Good News! The van survived over 6000 miles in two weeks, and well over 1000 miles of trail! It was amazing.
The good and bad:
The van did great! The 6.0l ran decently cool the whole trip. From 80 mph through North Dakota and Montana, to slow crawling up trails at 5mph and high elevation it never got above 224 degrees. Typically the Oil temp stayed 10-15 degrees lower than Coolant temp. On average it stayed under 214 degrees, and when the fans kicked on it rapidly dropped back to around 194.
The new Agile suspension is ok. I'm less impressed than I had hoped. It's fine on the highway, but it was fine on the highway before the change. My main concern is offroad. If you hit a bump with both tires, takes it easily. If you hit a bump with a little speed on one tire it's decent. If you hit a pothole on the trail with just one tire and slow speeds, the entire van wobbles like a drunken sailor. It's enough to give you whiplash. It dips, then rebounds super hard. It feels like the low speed dampening is too soft, and the rebound it too stiff. In my truck I can adjust High speed dampening, low speed dampening, and rebound separately, and I really wish I could do the same on these fox shocks. I may need to find someone who can revalve these, or find another solution down the road.
The interior I built out worked well. We used maybe half of the 16 gallons of water in our tank, and the Dometic faucet was sufficient if a little slow to fill a pot.
We eventually got a pretty good solution to make the bed (top and bottom) more comfortable. We used a 1 inch thick self inflating Kamp-Rite mat on top of the mattress, then a 2 inch memory foam mattress on that. Each side of the double mat can be inflated separately so I could have it more firm than my wife. We were able to keep a full set of sheets on the mattresses and move the mat and topper to the bunkhouse when we slept above, and leave it on the folded down couch when we were traveling.
The ARB Twin compressor is perfect for airing the tires back up to the 60/80 after taking them down on the trail. Right now it's mounted in an apache (Harbor Freight) case, but I'll get it mounted under the van soon.
The diesel heater was an absolute game changer! I ran a Chinese diesel heater with a different controller called the Afterburner. With the upgraded controller I can manage the heater from my phone via a nice web interface, adjust the heater to different modes, and even tweak how it runs at different altitudes. In the next couple of weeks I'll be installing the silent pump mod and we'll be golden. We used the heater almost every night. I ran it in a linear hertz mode, at around 1.2 hertz. Basically it pumps fuel at a rate of 1 squirt of fuel every 1.2 seconds. It can go as low as 1 hertz and up to around 4.5 I think. It also has a mode to maintain a specific temp, and has an external temp sensor so it's not affected by the electronics in the thermostat heating up. I've been using the afterburner controller for years, but now that it's hard mounted, it's even better. Once I get the silent pump installed, it will be about perfect.
The swivel seat for the passenger side is great while parked, but has some wiggle that makes hitting bumps offroad a little more violent in the passenger seat that you don't notice from the drivers seat. I need to find a solution for that before long.
Some nights we slept in upstairs area, and other nights we were too lazy to move the bedding and just slept on the downstairs bed. I love that I can pull into a reset area, throw the window covers on, and sleep down below in no time. In the truck I was never able to get good sleep while stealth camping.
As I edit pictures I'll work on creating a bit of a trip report, but I'll tease you with these:
Also, if you ever have a chance to stay in an old fire lookout tower, don't let the fire die at 2:30am.. It takes a while to heat back up. :n5:
