Our Excellent Adventures

Yep, it was hot today. Not as hot as in Mosul, Iraq, where it was 109 today, but East Bay hot. Still, I had a clean drive way, mods to do on the Sprinter. A perfect afternoon!

I jacked the Sprinter up about 4 inches using the trailer hitch. That gave me a little more room for rolling about looking for sockets that for some reason are just out of arms reach or under me where I can’t see them!

I got a new sway bar and Koni shocks for the rear in this afternoon and decided to go for it. I had gotten as estimate from a shop for 6 hours to do the work which translates to about $725. I looked underneath the bus and saw I would have to remove and replace 10 bolts to do the job. This is a no brainer.

To remove the shock you need 2, 18mm sockets, wrenches or a cresent wrench. All of these bolts, nuts today are torqued pretty tight so eat your Wheaties before starting or get a small cheater bar if necessary.

You can see from the photo below, the Konis are larger than the stock shocks.

The bolt and nut at the bottom of the shock are 18mm.

The bolt at the top is 21mm and very deep threaded. I thought it would never come out. Definitely takes some horse to get this one loose.

I am not sure how long the first one took but the second took 18 minutes to swap.

Here is a picture of the stock sway bar. You need to remove 4-50 tork screws and 2-18mm bolts/nuts. Start with the screws and remove the bolts last. This bar is easy to handle as it is very light.

The difference between the stock and new sway bar is shown here. There is a big difference in diameter. There is a substantial difference in weight which makes if a little difficult to install the new one.

The new sway bar comes with new axle bushings and new bushing for the arm (left and right). It also comes with some very sticky grease (like the old wheel bearing grease). I used it on the bushings for the arms but I did not put any on the axle bushings. If I need to, the axle bushings will be fairly easy to grease.

The bolt on the sway bar arm is 18mm and the tork screws on the axle bushing are a 55. The arm is under a slight pressure. I removed the axle bushing first and then the arm bolt. Installing, I installed the top tork screw and then went to the other side and installed the top screw. Then the bottom screws and last the arm bolts. They took some force to get the bolt through. Then I went back and tighted all the screws and bolts.

The finished sway bar replacement in place. Tommorrow I make a run to Monterey so I will see if things are tightened up a bit. I would expect less sway and faster recovery from a bounce.

The Sprinter is a pleasure to work on! Everything is so clean underneath and easy to get to . . . the Eurovan I had was covered underneath with something like cosmolene - no matter what you did, you got sticky and dirty. The oem sway bar was coated with something black but that’s what the Lava Soap is for.

Berkeley again.

Mogulof said tree protesters were throwing human waste down at police officers, but so far none of the officers had been struck.

Protesters told NBC11’s Ethan Harp that they have tossed bags filled with urine at the arborists.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25227802/

Hope their parents are proud. Time for the fire hoses. 

Bill Siuru, Greencar.com, reports that Daimler uses a special sensor integrated into the oil circuit to monitor engine oil directly. Oil doesn’t wear out, but rather dirt and impurities cause oil to lose its ability to lubricate properly, dictating the need for a change. Daimler uses the oil’s “permittivity,” that is, the ability to polarize in response to the electric field. If the engine oil is contaminated by water or soot particles, it polarizes to a greater extent and its permittivity increases.

To evaluate the quality of the oil, permittivity is measured by applying an AC potential between the interior and exterior pipes of an oil-filled sensor to determine how well the oil transmits the applied electric field.

Because not all impurities can be measured with sufficient precision via the electric field method, Daimler also measures the oil’s viscosity to detect any fuel that may have seeped into the oil. Daimler researchers measure viscosity while the vehicle is in motion by observing the oil’s side-to-side motion in the oil sump. The slower the oil moves, the higher its viscosity. This movement is registered by a sensor and the viscosity is calculated on this basis.

A single sensor, along with the information already monitored by on-board computers, is sufficient to determine the various parameters of the engine oil. Daimler will likely use the technology first on its commercial vehicles. Here, large oil reservoirs mean larger quantities of oil can be saved.

Bottom line - put off that urge to change oil early including the break-in period. It is better for you and your pocket book.

If you are planning to do any mods, such as adding GPS, or even changing your own air filters, oil, etc. there are at least a couple of tools you need to add to your collection.

The first is the oil filter wrench like the one shown here from europarts.com.

Next you need a set of tork screw driver bits, some tork sockets and some small wrenches in mm size. I seem to use a T-25 screw bit most of the time. Whether of not you need a torque wrench is still being debated. Apparently most of the torque requirements on the Sprinter are beyound what a human can achieve. I just happent to have a torque wrench but have yet to use it on the Sprinter.

Last you need a set of automotive molding tools like these which are invaluable in taking of dash, door side panels, logos and badging (like 2500) etc.

It always amazes me when an 8,000 pound vehicle has a horn that sounds like a baby road-runner. I mean it is down-right embarrassing when someone cuts you off and you can’t even express your displeasure with a polite tap on the horn, afraid they’ll drive off the road laughing.

I installed Hella Supertones a couple of weeks ago and while they were better, they still weren’t what I was looking for. So, I got on the web, went to the SMB (Sportsmobile) forum and checked out what some of them use - good idea!

I decided I did not want to sound like a train, or try to mount shiney chrome trumpets so I settled for a “Bad Boy.” This is a small, 118 decibels air horn that uses the 2 wires on your Sprinter and easily attaches inside the engine compartment where the oem horn is located.

It is available several places on line and here you can hear a resonably good rendition of what this horn and others sound like.

Yes, I was tempted to get a “Dukes of Hazzard” horn and I do have the site bookmarked just in case I get cut-off again with no respect.