Overland One
Well-known member
Well, hard to believe it has been 30 days since I took off. Finally got all the stuff out of my apt. Van is too full still but I have been weeding things out as I go. August is not the best time to head out in Ky due to the heat but, thats when my lease ended. Van running great so far with just a few issues. My hubs/rotors are a bit warped on the front and will need replacing. I decided not to do that while I was replacing the calipers and brake pads as the hub/rotors for this van cost about $160 each, and I will also need to buy new bearings, races and seals once I save up for all the parts. I figure about $600 or so in parts total. I did have a bit of a scare a few days ago when my transmission began slipping when upshifting from 1st to 2nd. It has never done that and I was scared that the trans was going out. This happened about 1/8 mile from my destination for the night so when I pulled in, I checked the dipstick and it was nearly empty! All fluids were full when I left. Fortunately, the bit of fluid showing on the dipstick looked clean and did not smell burned. I called around to various autopart stores and arranged for delivery of 6 quarts of trans fluid from a helpful NAPA store while I tried to figure out where the fluid leaked out. Turns out it was from a rubber hose coming from the factory auxillary trans cooler located between the radiator and ac condenser. I had replaced both of these when I installed the new radiator but evidently did not get one of the clamps tight enough. To service this correctly I really need to pull out the radiator or the ac condenser but I managed to reach a very long screwdriver down between to tighten both bottom clamps. I have made 2 test drives after filling the trans back up and it shifts fine and is not leaking. Later, I will remove the ac condenser which has no gas in it as it has a hole and needs to be replaced and my ac sytem vacuumed and filled. This will let me reach those clamps with a socket wrench to make sure they are good and tight. Thank God for my window ac unit which has been working great so far. (Crossing fingers) My usb rechargeable water pump was working great until I needed to recharge it. When I plugged in the the cable, it would not charge up, when I removed the cable to swap to another one to see if the cable was bad, the usb recepticle came out with the plug so, it was not soldered onto the circuit board very well. That pump ran almost a month in the initial charge so for only $15, I decided to order another one from Amazon and have it shipped to a friends house about 40 miles from my location at that time. The new pump works fine and the usb receptical appears to be soldered much better than the 1st one but, just to be safe, I hotglued my usb cord to the pump body to make a solid conection and just left the cord semi permenently attached so there should be no stress on that receptical. I am enjoying it out here and have been camping at some very beautiful places in Kentucky. I still have a lot to learn about my new life even though I have been reading and watching van videos for a year before deciding to do this. I have a few more mechanical things left to do to the van which I will do as soon as I can. So far, so good. I hope everyone is doing well and staying cool. Safe travels everyone.