lifeline battery - not the lithium set-up we have right now, which gives us approximately five times the usable power compared to our OEM set-up.  So back then, we had no choice but to buy another 3-way absorption refrigerator and obviously we did not choose well.

Why did our second Dometic fail?  An ominous quote from the Diagnostic Service Manual reads, “A refer (sic) that chases the out-side (sic) temperature is improperly vented or has a weak cooling unit.” (page 24).  We were seeing the temperature chase ambient, but we knew that there was nothing wrong with our venting.  So how could the cooling unit have suddenly become "weak"?  There are various speculations on the internet, including an intriguing possibility expressed in this forum thread, which is that one of the gas components, namely hydrogen, leaks out preferentially from the welds in the cooling unit, given that it's THE smallest molecule in existence.

Ya don't say.  Not very good news for absorption fridge owners, obviously. 

Once hydrogen escapes, the unit doesn't perform as well, and there you have it.  "Weak".  Or so the theory says.

To make a long story short, I researched the available replacement possibilities in the realm of two-way rather than three-way fridges.  A well-known RV upfitter had recommended that I consider either the marine fridges of brand name Vitrifrigo or Isotherm, so those are the ones I stuck to.  Rumor has it that Norcold is experiencing major failure rates right now (one source claiming 80% returns!!!  Plus they had major recalls even before these latest reported problems, so I did not even consider that brand.)

Here's a screenshot of my comparison spreadsheet.  

 As you can surmise from the chart above, Vitrifrigo would have sold me on the size of the freezer alone, but it was also well-regarded by wholesalers in my location, which contains one of the largest boating communities in the world.

I had a lot of trouble verifying the specs of these fridges, though.  Dimensional information on the internet was limited and often contradictory.  Customer service was no help.  Vitrifrigo itself is an Italian company which appears to have very poor representation here in America.  No retailer carried either of the models I was evaluating, so I could not view them in a brick-and-mortar to confirm that internet thumbnails were showing the actual product I was looking for.

Experiences like this were common.  Do you ever visit a webpage and have these annoying "Can I help you?" pop-ups appear only to discover that there's nobody on the other end?  It's just a useless bot.  

Fortunately I found a really good wholesaler who was willing to crack open one of his shipping boxes so that I could examine the Vitrifrigo C115IDB4-F in person, in his warehouse.

If anyone needs to know where and how to buy marine parts in the greater Houston area, email me.  Sometimes I don't list vendor names because of "law of unintended consequences" type outcomes.  But I'd be glad to share stories. 

That model link I gave above is to a UK site because I can't find a decent American sales listing as I'm writing this... case in point regarding the difficulty of finding information.

This is generally regarded as a fairly knowledgeable source, IF their site happens to be up and running while you are searching. 

Having been satisfied with what I saw in the warehouse, I phoned one of my favorite marine parts retailers and had them issue a purchase order to the wholesaler.  Then I happily carried this baby out of the wholesaler's establishment, stopping in at the retailer to sign my credit card receipt on the way home.

Literally.  It came home in our Interstate, which I was using as my daily driver until we got this refrigerator issue under control.  Here you can see the original cabinet opening where the cursed Dometic had been removed. 

Here's how this Vitrifrigo compares to our useless Dometic 2351.

The Vitrifrigo is visibly better construction quality.  There's a temperature control knob (black circle at lower right), and it has a light, neither of which the Dometic has.  It's also a slightly larger cubic foot size, I think... I could not locate any published statement as to the Dometic's precise volume. 

Even if we could get a Dometic 2351 that didn't break on us, this right here would make the slightly higher price of the Vitrifrigo worth it.  An extra 5 inches might not seem like a lot, but in a camper van, every inch counts, and having a larger freezer is HUGE.  

The Vitrifrigo's cut-out size, and especially it's face mount, was larger than the Dometic, which required us to do cabinet surgery.  Everyone's cabinetry will likely be somewhat different, so I won't run through this procedure step-by-step.  I'll just show some general provisions to give you an idea how we accomplished this.  In our case, it proved to be quite time-consuming.

