Vannin' Home Forums General Discussion General Discussion What Did You do To your Van Today?

Not yet but later today, I'm going to try to figure out why Lil' Shitty suddenly decided not to start.

I was out cruising around the city last night for over an hour, then went home. Ran great the whole time. A few minutes after backing it into the driveway when I got home, I went to move it back a few feet to make room for my wife's car and just got a rapid clicking sound when I turned the key. Battery is new, alternator is fairly new and the starter is anyone's guess. Hopefully it's just something dumb like a ground wire and I don't end up needing to buy a bunch of parts and fuss with this for the next month.

Solenoid on the starter ....

That was my first thought but if my lights are on when I turn the key, they flicker, dim and shut off. Wouldn't that point to battery/alternator?

See if the battery has 12 v, if not Id look at the alt

Check the cleanliness and tightness of the battery terminal connections and the battery ground. Also, check the integrity of the battery cables themselves.

Everything is clean, cables are pretty new and in good shape. I cleaned up the grounds when I did my grille swap so I'm pretty sure that's out of the equation.

I just hooked jumper cables to my wife's car and the van fired right up, so I know it's not the starter. Battery test is good so it's got to be the alternator. I usually only drive my van during the day, which probably explains why having my lights on last night would've drained the battery.

This morning I re-attached a separated inner roof support using a combo of Eastwood panel adhesive and seam sealer, which seems to have done the trick. I went way overkill but it's probbaly not going to detach again. Then I made some mounts for an armrest on my passenger side door because I have one 1978 door and one from a '75 (the armrest mounts are different and I'm using '75-style armrests).

This afternoon I replaced the all the weatherstripping on my passenger side door & windows, then finished up some body work around a rear wheel arch and prepped it for paint. Nothing major, just some touch-ups.

Tonight I ordered a 150 amp Powermaster alternator from Summit. Boom!

As a sidenote: has anyone ever removed & re-installed a Chevy vent window without having a f@#king nervous breakdown? If so, I salute you.

On my '75 Dodge B100 the car wash joint ripped of my antenna, lol. I just replaced with one off Amazon. It's actually intended for a Volkswagon according to Amazon, but it looked like what I needed, so I ordered it to find out. And it fits perfect. I can provide a part number if anyone cares.

More like what did we do this last month! Here's the blog post with photos...

Congrats to everyone getting things done on their vans. We were psyched to be in a position to finally get some stuff done too.

http://nikothenomad.blogspot.com/