Beside the Japanes accessory catalogue I also found a German sales brochure I wanna share with you guys.
It was the first time I actually saw some crash test photos. Doesn’t look too bad, but still a head on collision probably doesn’t turn out well with this van.
One safety item I don’t want to miss in a car is a fire extinguisher. Unfortunately all the products I found in the regular stores are either way to big or crappy made and don’t look very reliable.
There are a few companies out there who produce well made extinguishers in the right size. I specially liked the products from H3R Performance and decided to go with the MX250R. Their HalGuard product-line would be even better, but the high price tag turned me off.
The 2.5lb version I bought fits perfect right next to the sliding door and with the provided mounting bracket the fire extinguisher can be removed quickly. Hopefully we never have to use it though.
As you know we took two of our side windows out and replaced them with something more solid. Step two of this project was to come up with an useful solution of the area inside. First, I applied another layer of Neoprene. After that it was the turn of my better half. She designed and sewed two large curtains with storage pockets out of Sunbrella fabric. The top and bottom had a loop with an aluminum flat bar in it to mount it on the side walls. Beside the pockets with zippers and pleats for more volume, there is also a lot of storage behind the curtains.
As we bought DinoEvo in Japan it had absolute no rust. Not a single spot. Quite unusual for a 15+ year old vehicle, but I guess the previous owner didn’t use the van that much as well as kept it inside a garage most of the time. I’m pretty sure this van had never seen snow and salt either.
To keep it this way and protect the undercarriage when we travel, I wanted to apply some sort of rust prevention. I’m not a fan of the common black tar spray as it covers everything underneath with a thick heavy coat. That makes it hard to see rust right from the start when it’s still easy to treat as well as harder to work on any of the covered parts.
Therefore I used a large bucket of Fluid Film.
Fluid Film is formulated from specially processed wool-wax, highly refined petroleum oils and selected agents to provide corrosion control, penetration, metal wetting and water displacement. These long lasting products contain no solvents, will not dry out and will penetrate to the base of all metals, providing corrosion protection from both natural and industrial atmospheres.
It was easy to apply with a air gun, even inside the subframe and tight areas. It probably will last for a couple years till you need to apply another coat. Another side effect of the product: DinoEvo smells pretty good now :)
We thought we should give DinoEvo a little bit more personality and wanted to add our national flag to the front to show off from where we are. It is a little bit more complicated in our case so we had to add three flags.
Also, every time when we cross a border to another country we are going to add their national flag. A practice seen by “Sprinter Life” we really like.
Another addition to our electrical system is a 100W solar panel from GrapeSolar. Manly to extend our off-the-grid or not-driving-to-charge-the-battery time. After calculating the consumption of all our electrical devices we should be able to add another 2-4 days under good sunny conditions.
The GS100 is the cream of the crop when it comes to solar panels. It boasts 18.3% module efficiency and is composed of 32 back contact solar cells. Compare that to standard crystalline modules with 14% to 16% efficiency. This panel has a very small footprint and fits into places other panels can only dream about. As for weight, this baby comes in at a mere 14.5 pounds! Another distinct advantage of the GS100 is its width of only 20.7 inches. The mono-crystalline, back contact cells on the GS100 means there are no grid lines blocking the sun’s rays. It also means you can expect outstanding performance in both high heat and low light conditions.
To regulate the power coming from the panel to our battery-setup I installed a Morningstar SunKeeper SK-12, which is one of the smallest and most reliable battery-chargers I could find and fits perfect in the small battery compartment of a Delica. Also it constantly measures the temperature of the battery and adjust the charge accordingly.
To run the heavy-duty wire form the panel to the battery I used a waterproof plug from the marine industry. That makes it easy to remove the roof rack when we need to load DinoEvo in a shipping container. Also the plug has still a few more connections available in case we want additional lights up on the roof rack.
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