T1N can motovan

[keep shoveling]

You are very brave pulling all those German plastic components apart.

Seriously!

Interestingly, as I was watching a video of someone diagnosing t1n AC, it looks like one potential issue is that this heater control unit sometimes has the internal wiring get a little hot and that messes up the connections. That's a problem because power for the compressor is wired directly to it (and to that little snowflake button on the right). Push button, power compressor. I got the ac gauges today so I'll check on that first and then see if we're getting power to the compressor from the unit, but it may be the case that step number one actually is just getting this repaired. Might I try to solder it myself first? I might if that wasn't the dumbest idea anyone in this thread has ever suggested.

 

[keep shoveling]

ENHANCE

Looks like some replacement gaskets and figuring out how to run a vacuum pump on the street are in my future.

 

[keep shoveling]

Tomorrow I’m going riding with the family for Father’s Day. You may remember me from such prior mistakes as “You idiot, what the fuck were you thinking?”

Purely by way of example…

Next, to take up the seat rails.

After discovering that the nut was not welded to the frame like the sprinter forums suggested it would be but instead just free floating (and free falling right on top of the fucking gas tank so now I will need to drop that to reinstall and put the bolts back on), I just cut out the wood around the other one.

Totally unrelated

Up goes the van. Jackstand not pictured, but look at that beautiful work space. As always, if someone as dumb as me can take appropriate precautions then so can you.

Harbor freight didn’t have a transmission jack in stock so make do with what you have. Happy Father’s Day to me, too. I’ve wanted one of these ratchets for a while but honestly they’re totally unnecessary. I got one anyway and it’s a delight. But, yeah, totally unnecessary.

Turns out the bolts didn’t just go under the tank. They go into the frame rail equivalents. And there’s a teeny hole. It took me three fucking hours and I lost literally 18 nuts, but I used one of these Amazon product ASIN B009PJPEAS (which is a fantastic tool for motorcycles) and put the nut on the 1/4” head with a washer, snuck it in and then squeezed the other finger in to veeeeeeeery gently spin the nut around hoping it catches. It did. But seriously, three hours and it took literally the entire package of 20 nuts I’d ordered. MB punishes for trying to do something they had not foreseen.

But I got it done and I can finally safely attach the rear bench again.

One of the benefits of getting an old 3500 sprinter is the alternator will run anything including a 750w inverter to run a vacuum pump for as long as you have diesel. Of course it took three minutes after pulling vacuum for half an hour for it to go back to 0.

Not that that was a failure, but it would have been nice if somehow the AC system wasn’t just open air. On the other hand, I found out what was wrong with my head unit. Wiring! Speakers and head unit work now. I just have to pull apart the dash to run the wiring now. Which I suppose is good because I can take the opportunity to run the wiring for the backup camera too and maybe some cables for rear speakers in the future.

Last item for the day? TTR125 had a flat front tire. Fortunately that was relatively easy and the van is big enough I didn’t even have to move the bike out of the back to take the wheel off. Still changed the tube on the street but it’s great to have a van big enough to just leave the bike in the back instead of wheeling it out and scraping my knuckles getting it out and again getting it back in. But goddamn Yamaha, good job. Bike fired right up on old gas after sitting for 18 months.

 

[keep shoveling]

Today was time for fixing the AC system! For sure! No question! At no point is there any doubt that the AC system will be fixed today!

…

Until there was still no vacuum, so I tried putting in some R134 with the dye. No pictures of it because, well, no vacuum. So I tried putting some R134 in with some dye. And… yeah, there’s a big leak somewhere. But after spending an hour crawling around trying to figure out where it was from, I still didn’t see anything.

I consulted with my assistant.

And moved on to taking apart the entire dash to run the new speaker wires (you may recall that the speaker wiring turned out to be the issue with the head unit). It gets a lot more taken apart than this.

And put back together! You can’t hear it but that’s the sound of two new speakers. They sound so good compared to the old ones.

It’s NYC, one of the dirtiest cities in America. There are lots of structural reasons for that but one result is that sometimes folks just dump trash. And sometimes, the trash they dump is just fucking with you.

We tried to make friends on the way home. It didn’t work. In addition to being dirty, NYC has a real feral cat problem. Folks feed them and then trap them to spay and neuter them but every fucking year a bunch of entitled pricks go out and get kittens and then abandon them.

 

[motocopter]

Did your assistant sniff out the leak?

 

[keep shoveling]

Did your assistant sniff out the leak?

Yes. She firmly established that the leak was at the local burger place.

