SteveMalone189

We have been living in a 12 foot long Camp Inn teardrop trailer (towed by our 2015 TC) for the past two years. We had sought a way to mount a solar panel on our van to recharge an AGM battery in our camper, and had a very difficult time finding anything close to decent advice on how to do so. So I asked the Camp Inn factory for help. They advised me on how to tie the solar panel into the charge line that goes from the alternator to the van's 7 pin connector. It was necessary to add a relay switch near the van battery, which allows the solar charge to go into the charge line when the ignition is off, and the alternator charge to go into the line when the ignition is on. . The camper has a built in trickle charger that can recharge the battery when connected to shore power. But the big power draw is a Dometic CF35 compressor cooler, and its power needs interferes with the trickle charger's ability to fully recharge the AGM battery. To avoid this problem, we keep the Dometic in the van during the day, which assures that the camper battery is fully charged at night when we move it to the camper (this is also great when we do grocery shopping, as we can store perishable food right away - it also gives us access to our food when we are away from our campground). The solar panel assures that the van battery is getting recharged when the ignition is turned off, thus keeping the Dometic from drawing it down too far. The details of this installation are found in this post on the Unofficial Camp Inn Forum: http://campinnforum.com/community/threads/tow-vehicle-solar-step-by-step.4030/

I wish all of my searching and talks with Ford could have turned this tip up a long, long time ago. I can't tell you how many hours I wasted. I just tried this. It was necessary to push the stalk forward and then backward for the lights to go out.

No drilling required. The plastic caps (which are in the gutter where factory roof rack rails can be installed) cover elongated holes in the roof's sheet metal. These are the points where the factory rails would be installed. From the inside, you can squeeze the sides of the part that protrudes through to the interior and then push up to pop them out. On the exterior side, the bottom of the cap has a neoprene-like gasket that seals out the weather. You will need to remove some of the sound insulating foam on the side door track in order to access these holes in the midsection of the van (those in the rear can clearly be seen in a cargo van configuration). The foam is held in place by plastic "bolts" that have a wide, thin cap and a one inch or so barbed bolt. They press in place to hold the foam in position. In theory you might be able to back these out with a screwdriver, but there are auto trim pry bars made for this purpose. We live on the road, so I picked one up at a NAPA parts store in Texas. Yes, I did screw lag bolts into the bottom of the 2x2 to secure the same to the roof. The install took place last October. If I had access to better tools I likely would have bolted the 2x2 to the roof, but it is unnecessary, as proven by the power line that we snagged in Mexico. The way it is currently installed, that rack isn't going anywhere.

It is possible to mount an ARB awning on a TC without attaching it to a roof rack. We did so on our TC and posted the details on the Unofficial Camp Inn Forum: http://campinnforum.com/community/threads/arb-tow-vehicle-awning.3901/ The thread includes details of how to fabricate some inexpensive wind walls for use with the awning (to block low angle sun as well as wind), plus it links to an account where our custom mount survived ripping a low hanging power line off a building last fall in Baja California Sur, Mexico.

Like everyone else, I've tried to find a solution to the problem of all the exterior lights coming on when any door is opened. In our case, we were opening the doors often enough and long enough that we burned through the original battery in just 15 months. Fortunately, Ford replaced that battery under warranty (which shocked the hell out of me). But we didn't want to purchase a new battery every 15 months, plus we had an issue with the battery on our teardrop trailer that needed a solution. We've cobbled together a solution that we've been using for about six weeks now - we mounted a thin flexible 100 watt solar panel on top of our van, which we attached to a dual battery controller. The controller allows us to specify how much of the available charge will go to either the van battery or the camper battery, though if one of the batteries is fully charged, 100% of available charge goes to the battery in need of charging. The system is set up such that it ties into the 7 pin charge line to our camper (which is fed by the alternator) via a relay switch - with the ignition on, only the alternator charge reaches the camper battery; with the ignition off, only the solar panel charge is sent through the charge line to the camper battery. There are specifics of the install with pictures posted on the Unofficial Camp Inn Forum: http://campinnforum.com/community/threads/tow-vehicle-solar-step-by-step.4030/ It doesn't solve the problem of the lights coming on, but during daylight, the battery is always kept charged up no matter how often or how long the doors are opened. 100 watts is overkill for just solving the lighting problem. Our primary need for that much wattage is a Dometic CF-35 compressor cooler, which puts about a 6 amp load on our camper battery. A much smaller panel and a single battery controller would suffice to offset the power loss from the exterior lights, and it wouldn't be necessary to wire a relay switch to the ignition. If you had a need to run an inverter off of the van battery, such a set up would help offset the usually heavy load created by the inverter. It would also be possible to run various 12v devices while the van is parked - such as running a fan to help keep your pet cool while you do grocery shopping in the summer...

