Paper Towel Restraint

Our paper towel dispenser sometimes catches the wind from the windows and unspools the towels across the back of the van. We wrapped a rubber band around the roll for several years, but that proved to be suboptimal. I finally landed on this solution.

I took a piece of 1" wide elastic, about 12" long, and installed a female snap on each end. 

I attached male snaps to the cabinet in the locations shown below.

One advantage of using elastic for this purpose is that it accommodates whatever size the paper towel roll happens to be. We'll try it for a while and see how it works out.

24-July-2021

Bed Rail Caps

The bottoms of the bed rails are sharp and painful and prone to scraping your leg or hand. After doing this three times, I decided to do something about it.

Someone in the Revel group found these square rubber caps  (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07MKSGV7K/) that are the perfect size for covering the bottoms of the rails. I had to loosen two screws to slip them on, then tightened them back down after the caps were in place.  No more scrapes!

24-July-2021

Rotating the Dinette Bench

We never liked that the dinette bench protruded into the hallway, taking up aisle space, and making it difficult for two people to move around in the van fluidly. So after seeing someone in the Revel group rotate their dinette bench, we knew we had to do it. It's a big job, and can be pretty expensive, but it's turned out to be one of our favorite mods ever.

The work was performed by Tony & Wanda Loeza, at San Carlos German Motor Works. Tony found the job to be much easier if the electrical system has already been converted to lithium, as shown below.

We added a Lagun table, and are still working on the right tabletop. The old table is shown here for testing purposes.

One of the primary drivers for this was my wife's yoga practice. Opening up the aisle gives her much more room for her morning practice.

Keep in mind that this mod removes the seat belts, leaving a square hole in the floor from their previous mounting point. We patched it with aa piece of flooring from under the bench.

One of Tony's professional touches was to add a backboard with matching grey vinyl for supporting the back cushion.

Finally, we were extremely glad to see that our 12" subwoofer fits in the gap perfectly, like a puzzle piece.

I applied some iron-on edge banding to the wall that was trimmed, and it looks pretty close to Winnebago's fit & finish.

17-June-2021

Replacing the Revel Exhaust

I've always hated what Winnebago did to the exhaust system on the Revel, and was very glad to remove it. I've now got the restored, original exhaust that Mercedes ships with the Sprinter. It was about $250 in parts, and was an easy installation.

We added plenty of heat shield to protect the glycol and water lines in the area. (The heat shield is $45 from Mercedes, part number 9064913730. It requires a little modification: towards the rear, near the water lines, you have give it a slight curve so that it fits better. Then use existing self tapping screws from the old heat shield to secure the new one.) 

No more ugly, incongruous pipe hanging down there to get smashed against rocks.

19-July-2021

Rear Differential Skid Plate

We get offroad a fair amount, and are often concerned about the rear differential getting struck by debris. We finally got a Van Compass skid plate to cover it. It's an easy installation and not very expensive for the peace of mind that it offers.

19-July-2021

Offroad Lighting

In the past 4 years of owning our Revel, we've had many night drives on lonely country roads with deer, elk, bison, and other hazards in our way. For those times, we've often envied the folks with serious offroad lighting, like lightbars and flood lights, and finally decided to do something about it.

Our friend Carol has some very nice Baja Designs Squadron Pro lights that she purchased from Agile Offroad, but unfortunately they no longer make this for our 2017 Revel (NCV3). However, with the help of our friends Tony & Wanda Loeza at San Carlos German Motor Works, we were able to reproduce the system from various places. 

• The Squadron Pro lights came from Baja Designs directly.
• The mounting bracket came from RB Components directly, but they require a modest amount of customization to fit the older NCV3 Sprinter.
• The wiring harness & switches came from Agile Offroad directly.

We've now used them a few times and they are seriously BRIGHT. You can't use these lights in traffic, and if you want to do that, you should get the SAE version.

The light scuffing in the rubber pad in front of the bracket is due to the slight modifications that we needed to make for the NCV3 Sprinter

We love the professional, factory-style buttons that come with the wiring harness. The left button controls the white lights, and the right button controls the amber lights.

18-July-2021

Rear Lights

We've always found the back-up lights to be poor (nonexistent) on our 2017 Sprinter, so we were glad to see that the Baja Designs S1S lights work so well for lighting up the rear of the van.  Tony & Wanda Loeza at San Carlos German Motor Works professionally installed them for us, including front and rear switches (see below). 

New front lighted switch for the driver (subwoofer knob shown on the left).

New rear lighted switch if you need lights when standing at the back doors.

It's now very bright when backing up or needing to get something done back there.

18-July-2021

New Headlights & Foglights

Our 2017 Sprinter had the original old-school halogen headlights from Mercedes, and we found them to be dim, yellowish, and something of a safety hazard. After envying all the bright, modern LED headlights that we see on the road, we consulted with Tony & Wanda Loeza of San Carlos German Motor Works, and they recommended (and installed) the following:

• LED Headlight Lowbeams: Lasfit Pro-G2
• LED Headlight Highbeams: Lasfit Pro-MB1-N
• LED Foglights: Morimoto LED 2Stroke 3.0

After using them for a month or so, we can see a very big difference and a much improved ability to see at night. Also, when replacing the halogen bulbs with LEDs, the Sprinter's electronic system will normally complain that a bulb is burnt out every time that you turn on the headlights. However, Tony & Wanda were able to purchase a software patch for our van that removes that warning - - contact them for more information.

18-July-2021

Bike Cover for Hitch-Mounted Rack

I spent a lot of time looking for a high-quality bike cover for our hitch-mounted bike rack, and finally found the best one of all. It's the Formosa Bike Cover, made of heavy canvas & vinyl, and comes with 8 cinch straps and 2 giant bungees to eliminate any flapping in the wind. It's about 2x more expensive that its competitors, but in this case, you get what you pay for.

In the photos below, you can see that we have 2 RadCity e-bikes from Rad Power Bikes, and since they are the step-thru models, they require a platform rack. Our rack is the Rad-recommended Hollywood Sportrider Rack for e-Bikes. Of all the racks that I've tried, it is the most stable and shortest (closest to the vehicle) that I've seen.

One nice touch is that the Formosa offers a 'neck shroud' for the hitch itself, wrapped with a drawstring and velcro, for keeping out dust and road junk. The bikes emerge from their protective cocoon looking pristine.

17-July-2021