Kara and Nate found melted terminals and dangerously oversized wires in their Sprinter van's electrical system, plus a propane leak. They had everything professionally rewired and enclosed, turning a fire hazard into a safe rig for travel.
Questions this video answers
2016 Sprinter van.
A half marathon of 13.1 miles (completed without stopping).
omaze.com/karaandnate
Chapters
All right.
This still blows my mind. I need to take a picture of this just to.
It's that bad.
We're Kara and Nate, and we've spent the last four years traveling to 100 countries. But 2020 brought us back to our home country of the United States of America, where we bought a converted Sprinter van to explore our own backyard. Now that we've been living in the van full time for the last three months, we're taking a quick break from adventures to install a few much needed upgrades.
Before we get. We wanted to remind you that we are partnering with Omaze to give away a customized Sprinter van. We'll have all the details about this later in the video, but if you can't wait, just go to omaze.com karaandnate.
Just stay up to wait. Last night editing this is how Kara's been sleeping, trying to finish the bike series with her computer.
We're starting the installation process early this morning, hoping we can get everything wrapped up in one day. And the people who are doing the install were nice enough to let us sleep in their carport for the night also. It's going to be so nice to have it here.
Beautiful morning.
So the way this is working is we've ordered all the parts and then we're just paying Rick's for and labor costs for his time to professionally install them. And I can already tell you this was the right decision. This is all the parts for the heater. It'll be some kind of exhaust or something. There are about a thousand parts in this box, and I'm pretty sure you have to, like, drill a hole in the bottom of the van. Plus, I've watched Damon and Beck's video on installing one of these, trying to decide if I was going to do it myself or not. It took Eamon two days to do it, who's like a van building professional. So I figured trying to install this on my own was like, at least a week of my time. So then there's the alternator, charger, and the stereo, and it should all be getting done in one day. This is going to be so nice.
They've already got the seat out. It's been about 20 minutes. That would have taken me all day. So already off to a great start. And this is the heater that we're installing. It'll sit down underneath the passenger seat and the heat will actually come out right here.
Wow.
The owner of this place has this old, awesome VW van that I'm gonna try not to break. And he said That I could use it for the day.
Wow.
You can find me here the rest of the day.
So this is Dan, this is Rick's friend, and also our expert heater installer for the day.
Hi, everybody.
And this is John.
How's it going?
He's the owner of Colorado Custom Camper. This is his shop that we're using today.
We're working on this 2016 sprinter van. Doing a stereo install with a rear view camera. We're doing an ACR upgrade for charging the house batteries. And then we're also adding a planar parking heater.
And that's the ground.
A lot of wires getting closer.
And she works nice.
So I was originally just gonna buy like the standard in dash screen, like the one that Rick has, but the day that I went to order it, they were out of stock. So I went a little crazy and got this one.
Beautiful.
You think so?
Yeah.
I couldn't decide if this is like a Tesla or a rap video. What do you think?
I think it's more Tesla ish.
Thank you.
It has style to it.
That's what I was thinking. It looks great.
I haven't watched enough rap videos to know, so I'd say Tesla, you like the stereo?
Oh, my gosh. I didn't see it.
It's so big.
How'd you.
It's awesome.
Oh, my gosh. Is this how we turn on the heater from the bed? So in the mornings when it's freezing, all I have to do is this?
Exactly.
Oh, my gosh.
All right. So we are trying to charge the house battery off of the alternator from the engine. So what we're going to do is we're going to take a 2 gauge wire 150amp fuse protecting the house battery. ACR charges the rear house battery. Check them. If the house battery voltage, it'll disconnect so it won't drain your starting battery. So you'll always be able to start. And that's kind of the main point of it too. So always have a charge starting battery and then make sure the house batteries can get charged up in the alternator.
Appreciate y' all working late.
Yeah, definitely.
Oh.
Scoot it here.
It's beautiful. It's so hot.
Yeah, it gets. It gets piping hot.
Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Thank you.
Well, it is 1am but we are sleeping in a warm van tonight.
Heater works. It's probably in the 30s out here. It's like a furnace in there. So hot. I had to come out here to drink my coffee.
Kara loves it. Though she'd bake in there all day.
What do you think of the heater?
I love it. I'm so warm and happy.