 

[keep shoveling]

Thinking about it, I’m beginning to think it must be at the evaporator that lives in the dash. Which, fuck. It’s the only place I can think of that I didn’t get a chance to look. Despite also having the dash completely apart. Because I’m dumb. So dumb. There’s only one thing to be done.

 

[keep shoveling]

“Self” I says.

“Yes, self?” Says I.

“Well, the thing is. We both know you ain’t very good at this mechanic thing.”

“Truer words. But what particular situation has brought these facts to the front of the house as it were?”

“Well, perhaps the issue ain’t in the AC, now is it?”

“That’s where you’re wrong. Let’s just see about that evaporator first shall we?”

“Look at those silver fins. Clean as a whistle.”

“You may be on to something.”

“So let’s think about how you could be fucking up this diagnosis. Rather than it being some extremely uncommon like problem, eh? What’s say we do that first next time? And for now, let’s just have another look-see at the condenser.”

“You have me there. Next time we’ll do that first.”

One new bottle of R134 with UV Dye LEAK DETECTOR added as specified which is upside down? with the engine on and the AC on high later…

“Told you so.”

 

[motocopter]

That's a bullet hole!

 

[keep shoveling]

That's a bullet hole!

It really was just spraying out of there like crazy. New condenser is on the way. I'm headed out to see family and then on vacation for basically a month starting sunday so hopefully it comes and I can put it in before that but we'll see.

 

[keep shoveling]

Alright, new condenser, drier and expansion valve came in. Let's get this AC fixed before I head out to visit family for a few weeks for the first time in literally years.

Of all this is coming off.

The whole bumper is held on by two bolts in the front, a couple of rubber brackets it slots onto on the sides and then a couple clips. Right headlight has to come out. You can see the two lines going into the condenser on the bottom right. Flare wrenches in hand, I was ready to tackle them.

And then it got dark so there aren't more pictures. One came off easily. The second did not. After spending a great deal of time crawling around on the ground, swearing but trying to be VERY CAREFUL not to break the line going to the condenser because the parts place I use has it for $400. Eventually, out of frustration and being at a loss, if I'm honest, I cut off the line at the condenser. I thought this would let me carefully hold the AC line in place while using a tap to spin it out. Or at the worst, to use a right hand drill bit to spin it out.

It had other plans and was completely galled to the threads on the AC line nut. Why? I have no fucking clue. But it was stuck-stuck. Because the replacement line is, again, four hundred US dollars, I was willing to put in some real work to get that piece out. I have a dremel with a nice mithril bit that tears through anything. If you are very careful you can grind out the material without ruining the threads.

One hour later... As long as you really are very careful you can do it. All the threads were totally fine.

And while washing it out with soap and water (I have heard it is bad to have a billion tiny metal shavings in your AC system) I discovered a slight problem. There is not supposed to be a hole there. I assume I did that, but I don't know. The line is 17 years old and a little rusted so maybe it was someone else. And I just made it worse.

And that was the end of that. Fortunately(?) I found a place on ebay that will sell me a "genuine" replacement hose for only $65. If only I had looked it up before spending three hours trying to make this one work. Fuck.

 

[keep shoveling]

I’m back after visiting the west coast and doing vile, morally repugnant things, like riding an ATV.

The first thing to do after getting unpacked is go check on the van and see about making some progress on getting the AC working. But god punishes and in amusing ways so knowing my former virtue and keen appreciation for the hilarity of the suffering of others, provided me with “air.”

Maybe the inside is better? No?

Despite its name, “safety” glass is still full of tiny shards and will stab you and make you bleed all over if you try to gently sweep it out without gloves. You can’t quite see it but there’s $81 in the cup holder and pieces of broken window glass up and down the block so this was just someone breaking things, not stealing anything.

Good as new!

Reinforced for extra strength! Every time I close the door, I hear little pieces of glass playing pachinko inside.

As long as I was out there, I might as well install the AC line. Look how shiny and new it is!

No? It’s right there. It was so easy to get in when the rubber was actually flexible and bendy!

Then, because I was tired and feeling frustrated and distracted by someone breaking my window I had a really dumb moment and didn’t realize I’d already taken out the condenser. So I diligently took out the intercoolercondenser. These are not the same and I was very confused when my replacement condenser didn’t look like the intercoolercondenser. Literally eight seconds of inspection this afternoon solved the mystery though and now I can put them both back in.

New window glass coming tomorrow. Hopefully it’s just a matter of opening up the door and popping it in. I’m sure it’ll be fine, right?

 

[motocopter]

That's a bummer about the window. Know what it's like having to drive with a temp window. A ninja-wrapped, weed-eater guy slung a rock into the driver's window and shattered it when I was stationed in Panama.

