I don’t know what it is about this van, but I’ve done more repairs on this thing than maybe every other vehicle I’ve ever owned, combined. I know what you’re thinking. “Because you spend so much time in a camper van, things wear out more quickly!” No. Door handles do not wear out more quickly because you camp in a van. As I previously opined in another post, I have now replaced 3 of the 5 door handles on this van; I’ve been driving for 35 years now and, up until purchasing this van, I have replaced 0 door handles. In the late 80s, I owned a Yugo that cost $3,495 brand new. The door handles worked.
That’s not really the point of this video. The point is that life is easier with good friends. My friends Andy and Jeff make appearances this week and as I mention in the video, Jeff is my go to electronics guy and Andy is my go to car repair guy. I met Andy when we were both four years old, and Jeff and I met in seventh grade. We all grew up together, went to school together, and still talk all the time.
When I was younger if you didn’t know how to fix something you had to locate a Chilton’s Manual or someone who knew how to work on stuff. Today, we have YouTube. For sure, this video is not the one to watch if you’re looking to learn how to repair anything, although I have made a few, like the time I upgraded my van’s headlights. The video I made while MaxxAir Fan was pretty good, too. I have learned so much from YouTube and there is so much content out there. I specifically remember watching videos on how to install a MaxxAir fan before doing mine — oh, and I found a good one on installing rotating seat mounts that convinced me I could do it. It’s hard to imagine a problem one could have with a vehicle that isn’t well documented on YouTube at this point.
One of the “repairs” we did in this video was repairing my Fakery battery. I neglected to secure it inside the van and it fell face first onto the floor, breaking the tip of the charging connection off inside the charging port. I tried everything I could think of to remove it, to no avail. I had a second, non-functional power station and Jeff came up with the idea of disassembling both of them and swapping parts from one to the other. I’ve heard that draining these batteries empty is not good for them (and can in some cases ruin them) but Jeff said “no problem” and that he would just work on it while the thing still had a charge. Jeff’s pretty good at this stuff and careful, but it still had me nervous the entire time. The one thing I do know is when Jeff says he can do something, which is almost always, he can do it. We ran into a lot of issues and it was very evident that the makers of this power station did not want people opening it or working on it, but after a couple of hours and a lot of work we were able to swap out the connector on the panel. It’s back in the van and working great!
When it came to looking at my brakes and the rear door, I took the van over to Andy. Andy is a firefighter and is allowed to work on personal projects during his downtime, so I drove out on a Saturday and we spent a few hours doing the repairs. Andy had the wheel off and found the problem with my brakes in record time. We could have had the back door disassembled and were in the middle of fixing it when the fire alarm went off. If you like seeing firetrucks, you’ll like this video.
Big Rob’s Van is a solo camping van for one, but it was not built by one person. My local friends, my online friends, and my wife have all contributed in several ways.