I'll take another hug. See you later.
Bye. Have a good time. I'm so sad.
Now we're on our own.
The Notch family has become our family.
Ugh.
I'm so bad at goodbyes.
My sad tears quickly changed to happy ones. Because about two hours later.
I got to reunite with my sister. Who I love so much and hardly ever get to see it's a video.
This weekend was more about spending time with family Than it was about going on adventures. But we did squeeze in this beautiful 10 mile hike up to this old mining mill.
I'm so sad now. I'll just cry on the way back.
Okay.
Probably the whole three hours. Yeah. Bye. Love you.
So back when we were getting our upgrades installed. The guys uncovered several serious safety issues. With all the electrical stuff in back of van.
A couple things I noticed.
One, they pretty much told us that we were lucky our van had not caught on fire yet.
All these cables in your fuse sizes are not even close to correct.
This is obviously something we want to get fixed as soon as possible. So over the weekend the guys ordered some new parts. And now we're driving back to Steamboat so that the professionals can rewire the van.
This is something I've been avoiding since the day we got the van.
I'm about to empty the compost.
Oh.
It has holes in it.
I'm not sure this is big enough.
Never looked in here before. Been too scared.
I mean it doesn't smell good. But it doesn't smell like poop.
Really?
Yeah. It's actually kind of impressive.
I want to smell.
This is like see through. Aw man.
What?
I think I did it.
You wanna smell it?
Ooh. You really stuck your nose in there.
That was brave.
It just smells dirty.
It's not that bad though.
Is just smells like dirt.
All right. Don't bother me.
Morning Dan.
Morning. How are ya?
Good. How are you?
Yeah. Good.
Do you know what that means?
I have no idea.
See you later. Have a good one. All right.
This still blows my mind. I need to take a picture of this just to.
Yeah, it's pretty bad. Might as well get one too.
Here.
I get the discoloration even on the.
COVID It's that bad. We're gonna take care of it though.
So out of everything that's happening in here. What's the most dangerous?
Definitely this.
This one right here. You can see it's already melted. There's discoloration on the COVID studs got.
So hot that it. That it melted the plastic in the back. And if you compare it down to these other ones back here, they should be nice and clear. That is just.
So is that the only one that has an issue, or is there? No.
So you always size this wire.
So in layman terms, for people who don't understand electrical stuff, like me, what's, like, the real danger?
This thing going up in flames.
It was kind of hard to see what Dan was talking about, but he just pulled this piece right here out, and all the bubbles that you see, that's melted plastic on this piece right here. The metal is discolored from heat.
So there are actually two big safety concerns in this van right now. The first is the electrical that we didn't know about until the other day. And the other one is the propane, which I've been meaning to have professionally looked at for a while now, because, you know.
It'S leaky. So while Dan's working on the rewiring, John's coming up with a solution for the propane.
Starting to look like a box coming together. It's kind of a quick and dirty box.
All right, so we're making a propane box to seal off the propane from the rest of the cabin. That'll have a fresh air outside vent. So it'll force all the. There is extra propane released from the system. It'll go out through a hole, through hose in the bottom of the van. Much safer and healthier for. For you.
So I didn't realize this, but I thought as long as we had the propane tank turned off while it was inside the van, that there was no way it could be leaking. But it turns out that these propane tanks have a pressure valve on it. So anytime we're changing elevation, like we have been a lot here in Colorado, there's a little bit of propane leaking out into our van that we're potentially breathing in. So this should fix that.
And we're through.
That didn't take long.
No.
Fits in there just right. Got the little magnet down here, Door seals up tight. Then when you need access, you, can just pull out down here. There's the magnet holding it on. Now you're safe.
Boom.
We're not gonna catch on fire.
All right. We're gonna test it with fire, with soap and water, not fire.
Told John the story of how I attempted to fix it myself. And then I.
Oh, my gosh. Look at your arm.
Oh, my gosh.
Turn it Off. So he's just going over one more time making sure everything is sealed up. And this van is gonna be the safest it's ever been.
That's how you check.
See this?
Ooh, that's a leak. That's what we're looking for.
Oh, that looks so much better. And they're labeled.
Yep.
