Candlestick

Ever since our home burned in the 2007 San DIego fires, we've realized that the fire officials can restrict access to your residence as a fire approaches. We rebuilt on the same spot as fires are infrequent, but we are not willing to have our dog burned to death, so take her with us everywhere. Hope that provides a little context.

We recently bought a TC to replace our Roadtrek for local runs around town. We have as small dog we leave in the car and we wanted to have a way to air condition the car while we were shopping or at a movie (say a maximum of 3 hours at a time). Using 110v air conditioners have evaluated having six deep cycle batteries (heavy, expensive) a portable generator (fairly expensive, but cannot run inside vehicle, pilferable outside) and solar (requires less batteries but more holes). Then it just dawned on me, what if I just let the TC run at idle with the car's A/C on? Temperatures around here can hit 95-100F. Any anticipated problems letting TC idle that long? Any fuel consumption estimate?

Thanks, will do

We have a Roadtrek camper van and live in the mountains east of San Diego. Since we are about an hour from town, we used the Roadtrek for shopping as it had a refrigerator for groceries. As we also have a dog, we liked having the Fantastic Vent in the ceiling along with air conditioner and generator, and the toilet. Unfortunately, the Roadtrek is very expensive to operate (10mpg, etc). So we decided to buy a Transit Connect as our Mountain Car. Our plans are to install two deep cell batteries, a converter (which will permit charging the batteries from the car generator as well as 110v plugin), an inverter (which will permit running a small 110v refrigerator), an air conditioner and a generator. Like Roadtrek, we are looking at installing a window-style air conditioner. They have it so it does not stick out the back of the vehicle, rather the inlet and outlet air use separate routes to dump outside through a mesh cover. The generator is a bit trickier as it produces carbon monoxide. We've been looking at the 1000w portable models and are considering enclosing it in a box that can be sealed to the inside after it is started. Our original thought was to remove the two rear windows and cover them with metal screening. The rear doors would seal against boxes holding the generator on one side and the air conditioner on the other. Then we noticed the structure around the side windows and are now considering cutting holes in the sides. Has anyone done anything similar? Does anyone know where to buy a service manual? Any thoughts?

2011 "Premium" model has pop-out side windows. I think that means the rear edge opens outwards.