Hello! I see one or two other Mercedes campers on here too so thought i'd join and say hello.
Well where do I start, I'm a keen mechanic / tinkerer (aren't we all!) and earlier this year picked up our 208D 'Autotrail Apache' as a sort of upgrade from the usual tent camping..
This was the day we picked it up - it was a very slow drive home as i didn't know at the time that the nylon nut on the throttle cable must have slackened itself off over the years, resulting in about 40mm of throttle pedal travel
I knew there was a bit of damp in the back as there was a gap in the rear panels, after much gentle taking apart it turned out that a roofrack must have been removed years ago but the 8 screw holes in the roof never filled in - there was moss growing out of them. Add to this the fresh water tank filler had been leaking for god knows how long as well as the water pump.... the rear wall and rearmost 3ft of floor had pretty much turned to compost so out it all came
I probably have a million photos... I took the time to clean the exposed bit of chassis, weld a new section on and repaired the floor with some buffalo ply (phenolic ply). this is now insulated on top.
I rebuilt the woodwork in sections so the van kept its shape and so i could remember where bits went... The walls are pretty basic, aluminium on the outside, 38mm x 18mm timber on the inside and 38mm polystyrene
I used celotex style board when rebuilding it, this way i could use modern adhesive to make the wall into more of a rigid structure, kind of thing!
Decided to put pine cladding in the back, held in with PU adhesive and brad nails. The new walls are now really rigid, i'm quite pleased!
Fast forward a bit and it's amost finished here, minus cupboard doors. Doors were on in time of our first trip... don't want to drop the pot noodles
In addition to this minor job(!) I've also:
made new gearstick linkage bushes as there were nothing but holes where the old ones had worn and fell out;
Fitted a diesel powered eberspacher-style heater which is amazing, the original truma gas powered heater was rubbish when it was windy outside;
Fitted ~200W of stick-on solar panels on the roof, which is useful as i've got two fridges in the van - a small one for food and a big one for beer! My girlfriend and I tend to go camping all year round so big solar panels should give us just enough leccy in the winter.
And sorted out a bunch of previous owner electrics, such as the spaghetti below
We went away in it last weekend, it drives much quicker with the throttle properly adjusted
anyway that's probably enough for now! only 999 jobs left to go until it's finished. I'll do the front scuttle panels and wings in the autumn, for now we want to get a bit of mileage out of the van before summer ends.
Cheers,
Tom
Well where do I start, I'm a keen mechanic / tinkerer (aren't we all!) and earlier this year picked up our 208D 'Autotrail Apache' as a sort of upgrade from the usual tent camping..
This was the day we picked it up - it was a very slow drive home as i didn't know at the time that the nylon nut on the throttle cable must have slackened itself off over the years, resulting in about 40mm of throttle pedal travel
I knew there was a bit of damp in the back as there was a gap in the rear panels, after much gentle taking apart it turned out that a roofrack must have been removed years ago but the 8 screw holes in the roof never filled in - there was moss growing out of them. Add to this the fresh water tank filler had been leaking for god knows how long as well as the water pump.... the rear wall and rearmost 3ft of floor had pretty much turned to compost so out it all came
I probably have a million photos... I took the time to clean the exposed bit of chassis, weld a new section on and repaired the floor with some buffalo ply (phenolic ply). this is now insulated on top.
I rebuilt the woodwork in sections so the van kept its shape and so i could remember where bits went... The walls are pretty basic, aluminium on the outside, 38mm x 18mm timber on the inside and 38mm polystyrene
I used celotex style board when rebuilding it, this way i could use modern adhesive to make the wall into more of a rigid structure, kind of thing!
Decided to put pine cladding in the back, held in with PU adhesive and brad nails. The new walls are now really rigid, i'm quite pleased!
Fast forward a bit and it's amost finished here, minus cupboard doors. Doors were on in time of our first trip... don't want to drop the pot noodles
In addition to this minor job(!) I've also:
made new gearstick linkage bushes as there were nothing but holes where the old ones had worn and fell out;
Fitted a diesel powered eberspacher-style heater which is amazing, the original truma gas powered heater was rubbish when it was windy outside;
Fitted ~200W of stick-on solar panels on the roof, which is useful as i've got two fridges in the van - a small one for food and a big one for beer! My girlfriend and I tend to go camping all year round so big solar panels should give us just enough leccy in the winter.
And sorted out a bunch of previous owner electrics, such as the spaghetti below
We went away in it last weekend, it drives much quicker with the throttle properly adjusted
anyway that's probably enough for now! only 999 jobs left to go until it's finished. I'll do the front scuttle panels and wings in the autumn, for now we want to get a bit of mileage out of the van before summer ends.
Cheers,
Tom
