1990 Mercedes T1 208D AutoTrail Navajo Camper Van

outer rim depth is 1 inch

center depth middle of the bowl is 1;5 inch


hope this helps

It's a tricky one...panels aren't the easiest to find over here these days. Coastal Motorhomes tend to be one of the best options (if not the cheapest), but they're not showing any door repairs in stock at the moment. You might have better luck seeing if you can find a source on the Continent where these vans seem to be a bit less uncommon. Though shipping for something as big as a door wouldn't be cheap.

The leisure battery in this has been showing signs of having died a sudden death recently. Dropping like a stone to around 10V pretty much as soon as any load is applied.

Before consigning it to the recycling bin I figured it made sense to at least check the electrolyte level, as a visual inspection can often reveal signs of damage too.

The label helpfully said to remove the sticker for maintenance...so I honestly expected to find cell plugs under it.



Yeah...about that.



Strikes me as an odd decision to render this sort of battery unserviceable given by its very nature as a leisure battery it's likely to spend a lot of time on float charge when the vehicle is in use or in standby ready for use.

In this case all it told me was that yes it's toast. The electrolyte in all but one cell is the colour or strong black coffee and on closer inspection the one end of the battery has bulged out by about 1/4"



That lip below the lid is recessed on the opposite end. Something has gone quite badly awry in this battery.

New one is about £100, not the end of the world but a cost I could have done without.

I think I'll probably look to make a bit of a change to the charging/DC supply in the near future too. The current onboard charger is a pretty old school one, and just supplies the DC circuits in parallel with the battery. Given that I'm in and out of the van quite a bit and like to leave the heater powered on in frost guard mode in the winter that means it spends quite a lot more time on charge than is ideal.

I think I'll set things up so instead I have a separate mains to 12V DC supply to run the onboard services when mains is hooked up and a separate proper intelligent charger to look after the battery. It's a pretty trivial matter to use a few relays to switch automatically between the battery or mains DC supply depending on whether mains is present. That will mean I can leave the van plugged in indefinitely without having to worry about it frying the leisure battery - but equally know that it's always ready to go if and when I go to use it.

To be fair kits probably already exist to do exactly what I'm suggesting off the shelf...be curious to see how horrifically overpriced they are as generally seems to be the case for most things aimed at campers or caravans!

DC supply shouldn't be difficult. By far the heaviest load is the heater during startup/shutdown, but even that's fused at 15A, though the highest draw I recall seeing during testing was around 10A...so doesn't need to be anything too specialised.

Huge box from Tayna Batteries arrived earlier today which weighs about the same as a small planet. Really quick service as usual for them.



That people, is how to pack a battery.



A good 3" of padding on all sides (I've removed it from the top), foam wrap and double bagged inside that lot. Took me the best part of ten minutes to dig my way into it. Unlike the last one from eBay which came in a single wall cardboard box with a bit of bubble wrap.



State of charge indicator shows healthy, though obviously first thing I'll be doing after it's installed is giving it an overnight charge.



I note that the "remove label for battery maintenance" text has been removed from the label since my previous one was made.

About an hour later another box arrived with this in it.





It seems to work at least, plus side it's got a manual adjustment for output voltage which means I can bump it up a little from 12V closer to what you'd expect to see from a charged 12V battery. I only had 100W or so of load handy to test it with so far but it behaved perfectly with that.

Not exactly hard to figure out how to hook it up.



Not exactly the last word in quality in the fit and finish department, but I can't see anything that rings any alarm bells. For £22 delivered I've zero complaints - so long as it doesn't pack in after a week anyway.

I'll probably make some standoffs for it to attach to so it doesn't struggle for airflow - the fan draws in from the bottom and sides so if I mount it flush overheating might be an issue. Not that it will generally be running anywhere close to it's rated capacity for any period. I'm also going to be mounting it to a vertical surface (probably rear wall of the "electrical locker" as I refer to the rear of the space under the sofa/bed) so if we ever have any issues with water ingress through the outer hatch just forward of that area it should be kept well and truly clear of it. Just seems like a sensible precaution...the old school transformer and linear regulator setup would be rather more forgiving of damp than a switch mode supply like this.

