Sparkle Pony has Black Death - Time to see Dr. A

Hundreds of years ago a devastating illness swept across Europe, taking out large swaths of the population, and turning everything black.  It did this by loosening the fuel injector hold down bolt and allowing exhaust gases to escape from the cylinder. The gases spray across the top of the cylinder head and, over time, accumulate into a crispy, deep fried, chicken-waffle that envelopes all the fuel injectors.  Unbeknownst to most people, the Black Death is still alive and viciously attacks engines of Dodge Sprinters.

And it was unbeknownst to us too until we removed the cylinder head cover, peered inside with our curious little noses, and saw the devastation.  Our fuel injectors were under a thick coating of crispy, deep fried, chicken-waffles.  Dan suggested we simply eat the chicken-waffles, which is his solution for most things, but Delilah threw that idea straight out of his noggen with a firm bonk.

The black chicken-waffles encrusted all over the fuel injectors

Dan is not pleased with his sooty thumb

 It was time to call Dr. A.

For those of you that have not heard about Dr. A let me inform you.  Dr. A is a mechanic of German descent who was born into the world with a wrench in one hand and a mop of fantastic hair in the other - which he promptly wrenched onto his head and still sports to this day.  At age 3, his parents returned home to see their Volkswagen in pieces in the yard and Dr. A with a grease smudged nose, sipping a glass of chocolate milk atop the engine block. At age 5, he fixed a flat tire just by looking at it.  And at age 12, he was contracted by Q himself to build an invisible, indestructible, flying car for the British.

So it was quite clear that this was the man we had to see.  Luckily, Dr. A resides in Pittsburgh, a short 3 hour drive from Baltimore, and so one sunny Saturday we scooted on up to see him.  As we pulled up, he ambled over to us with his fantastic blond mop of surfer hair, cut-off sweatpants, and the premier mechanic footwear sought after around the globe - Crocs.  We popped the hood, he grabbed the wrench that was welded to his hand at birth, and went to work.  2 of our injectors were leaking we had spent around a baker's dozen hours carefully excavating the injectors with screwdrivers, toothbrushes, toothpicks, and other dental hygiene instruments before we left. They were now far from clean and shiny, but at least not caked with chicken-waffles.  With one fell swoop (what is a fell swoop?) Dr. A simultaneously removed the old injectors and installed the new ones.  After a celebratory pizza party of the world's best Feta-Spinach-Onion pizza (possibly the only thing in this post that is not exaggerated) we shook hands with the world's most renowned Sprinter mechanic and his family and headed back to Baltimore with an engine that did not sputter like an old boat and did not smell like a flatulent skunk. It was a happy day for us all.

For the factoids among us:    Black Death is really a term used by Sprinter enthusiasts to describe fuel injector leakage.   Dr. A  is a real man, named Andy Bittenbinder, that knows more about Sprinters than likely anyone else alive.

In other news...we did this today!

Modular storage systems

Dan doing his hoodoo-voodoo in
modular storage land.

There aren't many more things that make me want to throw up on myself, and Danimal want to prance around joyously like a baby lamb, than trying to figure out the modular storage system. Now that I have just said this, I guess I've got a long way to come because living out of a Sprinter is pretty much all about the storage system.  I have pared down everything I own to prepare to fit into a limited number of space-efficient and user-friendly boxes, drawers, and bins.  The process has taken months (mostly because I wanted to sell or repurpose most of my things rather than just huck 'em), but I suspect downsizing will have been one of the most important things I ever did for myself and everyone else.  I want it to stick.  Which means in the short term this storage system has got to rock my face off.

Our observations:

1.  We love the Rubbermaid™ "Action Packer" totes. They are sturdy, super light weight, have a well-built lid that you can sit on, and are voluminous enough to fit two peoples' river gear, or one person's entire winter clothing/gear get-up from ski boots to cold weather layers.  They are large, but not too large, and very strong.  Downside: they are pricey (cheapest we've found were $25/ea), and their tapered construction is not the most space-efficient design.

2.  Clear, see-through totes are ideal.  Another reason to steer from the black and grey Action Packer is that we are going to want a window into the soul of the storage bins.  