I'll talk about adjusting the width first, then the cabinet height.  But because this became an iterative process for us, with a couple of mid-project do-overs, some of the photos below do not show full continuity.

Remember, our space was designed for a 3-way fridge, and a 3-way fridge produces a potential combustion gas penetration hazard (think carbon monoxide).  It took me about 2 hours just to get a portion of the caulk off the inside of the cut-out.  And while I was engaged in this caulk-stripping, I also ripped up the frontal portion of the sheet metal that had been poorly installed.  I discovered some minor water damage in one corner, probably from condensation dripping out of the fridge after it had been turned off and left open to dry (we always tried to control condensation by applying absorbent rags, but it didn't always work perfectly).  I sealed that area up later in this process.  

The first task was caulk removal.  The second task was to remove face trim pieces one at a time. 

These things were glued, screwed, caulked, stapled, taped, and doweled.  Literally, all six of those attachment methods were used in this cabinetry process.  This was not pre-fab cabinetry and, complicating the removal, the face frame had been built partly in Airstream's shop, and partly in-situ.  In other words, there was no consistency from place to place. 

We needed to expand the width of the opening to about 23 inches (including frame overlap) to accommodate the Vitrifrigo (the inset number was smaller than this).

That meant deleting all of the trim on the right side, where it was deeper and more layered.    

Here you can see how that right side was constructed:

Obviously they trenched and sunk those screws before attaching the right section to the left section... what a hassle, because it meant we could not peel it back layer by later.  We had to remove this entire compound piece and then break it down, rather than leaving the section we needed in place. 

Here below you can see the right side with that entire strip removed.

You can see the caulk smear and the notch in the base plate where it had fit.  The compound piece itself is visible at photo lower right. 

As I started to say above, I tore off the sheet metal liner on the front portion of this space because its caulk job was irregular and un-salvageable.  But that left the original raw plywood exposed, so I sealed it by adding three coats of oil-based enamel, the same enamel paint that I'd used on the lithium chamber ventilation screen that you can see at photo left above.  Even if nothing in the fridge leaks or spills per se, drips of condensation can still make their way out the door and down onto its support platform.  That's what had caused the discoloration that was evident on the raw plywood.  The original metal sheeting here was not installed in a waterproof manner.

Or, even if drips don't occur, wood should never be left raw in a camper van, especially in our subtropical climate.  That's just asking for trouble.

This photo also shows the painted plywood, and also shows that there was only one inch of original face trim on the left side of the cabinet to begin with.  It was the right side that had been built out several inches.  You can see the corresponding notch in the bottom shelf toward photo bottom, where the compound piece had been removed.

I left the sheet metal lining intact in the rear of this chamber, because it was in good shape in that location.  

We decided to do the extra work to achieve an inset of the refrigerator, which meant cutting the original vertical trim piece off at the height of the shelf, removing the upper leg entirely (this pic shows part of that upper portion still in place, before we figured out that it had to go).  Every inch counts in an Interstate, and having the fridge slightly recessed would help prevent it getting bumped, the handle getting snagged, etc.  But given that we'd adjusted the width, there was now a hole at the bottom where the trim had previously extended straight up.  The most efficient way to finish that out was the create a threshold out of quarter-inch plywood, much like the threshold for a door.

By the way, before I forget, here are the details on the gray paint I used throughout this project.

Sherwin Williams "Iron Ore".  Note that it's an oil-based enamel.

It's a pretty good match to the existing countertops.

We originally thought that we could salvage some of the original face trim, but that proved not to be the case because Airstream's OEM DC wire bundle plus the solar wiring were interfering with the refrigerator on the rear left side.  Therefore we had to remove all the original face trim, and basically start over, in the most minimalist way achievable.

We had to cut that right trim flush... and of course I sealed the raw plywood edges with oil-based enamel...

...and then we added an entirely new bottom plate, and a down-rod at left (solid oak).  