 

[keep shoveling]

That's a bummer about the window. Know what it's like having to drive with a temp window. A ninja-wrapped, weed-eater guy slung a rock into the driver's window and shattered it when I was stationed in Panama.

Yeah, fortunately I can just let it sit until the new glass comes in tonight. I've never replaced a window before so I'm sure this will be an adventure but at least on the T1N it seems pretty simple mechanically so hopefully not toooooo tough.

And I really did forget taking all my cash out of my pocket last time I'd been working on the van so it was awfully nice to come back and find all my tools and bikes and a free $80 still in the van!

 

[keep shoveling]

The new window came yesterday and today, motivated by the thunderstorm we may get tomorrow, I was able to scrape together some time after work to put it in.

Off this pops, don’t move it too far because the cable is still connected to the door handle and if you break that you have to crawl through a broken window to get in. You can see that arm is the mechanism for rolling the window up and down. I took the black piece of metal (mounting plate? bracket?) holding it in place off, slid the glass in, put it back on and then realized it has a little hinge that you have to place into that metal slot in the bottom of the glass. I thought I had a picture but apparently not.

Fine enough, just pop off that black metal piece and…. Fuck. It was dark at this point and I thought I’d grabbed my t30 impact socket but apparently that was a safety socket and now the bolt is stripped.

SAFETY CHAT
I don’t give a shit how frustrated you are at how an easy job turned hard or how your glasses are buried in the back of a van or how the babes don’t look at guys wearing safety goggles. WEAR EYE PROTECTION. If you don’t, because you are a stupid jerk then eventually you will be drilling out a stripped bolt and a tiny shard of metal will ricochet into your eye. Hopefully you get lucky and it falls right out and doesn’t scratch the cornea and you can still write posts to all your friends on the internet. But don’t do that. All PPE all the time.

Anyway, as long as I was in there, I added some of my favorite thing. Sound deadener. If nothing else, it makes closing the door more satisfying.

Little MB symbol on the glass so you know it’s actually just branded freightliner for the US market. All T1Ns were built and assembled entirely in Germany by Mercedes-Benz.

Wait, what’s this? This isn’t a window?!

In a fit of rage I continued to work on the van. And it was good I’d gotten in the mood because I discovered some PO FUCKERY. They’d previously had the radiator replaced and the mechanic who did it did about the job I do when I’m tired and annoyed and told my wife I’d be home two hours ago. This is the intercooler and its attachment point to the condenser. I figured it out all on my own because it sure as fuck hadn’t been connected before.

Nor had they actually bolted the horn back on after undoing it to move it out of the way. Because it was too much effort?

They were also missing two of the four bolts that connect the intercooler to the radiator. The hard to reach one’s obviously. I played fast and loose, using Genuine OEM KTM bolts. They’ll have the added benefit of reducing the van’s weight by .03 grams.

Here you can see the cleverness of the design. The intercooler bolts onto the radiator in four places on the far outside. Then it hooks up to this line with two small screws. On the bottom, it bolts to the condenser and then the top of the condenser bolts to a crosspiece that goes above the radiator.

Last but not least, the fan connects to the van body on the bottom in the front and to that bracket that goes over the condenser. I’ve read a lot about how folks who replace the condenser get rubbing from this fan that rubs a hole in the condenser but I don’t see how. They’re close ish but they definitely in no way touch and they’re both firmly held in place (if you reconnect everything correctly).

As long as we’re here and it’s almost midnight and I have work tomorrow, I might as well check to see, right?

That is vacuum!

And here is ten minutes after disconnecting the vacuum pump!

I’ll go out and check it tomorrow or Friday but it looks like I’ve fixed the catastrophic hole to atmosphere. Next steps are replacing the dryer, vacuuming for an hour or two and then refilling with R134a by weight. The engine also sounds quieter/smoother with everything properly attached too!

 

[keep shoveling]

I’m going on real vacation for a week. Please don’t steal my van or break its windows while I’m gone. When last we left off we had vacuum!

After much fumbling and loud hissing as I messed up popping on the gauge, we still have vacuum! Slightly less but I think it’s likely because I didn’t put the gauge on very cleanly. At all. I’m only mentioning it because my mistakes must be memorialized and in case you care about how much vacuum there is.

That thing in the back in an inconvenient place is also getting replaced.

It’s an ax expansion valve. It connects the system to the evaporator and makes cold. It also wears a jaunty chapeau. I fucking love adorable things that have faces like this. LOOK AT IT

Cleanly installed.

Then the dryer which, disappointingly, has neither face nor hat.

Original though so probably good it’s getting replaced.