The real deal, as they say. What we did is replace some fuses and breakers to properly sized ones for safety concerns. Both of these battery posts had about six or seven things coming off of them. So we installed the bus bar, which basically means I've got my positive cable coming off, charging this bus bar. Then all my other 12 volt accessories can, you know, come off of here. Instead of all having to go to the battery. Put a new properly sized cable for the inverter for the power in the ground through a properly sized 200amp class T fuse. So we will not have any more issues with overheating and melting things. Basically a quick disconnect switch. Then up here we remounted the charge controller. Kept on falling off the wall. Oh, yeah, and we did the we boost power.
So boom.
Yeah.
Appreciate all the work, Dan.
You got it, man.
So basically everything still works the same. It's just a lot. Simple, safer. Except for the Wii boost. It was the power cord issue. And this is going to be our first time since hitting the road that we have a working cell booster, which is awesome.
Well, a lot of good things happened today. But as is par for the course with this van, as soon as you fix one thing, something else breaks. And that thing that broke today was our fridge.
So John was nice enough to lend us his cooler until we can get the fridge fixed and never ends. It wasn't the victorious feeling that I thought we were gonna have tonight, but we are in a better place than we started today.
Kind of washing out our toilet bowl. Figured while we're already having so much fun, I would just continue. What a weekend.
We thought we were going to make a video about cleaning out the van and installing a few new things, and.
You just never know.
This is what you get instead.
I think you may be delirious. She's been editing the bike video for too long.
All right, so we're still living out of a garage, waiting to get our fridge fixed, but do it.
I still don't believe you.
Do it. Stick your hand under there.
It's beautiful. Should we take a shower? We haven't showered in a week. Should we take one?
This is the first time we have ever had hot water in this van.
Since owning it, what in the world happened?
And we have no clue what why it works. The hot water randomly works. Now, plugging in with an extension cord randomly works. Somehow Dan's magical touch with all of the rewiring just, like, fixed all these random things that were broken in the van.
He is a magician.
Oh, good news. Long story short, the fridge itself wasn't broken. A wire had come loose somewhere in the van. It's working again. And all in all, the van's in the best shape it's ever been in since we've owned it. So we can finally head off on our next adventure.
Tapping Leaves are changing, so I thought I'd carve out a little time to.
Go on a little jog, because I.
Pretty much tied to my computer for two weeks straight. And before that, I was driving a van for two weeks straight.
All right, I'm doing it. This is not part of the plan. I didn't set out to do this when I started running today, but.
I'm an hour and five minutes into my run, which is the first I've ever run in my entire life. And I think I'm far enough removed from the bike trip that.
Starting to crave another physical challenge. So today, I'm attempting my first half marathon on the Steamboat Springs Greenway right now.
Okay.
I'm 10 miles in. Since I didn't set out to do this, I didn't bring any water.
I'll say the hamburger and french fries.
Two hours before I started this run. So.
Needless to say, I don't feel.
Great, but I haven't stopped.
And that's the goal.
The goal is not speed. The goal is just to finish. Just like the bike trip.
It's a beautiful place to run, though. Okay.
I smile a quiet.
Hey.
Feels like there's razor blades inside of them. I'm pretty sure I'm not actually running anymore. I'm just moving my body in this motion. It looks like I'm running, but I'm going at a walking pace. But I haven't stopped, and I'm almost done.
Did you do it? Are you serious? 13.1 miles without stopping. How long did it take?
I don't know how to use this app.
And don't forget to check out omaze.com karaandnate for your last chance to win. This is a very messy electrical cabinet. Oh, fuse box. And then the weboost is in here as well. Solar charger fell off the wall and it's, like, broken.
Oh, okay.
You probably know what that thing's called right there.
Yeah, It's a shunt.
Yeah, shunt. Trust. Whatever you need to do.
Yeah.
Sweet. Well, the thing is, there's, like, this space in between here. All this, like, wasted storage almost, you know, there's, like, five inches between here in the old floor.
That's gonna make Kara unhappy. Yeah.
Camera has so much stuff on it. Can you see me?
I got a shot of Sawduster while you're coming out of the thing.
You didn't watch the video, huh? You didn't have to do your homework.
Did you watch our tour?
I did, yeah. I was getting a feel for it.
Yeah. You subscribed, though, right?
I did not subscribe.
You're fired.
I know.
Jeez.
How's it going, man?
