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chong

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Everything posted by chong

  1. chong
    First summer trip in the Van report! As mentioned, our route was as follows: Ann Arbor -> Traverse City -> Marquette -> Houghton -> Copper Harbor -> Ann Arbor The first night in the van was Marquette. Turns out, the Marquette Walmart is Boondock Central! As mentioned this was a bike trip. We carried 5 bikes: 2007 Giant TCX (Roof) 2012 Pivot Mach 4 (Roof) 2016 Surly Ice Cream Truck (Hitch) 2005 Santa Cruz VP Free (Hitch) 1986 Trek 400 (Inside) We mostly rode mountain bikes. Starting July 3rd we rode laps on Benson Grade in Marquette. The Norquemanon Trail Network is an IMBA Bronze Level Ride Center. Some good gravity there if you are willing to work for it. Monday night, we drove to Houghton and stayed with a buddy. Tuesday we spent up in Copper Harbor, an IMBA Silver Level Ride Center. The route from Houghton to Copper Harbor has some photo op places. I can quite honestly say that this is the first time I've ever stopped at either of these locations. I used to live up there so I never bothered. This time, we made an exception. It snows a lot up here. The pavement disappears in November and doesn't re-appear until Mid-April. I've chased a lot of storms up here. This thermometer tracks just how much it snows year to year. As you can see, last year was just above average. Breakfast in Copper Harbor: Lunch in Copper Harbor: Mrs. Chong getting ready to rip the Overflow trail: Apparently, the showers in Copper Harbor are only for bikes. Mrs. Chong was not pleased: All in all, it was a good trip. We didn't get any rain until after we were done riding/running on Saturday evening. We stayed Friday night at the Fort Wilkins State Park in Copper Harbor and Saturday night in the rest stop in Seney. We did 1573 miles round trip, averaged 23.2mpg, and never left the state!
  2. chong
    Tell my wife that so I don't have to come up with a solution for the walls and ceiling!
  3. chong
    Looking good!
  4. chong
    I was in your neck of the woods back in March: I'll have to disagree that the van handles well in the snow. I run Blizzak WS series tires in the winter and I'm pretty confident that my WRX with the summer tires could, literally, run rings around the van in the snow. I put up with the compromise because the van gets such good fuel economy and I have a full size memory foam bed in it
  5. chong
    Got the awning locked down, added the 3rd bike carrier, and threw the mattress in the back and secured it down with a ratchet strap. Now we are just down to small stuff. Added a couple of hooks for hanging things like helmets: I'm also using those hooks to bungee my cooler in place We also got 2/3 curtains done last night. Need to make another run to the fabric store to make the 3rd.
  6. chong
    SYNC 3 works with CarPlay/Android auto. It's actually the best implementation of the 3 deck's I've played with (Pioneer AVH-4000 NEX and Alpine iLX-007 being the other 2). If your SYNC 3 vehicle didn't come with CarPlay support, it can be upgraded to support CarPlay. Your dealer is mis-informed. To answer the poster above me, yes, the head unit will display the map from CarPlay. When you take screenshots on the iPhone with CarPlay enabled, it actually captures both screens. Here's a screenshot from one of my CarPlay enabled vehicles.
  7. chong
    Coming along quite nicely!
  8. chong
    Test fitting the awning. I need to make a quick run to the hardware store before I can leave it up there, but it should be pretty excellent.
  9. chong
    Ann Arbor -> Traverse City -> Marquette -> Houghton -> Copper Harbor -> Ann Arbor
  10. chong
    Fluid Film is like that. The only real issue is that its temporary. Good to last a winter, but you need to keep re-applying it if you want to keep the rust away.
  11. chong
    Did a bit of load testing yesterday. I have one more tray and an awning to get up on the roof before we leave. I don't think I'm going to roll with the wheel carriers. I've had wheels come off on the highway before, not fun. 5 bikes, no problem!
  12. chong
    Got the panel to mount the power points installed. Wiring it up today. I also bought an awning for the roof rack. Should be neat!
  13. chong
    Everything is more or less installed. I've fixed up the janky cracked blocks and have been test driving everything to work and back this week. So far so good. It's been goddamn hot out this week (90+) so I've not been venturing outside unless completely necessary. I still want to add some more power points to the back side of the battery cabinet as well as wall off the cabinet on both ends to help sturdy it up a bit more. Almost ready to roll out on our first summer road trip in a couple weeks!
  14. chong
    Made some more progress last night. Got the new bed fully assembled. The bed flips out and rests on 2x4s that are hung with hinges. I need to fit some braces to the floor to keep them from sliding around, but it should be quite sturdy. The next bit will be to figure out a good way to secure the bed itself to the floor in a way that makes it easy to install/remove.
  15. chong
    I think you'd likely need a larger vent than the plug in the back. That hole was barely large enough for me to run an extension cord through. Also, how are you planning to power that thing? The answers section on Amazon says its 800-900W. My battery setup is pretty nice, but it would only run that AC unit for about 2.5 hours. Things to consider.
  16. chong
    While I've not installed solar, I do have a fairly decent electrical setup in my van. I can run my powered cooler for about a day without running the batteries flat. Due to the cost of solar, I'd only consider it if I was planning on parking for days at a time. If you aren't doing that, consider wiring to the alternator and charge the house batteries while you drive. Just be sure to get a smart isolator to prevent overcharging. My electrical setup is detailed out on the first page of my build thread. Welcome to the forum. There are a lot of good ideas here. I love road tripping in my TC. I've been to Banff, SLC, Jackson Hole, and Copper Harbor (a few times!) since buying mine last September. Like you, I bought the TC as a starter van. My intention is also to upgrade to a big van, but I wanted to test the waters on something considerably cheaper to be sure I liked it. For now, I'm loving it. It'll be easy to drop the larger pile of cash for a bigger van in a few years.
  17. chong
    Looking good! I like how you built the legs for the bit of the box that flips out.
  18. chong
    I had mine undercoated right after I bought it. I just took it to Ziebart and had them do it. They have a 10 year warranty. Hopefully it holds up!
  19. chong
    Do you have a link to those?
  20. chong
    It's funny you mention that. I have that exact same idea in mind!
  21. chong
    I've been making progress. Over the long weekend I spent time getting my battery cabinet re-built and getting my bike mounts installed. My longest bike (just barely fits!): Got the electrical bits re-installed and tested to ensure everything still works: As you can see, I have a bit of finishing work to do there, but everything is secured down and I'm able to drive the van, which is good because my WRX blew a tire on my way home last Friday! I'm now able to fit both of my mountain bikes inside the van. This helps immensely from a security point of view. It isn't unreasonable for me to be carrying $10k worth of bikes depending on which ones are in there (between the wife and I we have 10-12 fairly high end bikes). On Wednesday, I spent some time test fitting the bed frame. None of this is installed, I'm just sliding it around the floor to make sure everything fits. It should start to look a bit more like the model I posted a couple weeks back. The next task is going to involve coming up with a better way to secure the bed frame so that I can quickly and easily pull everything out. I also will need to rig up some supports to hold up the bits of the bed that flip out into the empty spaces. All-in-all, I'm quite pleased with how things are moving. I've been able to re-use 95% of my lumber. I've only had to spend about $20 in new materials. We leave for our bike trip on June 30th. We'll be carrying 5 bikes in total and planning to sleep in the van 1 night. The bikes riding in the van will re-locate to the roof while we're sleeping. Can't wait!
  22. chong
    That is a cool tank!
  23. chong
    The boxes don't take up that much extra space, but I also didn't know that. I'll have to investigate that.
  24. chong
    Spent yesterday taking the cabinets and batteries out of the van. Spent today measuring and modeling. The cabinets were good enough to get us skiing, but for the coming bike season, I wanted to be able to get a bike (or 2) into the van. I need to do a bit more tinkering to see if I can get 2 bikes into a 2 foot wide space, but I'll definitely get at least 1. The problem with the previous design was not having enough length for my main bike (Surly Ice Cream Truck). I'm also slightly pigeonholed into the mattress dimensions because I don't want to buy those again (they are really nice). Rough design is here: The other thing I'm going to do is spend some time adding some hardware to my Fobuino. It occurs to me that I should be able to buy an arduino compatible thermocouple and use that as the trigger for starting the Van. That way, I can set a temperature threshold and let the van run for 15 mins whenever I get above/below it. The best part about that will be that I don't foresee ever cutting a hole for a roof vent.
  25. chong
    If you can't figure out the roof top AC unit, I hacked up one of my remote start key fobs to start the van and let it run for 15 minutes. If you have the OEM remote start system you can program the car to run the climate control system. I used it back in December out in Fargo to sleep quite comfortably when it was -18F. I don't see why the system wouldn't work to keep the van cool. I used an Arduino to control everything. It uses about a gallon of gas to run the van all night. I open sourced the code. Fobuino on GitHub
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