Need to engage my brain a bit with regards to wiring things up, but pretty sure I can get an automatic switchover sorted out with a handful of components and some brainpower...quite possibly a single double pole relay could do it...Absolutely sure I can do all the switching on the 12V side...mains can just be left "on" to everything permanently (I'll incorporate a switch anyway for service purposes, but you get the idea).

There are a handful of things I'd like to tidy up while I'm doing this work too - not least getting rid of the last few inline glass type fuse holders. There are a couple of redundant wires that can be binned, one or two to be rerouted actually under the floor, and I'd like to beef up the wire that's actually used for the split charge charging line...it just *looks* weedy to me for the application.

Oh, and a bunch of grounds which run *aaaaaaaall* of the way back to the battery. Zip tied to the nice chunky metal chassis rail. Which being a van/truck chassis has a plethora of bolt holes, mounting eyes etc all over the place...they're getting abbreviated and terminated to the chassis and a beefy earth strap just run to the leisure battery - which should reduce the spaghetti in the leisure battery box by about 80% in one shot. I imagine it should eliminate a lot of the voltage sag we see when the water pump runs a bunch too. Said water pump may get totally rewired anyway... there's something not quite right with it on the control panel (it's causes backfeed into some of the indicator lights on the panel and way more volt drop than I'd like...so the switch may be repurposed to run a remote relay).

The inverter is getting tweaked too. It's only really there as insurance against needing mains in an emergency, and is the sort of thing you can run a battery down with in a hurry - so I want to hook it up to a potential relay same as the setup for the fridge so it can only run when the engine is running and the charging system is live (the idle speed is slightly too low for it to wake up until you blip the throttle).

I actually quite enjoy stuff like this - not so much while doing it, but standing back and looking at the end result and actually seeing an improvement or how much better something works is worth it.

I'm seriously considering just taking a few days away before the weather gets too horrendous to go have a wander around up north. Aside from one overnight trip to collect the S123 I've literally not been more than 40 miles from home since November 2019 and am going *sliiiiightly* insane. Got a couple of friends who can loan me a parking spot and mains extension lead which is all I need with the van, otherwise I can be totally self sufficient. Insulation does just fine even in sub zero temps with the heater, I've got both hot and cold running water, TV, fridge, comfy bed, oven, grill, hob, perfectly usable bathroom, shower, eight USB charging sockets around the bed, and shedloads of storage. What more do you need for a few days away?

Beer?

Nice improvements. The charging / electrical side of old vans appears to be a dark art to many and good to see somebody with a bit of an idea sorting things out.
James

Planning to make a quick run up north later in the week in the van. With a long run ahead I decided it was time to finally get around to finishing sorting out the audio in the van...being able to even hear that the stereo is turned on above 40mph would be nice.

After a search covering approximately 80% of my house I eventually unearthed this pair of speakers which I've owned since 2005 if I'm remembering right, but have never actually been properly installed in a vehicle.



They came as part of a package deal including a sub and amp (which were what I was after) and all the stuff that went with it. Really was a case of a whole car audio system in a box, just add your own head unit - though the shop did have a variant with that too.



The sub is actually still in use as part of my stereo inside, albeit having seen very little use actually in a car.

These should help out quite a bit compared to the little 10cm ones in the dash.



There aren't a huge amount of places I can really put them without adding in unsightly surface mount boxes, the obvious spot being in the forward facing sides of the seating/lockers immediately behind the cab. I'm loathe to go cutting holes in things...but improving audio is high enough on my list I'm willing to do it. If some future custodian really wanted to undo it, at the end of the day it's just two panels of plywood laminate they'd need to replace.