You'll notice the left down-rod has a gap between itself and the left wall of the cabinet.  My Class B mantra:  Not a single inch wasted.

If we were forced to push the fridge all the way to the right to avoid the wire bundles, so be it.  But why waste the resulting space on the left?

That space is pure gold - a precious 0.7 cubic feet, albeit in a really strange planar configuration.  But not strange for a Rumpl blanket.  I cut a "spine" for it out of coroplast (plastic cardboard) and used two of my big prepper elastics to cinch the Rumpl to the coroplast, to give it shape and stiffness so that I could slide it in there.  Not only does this create blanket storage (ALWAYS a problem in any Class B), it also increases the effective insulation for the fridge.  Obviously this view above is with the fridge not yet in place.

There's a view of that offending DC wire bundle (1 of 2) that we had to avoid by pushing all the way to the right.  The while line you can see is caulk, and the gray at the base of the DC bundle is some Sikaflex 221 we used to plug this hole.  We have electrical workings underneath and to the left of this bundle. 

We also replaced the vinyl flaps that Airstream had installed around the former fridge.  But let me not get ahead of myself...

OK, so, achieving the correct new width was the relatively easy part.  Adjusting the cabinet height was a female dog.

 

Because you're an Airstream Interstate - THAT'S WHY!!

Jackie Chan, one of my all-time favorites, whose work ethic resonates so deeply with my immigrant heart. 

Difficult because we had to move the microwave shelf up about a half an inch to accommodate the Vitrifrigo mounting frame.  But the microwave shelf was not a simple shelf...

...rather, it was structurally integral to the "chimney" that had been built to vent combustion gases from the original 3-way refrigerator (see that area extending upward at photo right).  Plus Airstream's vehicle-wide DC wiring bundle ran up through that shelf through a hole, not a notch.  And that stuff in the gray conduit is part of the solar wiring.

As it always is when working in the tight space of a van, it wasn't just difficult. IT WAS COMPLICATED, TOO! 

James of The Fit RV gloats every time a van project demands that he purchase a new woodworking tool.  So does my husband.

In this case, it was an oscillating saw, with various blades.  The piece of plywood beneath it was used as the spacer.  The cylinder in the foreground is the nozzle of the Shop Vac.  

Because of the way this cabinetry was put together, we had to surgically excise a nominal half inch so that we could raise up that microwave shelf enough for the Vitrifrigo face frame to achieve clearance. 

See how that works?  Isn't that cool.

Actually it wasn't cool, at least not literally - it was really friggin' hot.  Temperatures in the van climbed above 100 degrees F as we did this job.  It was so hot that I could not bear to exert myself to make the usual big step up onto the hitch platform without assistance, so I needed this extra stool for my feeble, overheating self.  People sometimes ask me how I find the time to write blog posts.  That's easy to answer - I'M IN THE DEEP SOUTH!!  I'M DYING HERE!!  I have to stop working periodically and sit motionless (all except for nine digits typing furiously) in the air conditioning until I cool off again.  

I'm trying not to complain, but I'm not always succeeding these days.  Let me say it again.  It was miserably hot from start to finish with this job.

That's one of my favorite emojis.  Especially this time of year. 

The fully-excavated shelf area looks like this, and you can see the complexity of the woodwork.

You can also see a bunch of electrical running all through there.  The AC plug is for the microwave.  Obviously you need to be very careful when cutting in an area like this.  And observe electrical lock-out tag-out protocols.  

As a rule, I never leave any raw wood edge exposed in the Interstate.  It's just asking for trouble.  One spill of liquid or leak of water, and you've got swollen plywood and ruined cabinetry.

This is a small piece of that same plywood that I left out in the rain last week for illustrative purposes. 

 There's no need to run that risk.  Seal the exposed edges of your plywood - at least it will buy you some time if you have a spill incident.  Look for unsealed edges when and where you can.  In our rig, Airstream generally did not do this edge-sealing.