3.  Uniform totes that stack win the battle vs. that piecemeal tote collection you've been dragging around since college. There is a finite amount of space.  You need to make the most of it, and you want your stored bins to stack nicely so things aren't jangling around every which way.  For those dirtbags who are unemployed (like me), or are cheapskates, or consumer-conscious. . .or all three, I can understand why you wouldn't want to go out and buy a whole new world of ridiculous matching plastic bins like you were some consumer-ignorant suburban zombie Mom, I do. The raw deal of it, though, is that uniformity in your storage system is smart. It just is.

I'll have to get back to you on the status of my dream modular storage system because I couldn't look at/think/talk about/visualize stuff-stuffing-into-bins any longer.  I'm sure storage dreams are had by the robots living in Japan all the time.  I will have to tap into my inner robothead.  

In the meantime, tomorrow we take a break from the garage to hike/skate/freeze our carrot noses off on Pitchoff Mountain. Three inches of snow have fallen tonight and climbing.  
-Delilah  

Preparing the insulation

Today we split up and pruned down 17 pieces of hard foam insulation.  It was one of my least favorite days so far.  The foam board is hard to work with and the outside temperatures reached an all time low for us of 17F making the garage almost insufferable to be in for many hours at a time.   I could ward off the bone chilling temperatures, but not the stupid insulation dust.  When I hacked into it with a butter knife, as Daniel has suggested, insulation just squeaks loudly most of the time, and otherwise disintegrates into airborne particles that float intentionally towards your eyes and try to get in your mouth.

We had a sweet rhythm going, though.  Using a table saw, we cut the long foam pieces 7.5" lengthwise, and then halved piece's thickness in order to give us 1/2"-3/4"-thick pieces to adhere straight onto the walls of the van (layers of spray foam and Reflectix comes later).  After a bit we were forced to open the garage door because of the air quality.  I felt sad about releasing such gonkus into the mountain air, but we chose self-preservation over being ecofriendly.  Lesson learned: insulation is nasty stuff but will be our best friend down the road.  

The most significant thing we realized today is that we don't need to follow a linear sequence of building-then-installing.  We can pre-fab everything: the bed frame, the compartments, the bench seat, the kitchen pop-up counters, etc., etc., and then install it altogether in one go. There wont be any caulking or gluing any time soon because those things require it to be warmer to dry, so we will go ahead with building out the frame and countertops.  -Delilah

  

Hangin' with Shiloh dog in the downtime.

View of Sentinel range from our spot.

Cutting for windows

We started the holes with an angle grinder,
then used a jigsaw for the rest of the cut.

"Ahhh...look at the sun poking its afro-topped head above the Rockies."

That's what we wanted to be able to say from our Sprinter Cave Bedroom and so we put in windows.

Steps for installing windows:
1.  Go to Crazy Ray's junkyard, pull out desired windows (make sure car does not fall on you when removing window), pay the hungover/drunk cashier at the window booth
2.  Make window template & draw window outline on van.
3.  Scream and shout and let it all out. (You are now ready to move on to the next step.)
4.  Cut 3 big holes in the side of your van.
5.  Bop those windows in there!  -Dan

Foam cut out.

Tracing the window template onto the back wall.

She didn't cut her leg or face off, good job.

Seeing if the windows fit.

Tape around the outside of the outline before
cutting to avoid scratching the vehicle wall
with the jigsaw foot.

Santa's little Sprinter Workshop

nataliedee.com

We're doing it, we're reeeaaallllly doing it.  Sprinter magic is happening in Santa's northcountry Sprinter Workshop.

Our home for the next 6+ weeks is at my folks' place in Adirondacks State Park, NY.  It's got a killer view of the High Peaks and we are living like gods and working like dogs (who eat ice cream for breakfast).  Danimal and I struck out trying to begin construction in Baltimore.  Some ordinance forbidding people to set-up make-shift automotive shops in city parks got in the way.  We fell in a bit of disfavor with some Baltimore parks officials after trying to build such a workshop under the porch of a Civil War-era building and then drive the Pony into it.  It wasn't the best idea we've ever had.  But if we had pulled it off it could have toast (totes/totally) been one more awesome historical event to add to the living walls of that old mansion.  We considered--but attempted not to accept--that the ruckus made over us was the most exciting thing that happened to those handturkeys in the last 20 years but it's probably true.  Either way, Danimal and I had to come up with a new site to launch the Sparkle Pony.  Seeing how the Sprinter's SHC (super high ceiling/that's really the abbreviation and the full name/I try to throw in the term "SHC" more than an appropriate amount just to annoy Dan) made it tricky to find a shop with 8.5' clearance just to do a vehicle inspection.   My folks' offering up their massive 18-foot-tall garage was a happy day.