Nearside is easy enough.



The offside however is a bit busier because I've already installed equipment here in the form of the outlet, switch and status lights for the inverter.



Right in the way.



After a bit of thinking I've decided to rotate the speaker through 90 degrees and move the outlet, probably to sit directly below the switch.



That bundle of wires you can see there is on my list of bodges I inherited with the van I hopefully will get rid of shortly. I'm planning to vastly simplify the DC wiring when I add in the new power supply and charger setup. Currently every circuit has its own feed all the way back to the battery, instead I'm going to install a beefy cable to a distribution point in the locker right next to the power supply, where it can then split off to the relevant circuits to get rid of a lot of the voltage drop - probably via an actual fusebox so I can get shot of all the remaining in line ones. The current setup is just a mess, for all I have removed quite a lot of bodgery compared to when I first got the van.

Another wiring change I'd like to make would be to allow me to run the stereo off the accomodation power, as it would be nice to be able to run that without worrying about draining the vehicle battery.

I hadn't been in the nearside locker for a while...like in a couple of years. As evidenced by there still being a mains fan heater in there... I've had working heating since sometime in 2019!



It will come as absolutely no surprise to anyone who has ever been unfortunate enough to witness me undertaking anything resembling carpentry that things pretty much immediately descended into farce. Eventually we got to this point.



You are not getting to see what's behind the panel. It is seriously ugly.

The other side first required me to remove the socket, but followed a similar theme.



Likewise, you're not getting to see the carpentry here either. Especially as a fair portion of it had to be done by hand as I couldn't get in there with the jigsaw.



I'll reinstall the socket shortly, probably directly under the switch.

I may go back and add a cover of some sort behind the speakers, partly as protection for them and partly to hide my absolutely hideous carpentry.

Will be curious to see how this sounds - has to be an improvement over the tiny dash mounted ones though. No I've not discounted the idea of adding a sub in the future. That's a job for the future though. Would really like to get some better ones actually in the cab too, though that's difficult without actually cutting holes in metalwork which I'd rather not do.

Last job for the day was to give the new power supply a test run. With everything on and the heater in preheat mode and the leisure battery disconnected the line voltage stayed rock steady at the voltage I set it to.



At a guess that's with about 15A being drawn.

So looks like that will do the job just fine. The fan speed is load dependent, but even at full chat (well, the loudest I've heard it anyway), it's just a distant bit of white noise once the locker is closed. Definitely won't be objectionable for the intended use.

The little round pin socket, before folks ask is a DC outlet. Only thing I generally use it for is the water transfer pump for filling the onboard tank from the portable one. Though as part of the electrical improvements I might install a cigarette lighter style outlet in the locker so I don't need to run in and out of the van during the filling operation - I'd probably replace it with another mains/USB combo, one thing I've learned is that in 2021 you can never have too many USB charging points.

460 plus change miles covered today.

Three things to note.

[] Is there a running difference between the cheapest diesel I can find and She'll V-Power etc? In this engine, absolutely. Definitely less willing to rev cleanly on the cheap stuff.

[] The clutch pedal squeak is back. I was wanting to tear my own ears out to free myself from it after about three hours. It's getting some attention tomorrow.

[] I really do need to do something to tame the exhaust noise...I love the throaty, raspy side of it, but not being able to hear yourself think between 40 and 69mph gets wearing after a few hours.

Really is quite roomy when by yourself.



Currently it's 6C and tipping it down outside... I'm quite happily listening to it on the roof and am just as warm and comfortable as I would be in a real hotel room. Heck, every single hotel I've been in in living memory I've had to take my own extension lead with me so I could charge my phone near to the bed... I've got four accessible USB charging points here within arm's reach and an extra two if I open a locker up. Take that Premier In...

Stick a gallon of kero in it to boost the cetane rating. It's acceptable legally as an additive.

Wrap some PTFE tape round the thread of the strainer, till you get it to the position you want