Vannin' Community and Forums Forums Thread Like Summary - What Did You do To your Van Today?

My wife and kids bought 6 of these portal bubble windows yesterday for me for Fathers Day. I cant wait to get them installed. I'm going to place them not quite vertical and lined up from the rear wheel aft, three on either side

Very Nice!

I've been wanting to do that to mine for a long time.

I replaced the front turn signal sockets. They light up, but the passenger side won't blink, g*ddamn wiring....ordered a new speedo cable on eBay because O'Reily had the wrong one, g*ddamn parts stores.

While I was under there pulling the cable the other day, I noticed a decent sized rusty hole on the driver side pan....g*ddamn rust.

I wish I hadn't looked at that '77 Econoline near me on eBay.

Cleanest ATV tires I've ever seen

Cleanest ATV tires I've ever seen^^

Last December I removed my AC compressor, which had been acting as a pulley only, for 15 years, and replaced it with a '120 amp NipponDenso' alternator.

120 amp, is in quotes, as it maxed out at 109 amps, and its 50 amp rating at hot idle, in drive, foot on the brake, is a woeful 32 amps. It is a ND clone alternator, assembled in Malaysia, bought new at Autozone. I think they shaved a few dollars in copper windings of rotor and stator.

I was hoping its dual internal fans would outperform the lifetime warranty reman 50/120 chrysler alternator which failed. Oreilly's had decided they had no record of me ever having bought such an alternator, so I just moved on.

That reman alternator just had poor brush alignment. I fixed that, added some spit and polish to improve heat transfer from diodes and reduce resistance, and returned it to service, and the ND sat on a shelf for 9 months.

A few more hundred rpm and the ND outperforms the chrysler 50/120 amp alternator, until about 1800 rpm though. The chrysler can meet 50 amp at hot idle foot on brake in drive, and 120 amps max, but at about 3200 rpm, where I rarely go.

Since aligning the pulleys in December, I never hooked it to the battery or to a voltage regulator as I did not require the extra DC juice, still don;t really, but I found the round tuit.

Last couple days I decided to change that, hooking it directly to me engine battery and the Chrysler 50/120 to my House battery bank.

Both alternators are separately regulated with an adjustable voltage regulator.
The OEM voltage regulator in engine computer is bypassed, and the ECM tricked into not flashing the check engine light with a 50 watt 10 ohm resistor in between the original wires going to field terminals on the externally regulated alternator.

On my dash, I have two digital two decimal voltmeters and two voltage adjustment knobs.

Basically, Nearly anytime my engine is running, I can charge my deep cycling batteries as fast as safely possible, to get them to as high a state of charge as possible when I drive, which greatly extends their lifespans, as opposed to slower charging and starting the next discharge cycle from lower states of charge and drawing them deeper.

The original voltage regulator inside ECM drops from high 14's to mid 13s quickly, and a new battery will accept about 2/3 less amperage with 13.7v reaching battery terminals compared to 14.7v.

I can also turn a switch and charge both battery banks from one or the other, or just cycle one bank or the other.

I'm not quite done, its just functional at this point, not yet refined.

The ultimate goal is the ability to idle my engine, with both alternators and two battery banks powering a 2KW+ inverter at near full load, for as long as there is fuel in the tank, even though I do not require such an ability at this point in time.

Some additional forced alternator cooling would likely be required if 2KW is needed for more than 10 to 15 minutes, but the thermocouples attached to their casings, will decide.

“Uh, does a man work here?”

Says me too ..... lol

Wow Charlie ! Are you coming over to The Bow-Tie Guys ?

Go Bowtie and let your knuckles heal up........

Is that why the roof was falling down?

So full sheets of 1/4 plywood to keep the curve and then your finished panels screwed into that? Do you have any pics of the process? I just want to wrap my head around it. I was trying to build it the way it was previously which used the strips but I don't like the gaps it is going to leave me with that I would need some metal edge trim to fix.

Thank you

does anyone know the best way to wire a Carovan switch? There one red wire, one white wire, and four black wires. I don’t know if they’re individual grounds, which wouldn’t make sense in terms of wiring power to each accessory.

I just scored some fiberglass inserts for the rear corners from a Dodge. They even have the speaker cut out and come with some speakers!

I would run my own but still, not a bad score for this morning.