Then we get here and see how un-tall the garage door is.  It's a normal pedestrian garage door.  The garage is a new construction that I haven't seen before.  In my head the massive garage had a massive door.  A totally standard, comically large, eighteen-foot-tall door that is, like, out of the medieval ages.  

One might wonder how one squeezes an eight-and-a-half-foot tall Sprinter under an eight-foot door.  Here is how:

Pour all of the soup in the house on the frozen 

ground to loosen and rake the gravel away and 

lower the van 3/4-1" to the level of the garage slab.

Advance the vehicle so you get the two front tires onto
the non-pokey cement floor but don't yet deck the roof.

Steady the pony.

Deflate the tires completely which lowers the 

vehicle another 5 to 6 inches.

Know that you are either complete
idiots or complete geniuses.

BOOM BOOM!  You get to drink champagne with
only your shirt and socks on.

This is actually the very first blog. Written by suds, published by bubs.

I'm compelled to begin this blog by stealing a line from a book I've never read.  A friend of mine once told me that his most favorite first line out of any book was as follows:  

Owing to a favor I once made a cow

Feels fitting, you'll understand later, but here I go.

Owing to a favor I once made a cow, me (Delilah) and Daniel (heretofore referred to as the most honerable "Danimal") have scored ourselves a Sprinter van.  We found it in Galway, NY on a side-jog from a summer lake trip.  The seller's name was John.  We in turn found him on a wooded backcountry road, an ex-cop and motorcycle racer who had just crashed his BMW sedan and was looking to liquidate some cash quickly. The Sprinter he had for sale was a white 2003 mid-sized standard cargo van with no exhaust system. It rumbled down the road.  Me and Daniel look at each other.  John said, "that's nothing, that's just the way these sound," from the passenger seat; he had hesitated earlier when I had asked for a test drive.  We did not dispute John, we did not believe him either.  Later on, this same exhaust system would have cost us over $1,000 to install new if it wasn't for Danimal scouring the earth (really just the Mid Atlantic) for a cheap alternative, coming up with a guy in Pennsylvania parting out his '05 Sprinter muffler with built-in catyllitic converter for only $250.00.  What a guy.  Anyways it worked out perfectly, other than that Danimal had crawled through poison ivy to hack the part off and had to appeal several times to the rash, with salves, washes, scalding hot showers, and the "hair dryer method", to try to back it down.  Once I saw him pick up a cannister of Morton salt and pour it down his belly.  He said he thought it might work on the rash because once he had swum in the Dead Sea with a cut that had then healed overnight.  

The very first blog

Earlier today, I was on my way to REI with a big ol' cardboard box in my arms, about to return $1600 worth of outdoor apparel when I saw a couple sitting on the ground cooking up none-other but sauted spinach delight!  And I thought to myself, "These people are cool."  Not just because they were eating Spinach Delight but because they were clearly living out of their van.  Before I knew it my feet had taken me and placed me smack dab in the living room of their van, which was also all the other rooms of their van.

Just to emphasize how cool they were, they did not freak out and start yelling at me to exit their home, waving wooden serving spoons at my behind.  We talked for a while and I found out they were just finishing a 3-month road trip starting in British Columbia and working down through the Southern United States and hitting up all the classic climbing crags they could count on callused knuckles.  Now they were leaving the van here for a while and catching a flight...to somewhere, I didn't ask.

It was, in the words of the 60's, a gas to see this couple doing what I've been dreaming of for a solid 6 months now and it really was a gas when they gave me a small jerry can with white gas they needed to get rid of, along with a book titled "Rock and Roll",  an overview of all the climbing sites in the U.S.

Besides that, reclaiming $1600 from REI, backing all the way down a narrow road in D.C. with the Sparkle Pony (what we have decided to name our Sprinter van), and picking up our soon-to-be bed (though Delilah doesn't know it yet), I also brushed my teeth twice today!

And that ends "The very first blog."  Thanks. -Dan