Hi bahavw! I'm just curious about your delivery timeline? We're expecting our EcoBoost TC to show up soon. We ordered on the 19th of January and were told it docked earlier this month, but our salesman didn't have a specific date. -Steve

I found out that the thresholds or mouldings (side and rear) are about 1/4" high. There are differences in the vinyl load floor, presumably between 2014 and 2015. The earlier load floor is even with the bottom of the sliding door mouldings. The newer floor is formed that it is more or less level with the top of all the mouldings. I say more or less because it seems to be a bit taller than the side mouldings and a bit shorter than the rear moulding. But pretty close.

I've been discussing with Windguy via PM the possibility of utilizing the seatwell area under the LWB van's load floor extension (see page 11 of the Body Builders Layout Book - https://www.fleet.ford.com/truckbbas/non-html/2015/2015_Transit_Connect_v1-0.pdf)) as a potential extra storage area. Since U.S. vans are imported as wagons the seatwell area comes already carpeted, so it could be possible to store stuff there without it rattling around. It seems the seatwells are about 6" deep at the deepest point, but it is split in the center by the driveline hump, where there is perhaps a few inches of clearance. The difference in height from the bottom of the load floor extension to the sill of the sliding door is probably less than 3". Since the LWB model is nearly 16" longer than the SWB model, I thought there was a possibility that the load floor extension was also that long, but I'm virtually certain that it is only about 9" long - the difference in the sliding door width of the SWB vs LWB models. When the van is converted from a wagon in Maryland, there are some exposed seat belt anchor points on the floor (these were bolted down with T-50 Torx bolts). There is a picture of the seatwell area of a LWB wagon in this post: http://fordtransitconnectforum.com/topic/3551-my15-slim-pickins-pics-or-it-didnt-happen/ There is a tower and beam structure that supports the load floor extension, and that is bolted into some of the seat bolt anchors shown in the seatwell picture. I'm guessing there is a box beam that spans the width between the two towers, so it is only the space aft of that box beam that might be modified to provide access to the seat well. And as stated earlier, that can't be more than 9" wide. The load floor extension is less than 4' wide and the driveline hump probably takes away close to a foot of that. So what you are left with is two 9"x18"x6" tall spaces (located more-or-less in the center of the sliding door openings) which could provide a place to store some gear, but the access would pretty much have to be through the load floor. As such, if you store much on the load floor, the practicality of accessing the area won't be very good. I'll be taking out the vinyl load floor when my van is finally delivered, as a plywood floor bolted to the load floor will give me the flexibility that I need for the camping and cycling gear that I'll be storing inside. I would have liked to have accessed the seatwell area as an additional storage space, especially if it could be done without extensive modifications, but it looks as though that is not possible. Or at the very least, I can't think of anything small enough to fit in the seatwell that I can't accommodate more easily elsewhere. A better way to approach converting the space to storage would be to remove the factory load floor extension and create your own custom design for the area (wood would be the simplest option for most people), using the existing T-50 bolt anchors to secure it in place.

