If you look back to Post #703 on page 71 of this thread you will see a discussion regarding carrying spare rear upper shock bolts, the reason being that this was becoming a known weakness of the Sprinter van at the time. Since then both Agile and Van Compass have come out with double shear brackets to strengthen this attachment point. This post documents my installation of the Van Compass bracket.
I have not seen the Agile bracket for myself, but looking at pictures and reading the description I believe that one key difference is that the Van Compass bracket is designed for a Falcon shock and the Agile bracket is designed for a factory or Fox shock. The Falcon shock is wider than a Fox shock, thus if Falcon shocks are on your van or may be in your future it looks like the Van Compass bracket is the way to go. There are other differences between the two brackets but this is not a product review so I suggest you compare the two for yourself before deciding which option best suits your needs.
In my case I have Fox shocks but I wanted to keep the Falcon option open so I went with the Van Compass bracket. The addition of a couple washers/spacers is all it took to adapt the Fox shock to the wider bracket; thus this was an easily solved minor issue.
The Sprinter is blessed (cursed?) with an unbelievable amount of undercoating that looks like it was troweled on in places. This needs to be removed where the brackets are attached, don’t discount this as a trivial piece of work! See the following picture for the undercoating that I removed from one side, with both sides being the same. Ultimately, I found that a small stiff scraper and a ball peen hammer worked best for this operation. Also, don’t forget to paint all the newly exposed areas because you will expose steel in the process.
Here is a picture with some of the undercoating removed. At first I thought this was enough, but that was not the case. Do a good job with this step as the material needs to be removed for the bracket to fit.
One thing I found was that there was a metal tab in the inboard upper corner that was exposed by scraping. Ultimately, I had to grind the top of both brackets at this location in order to provide clearance, so add your peanut grinder to the list of tools required. He is the bracket after grinding and before painting.
I mentioned above that washers/spacers were required to fit the Fox shock to the bracket, here is all that was required.
And here is the finished bracket installation on the passenger’s side. I had to work around interferences from one of the rear bench seat mounting bolts and the hose runs from the aftermarket passenger side 14 gallon auxiliary fuel tank, but neither issue was particularly difficult to resolve.
Then it was on to the driver’s side. This got very interesting when I discovered that one of the existing holes that the instructions direct you to use to install a bung was being utilized as an attachment point for a bracket and linkage that I believe is only found on vans with the Zenon headlight option.
I quickly decided that relocating this bracket was a no-go for me so I eliminated the bung, added some washers on the outside of the protrusion and reinstalled the bracket with its original bolt. Not quite as strong, but I believe plenty strong enough. Here is what it looks like from the underside.
And here is the finished bracket installation on the driver’s side.
This is a good addition that adds greatly to my peace of mind. I have carried the two spare upper shock bolts in the van for the past several years, hoping that I would never need them but knowing that they were on board if they were ever required. Now I can retire them from their place as spare stock and put them on a shelf as a curiosity item to be discarded at some point in the distant future.
Linear Mode