And replacing this sensor because the guy who sells the dryer recommends it. Mine works. You can tell by unplugging it and if that makes your fan go on it works. I still replaced it because I’d ordered them together.

So shiny.

While putting a vacuum on for 90 minutes (as long as folks recommend? Maybe not, but when your vacuum pump is attached to a converter hooked up to the battery you cut some corners on time.), I addressed another issue. See those little empty holes in the black bracket on top of the condenser?

Two of them get a couple of rivnuts.

Because the genuine Mercedes-Benz brand grill had been hanging from the single silver bolt and was starting to crack. Two more bolts on each side (washers to come! But at least they’re matching black) should hold it in place a lot better and stop it from snapping in half.

“CAUTION: SYSTEM TO BE SERVICED BY QUALIFIED PERSONNEL” uh….

484 grams full.

184 grams empty. I switched tops because the brass colored one was for the old style cans and the silver one was for self sealing cans. You can tell the difference because the little punch that comes down to open the can up is a cylinder for self sealing and has a sharpened end for the old cans.

We have pressure going in!

And pressure on the high side too!

No pictures, but glorious cold air comes out of the vents now. Is it ice cold? Only if you’re talking about it in an ad. But it is great and a huge difference and should be enough to convince my family to use the van literally every when it’s hot out. I’ll check pressure again when I get back and hopefully it will still have plenty of coolant and blow cold and I can move on to the garage portion or maybe cleaning up some more rust.

 

[motocopter]

Nice work and Keep Shoveling!

 

[GMK999]

Welsir.. I guess that makes you a one of these



Congrats! Er Um. I mean Herzliche Glückwünsche

 

[Shiryas]

Great job on the AC keep shoveling !

My T1N could use a recharge so that is on the list when the temps cool off a bit here. It sill works so I don't want to go without and working outside in 95 degree full sunshine is no bueno.

I did recently have to do the Harmonic Balancer and merde' torquing to 350'lb is a lot. In addition I was having a hard start issue and tracked it to a leaking injector, lots written up about them and mine could not have gone much smoother. Got 4 additional cores and I will have all 5 rebuilt and blueprinted then swap them all.

Looking forward to your next update

Cheers, Chris

 

[keep shoveling]

Good news, nobody broke into the van while I was on vacation. It was nice being on vacation.

But there's nothing quite like NYC... Check out the dude's sign on the right.

This weekend I went riding, but before I did, I had to fix something. You see, there was a bolt left over from fixing the AC. Now if this were some other car, I might have just sent it. But because I am becoming intimately acquainted with the MB engineering philosophy of "do it our way or get fucked" I thought maybe it was best to figure out what was going on. And what was going on is that the line from the compressor to the condenser is bolted onto the top of the compressor, and then there's a separate bolt that on the side of the compressor. It's there to hold that line solidly in place so that the line can serve as an attachment point for the return line in the picture and won't slowly bend under the weight of hundreds of thousands of miles. It's a clever design. Unless someone forgot to put that second bolt back in and, in putting it back, then discovered that the condenser-compressor line was going underneath the return line rather than over it. So, undo the condenser-compressor line, work it inside that return line, bolt it up and attach the return line to the condenser-compressor line so that it has support and everything is good and proper in just the way the MB engineering team old gods demands.

Then it was time to go for a ride. Having A/C was fantastic. It's not super cold, and my vents are broken (having come off like confetti explosions at a ticker tape parade when I took apart the dash to look at the evaporator and run speaker wire), just like they are on all T1Ns so you can't point the air where you want. But it's still glorious. It does make me think I need to start working on the insulation. The AC can barely keep up with 84 degrees, let alone real heat. But once it's insulated that should help. Riding was great, but man I am just not good at this. Slow, out of practice, terrible line choice, propensity to veer off into the trees. I didn't crash, but there were a couple of close calls on some rocks. I love it.

After riding it was time for tacos. This place is great and you should go there if you're ever riding at Thomaston Dam. Their tacos and burritos are quite good, but the quesadillas are great. It's cash only.

"Hey man, this is a shitty picture why are you posting it?" Well, it's funny you ask. You see that silver BMW station wagon peeking its nose out? I was getting cash from the van and heard a huge crunch from the other side. I scampered around thinking "oh goddamnit, why would you hit my van?" only to discover the driver of that BMW standing, looking perplexed at the telephone pole he'd just driven into. Not backed into, just driven the driver's side of his car right into the pole. Then he got backed in, backed up and sat down at one of the tables. Presumably to contemplate his failures? I have no idea. But the last time I was there someone backed into it so I'm posting this picture as a warning. The tacos are good but this telephone pole craves side panels.