We've got a Mazda CX-5 for our current tow vehicle. It has standard mirrors, and is fine for use with our teardrop camper, as it is the same width as the teardrop's cabin. So I suspect the standard TC mirrors will work fine for us. We almost opted for the glass on the curbside slider, but figured we'd probably have gear blocking the view, so it would be marginally worthwhile. It figures that there would be cheaper options for getting a USB (assuming that yours is connected to the stereo), but Ford doesn't make that clear in any of their promotional material and that was something we didn't want to be without. The only radio where it was clear there would be a USB was the Sync - not really something I wanted because I'm never going to ask the radio to find a particular song for me. Since we'll be traveling a lot, radio reception will be spotty, and even places with reception often have terrible (mostly Top 40) radio stations. So we have a tiny USB drive with enough music on it that it can play for 24 hrs/day for a full week before it starts to repeat. Since we don't plan to drive for more than a few hours every day, we won't have to worry about wearing out the music. Thanks for your help. Now that I know about the galleries I'll probably browse through them to see if any offer ideas that we'd like to borrow.

Oops

Windguy- I took a look at your photo gallery. I'm thinking the bottom of the door opening is different on the barn door version vs. the hatchback version, so my question in that regard probably doesn't apply. We opted for Frozen White, since we'll be on the road a lot and won't be able to garage the van (we want to minimize heat gain). We also opted for a no-window van (all we'd ever see out the back is our trailer), though I'm a bit disappointed to learn that on widowless vans they install a solid panel over the window opening on the sliding doors. Or at least I think all of their no-window vans are all built that way? The two things we wanted were a backup cam (to facilitate lining up on our trailer hitch) and a USB port, so we ended up ordering a Sync radio to get the USB (I briefly considered getting an aftermarket USB, but I did that in the past and had problems with it). We're having aftermarket Katzkin leather seat covers and seat heaters installed. We're thinking on cold mornings it make take a while for that much space to heat up, plus newer engines are so efficient that they take longer to heat up. We've opted for the EcoBoost engine, as the increased horsepower and torque will come in handy for towing, especially the higher low-RPM torque. The standard Mazda engine needs a lot higher RPM for the torque that it produces. We've owned a few Mazdas, so making that change was something we didn't do on a whim. But we've got our fingers crossed that we made the best decision. I saw where another TC took exactly one month from the time it left the plant to when it left the Maryland modcenter. So hopefully 5 or 6 weeks is a realistic transit time. Of course that could land it here close to the 4th of July holiday, which would only add to the delay...

Thanks for the replies! 103west43rd- I did explore the forum and looked at the layout book before posting. It was helpful, but unfortunately doesn't have sufficient detail about the area that I'm curious about. Windguy- You have the same model van as we've ordered. The threshold is the plastic piece at the bottom of the door opening. We were given a few minutes to look at a SWB van with hatch just before the owner arrived to pick it up. We placed our drawer pedestal inside and against the edge of the threshold. It appeared that we'd be able to overlap the threshold a bit and thus save an extra inch or two of remaining cargo space. We got rushed out since the owner showed up early, and I didn't get a chance to measure the difference in height between the load floor and the top of the threshold (it's probably less than an inch). I saw where another member had ordered a TC on 14 Dec 2014 and it arrived on 5 May 2015, just slightly faster than your timeline. We were told that ours had left the plant early last week, so we're hoping it is on a ship right now. If so, we'd expect to see it by mid-to-late June. Did you get any status updates between when the van was produced and when it arrived at the dealer? We're planning on selling our house, but don't want to begin that process if we can't set a definite closing date. And the longer it takes the van to arrive, the more likely that we'd winterize the house and sell in the spring. -Steve

Hi! In January we ordered a 2015 TC LWB cargo van, that appears to have finally left the plant last week, despite having rolled off the assembly line in early March. We plan on using the van to tow our Camp Inn teardrop trailer, and it's primary purpose will be to stow our gear. We've had a hell of a time getting our hands on any vans at local dealers for the purpose of taking measurements, though we have had some success. We think we have all the measurements that are of critical importance to us, except one: can anyone give me a precise measurement from the load floor to the top of the rear door threshold (we've ordered the "barn door" version, not the rear hatch version)? We have a drawer pedestal that will be mounted in back and will overhang the door threshold, so we'll need to mount some plywood to the bottom of the portion of the pedestal that will sit on the load floor, in order to compensate for the difference in height between the load floor and threshold. We're wondering what thickness we'll need? Thanks in advance to anyone that can help with this, it is very much appreciated! -Steve