In this case, we had insufficient time to allow oil-based enamel to dry as we did with the bottom shelf, so I sealed everything here with gray-tinted water-based Kilz.  The one-by-one wooden brackets that you see in this view were waxed, presumably by Airstream, and can't be painted or stained as a result.  

Here's a view of the shelf re-inserted, and the spacer fitted beneath it.  Later, those two vertical trim pieces had to be removed (what did I say about photo continuity?).  

Here's the corresponding top view of the microwave shelf, repositioned. The holes in the sides of the shelf are the screw holes for anchoring the microwave. 

As it turns out, the resulting narrowed gap above the microwave was no longer tall enough to store my cutting board because I cannot get my fingers in there.  But it did turn out to be perfect for this item which has long eluded effective and protective storage:

My Mapsco Texas Road Atlas.  No other map is as thorough and accurate - no paper maps, no GPS database.  Only this one will serve for our kinds of backwoods travels.  And now it wedges in there tightly enough so that it will not go flying onto the floor when the rig is in motion.    

Every inch of storage counts in a camper van.  Every single opportunity for storage must be leveraged. Finding a half-inch space to store an atlas is golden.

Just before we loaded in the fridge, we covered its rear refrigerant line with the same plastic wire conduit we'd used for the interior DC wire bundle.  All that refrigerant line had for protection was the usual layer of spongy foam which, in this tight environment, didn't seem sufficient (as evidenced by the fact that we'd already nicked the foam during fridge fitting trials).

And speaking again of space, finding 0.7 planar cubic feet is also golden.  At first my husband was not convinced that storing a Rumpl next to the fridge was such a good idea.  Then he actually heard the Vitrifrigo compressor with his own ears, the Danfoss compressor that is widely rumored to be silent.

Silent my sweet buttocks!  That's the decibel reading in front of the cabinet slot, without the Rumpl blanket in place.  

Oh, and let me not forget to make this important point.

This is actually a larger fridge than the Dometic 2351, but because we recessed it into the cabinetry, the door doesn't come anywhere near to hitting the opposite cabinetry.  This is an issue with some Dometic installations in Airstream Class Bs, as this forum thread attests.  

And now for the money shot...

There she is - Miss Italy this time, rather than Miss America.   

And also the money shot on Danfoss compressor noise attenuation...

Much better.  The Rumpl does result in a significant noise reduction.  Plus I get the blanket storage.  How rad is that, to use #vanlife-speak?   

And the money shot showing that the serendipitous noise attenuator is not impinging upon the coil...

This is the view through the old side vent that the propane fridge had used for air intake.  We may devise a small shield to go here, although I think the risk is minimal.  I think mostly the blanket is at risk of getting damp from exposure to outside air. 

And the big question - how does this fridge perform?

I left the thermostat in the half-way position overnight, with no load on the fridge, only two water bottles (it's difficult to keep a fridge cold unless there's a load of food in it to "hold the cold").  The freezer portion turns sub-Arctic very quickly.  This is what the fridge got down to, with a corresponding lithium battery draw-down of about 11% overnight.  It was cycling (and it's a two-stage compressor, I note from the sound of it) but I probably left the thermostat too high for prevailing conditions, especially with no food load.  

We plan to run a bunch more tests today, with the thermostat turned down further, and also we want to track power consumption with respect to the batteries.  I'll update this post with any significant findings.

Edit, same-day:  The fridge immediately dropped into the 30's when I turned down the thermostat.  And this despite the side of the van being too hot to touch with the fingers in our blazing heat.

Second Edit:  Here's what our BMS (Electrodacus) looked like overnight as it was cycling.  My husband surmises that the compressor ran about one third of the time.  Overnight low temps in our area were probably around 75 degrees (we're located in the subtropics).  I think you can see the effect of the "soft start" multi-speed compressor here (all those spikey narrow peaks).

Here is the Cruisers Forum thread that corresponds to this blog post BTW.  And here is the Air Forums thread that includes discussion of some of the same content.

I shouldn't complain but I find it hard not to.  On the bright side, we need demanding conditions in which to properly test a new refrigerator.  Well, we sure as hell have them.