van maintenance and chores in Sidewinder BLM
14d here at Sidewinder BLM (adjacent to American Girl Mine BLM1) is up on Monday so I’ve been starting to get some chores out of the way.
I had some mail forwarded from ELP to the Yuma main USPS, c/o General Delivery. Hopefully it will get there on time. Hot weather is supposed to arrive Wednesday and I hope to be at slightly higher elevation when that happens.
van maintenance
headlight replacement
How do you know you have a Genuine promaster? One of the low beams is out.
There are many theories about why PM headlights burn out so fast. I suspect retained heat in a poorly-designed headlight assembly. I do know my bulb life went from ~6mos to ~12mos when I stopped using them as daytime running lights (DRL).
Dodge RAM FCA Stellantis has started recommending H7LL (long life) bulbs. This will be my first replacement with LL so we will see what happens.
cabin air filter
I ordered a PG Air Filter PA99079 and installed it. Took a few minutes to figure out how to access the fasterners and how to get it in the right spot.
engine air filter
The engine air filter is recommeneded for replacement at 60k, and I am just over that. Replacement wasn’t hard, just awkward as are most tasks under tiny van hoods. The old one still looked good but I am happy to have it changed out.
I replaced it with the PG Air Filter PA99079 as recommended on the promaster forum.
propane decanting
Decanted propane from the 20# tank into my 1# empties. There was a breeze which keeps vapor breathing under control.
wooden floor mat
I made a little mat out of old pallet wood I found. The intent is to keep the stool feet from further beating up my VanTred mat and floor. It’s connected on the backside with that steel tape with holes in it, whatever it’s really called.
I eyeballed the length and made the cuts with DC’s 5.5” Ryobi circular saw. It handled this light work fine, even on the small 1.3Ah batts that came with my kit. I have a corded jigsaw I could have dug out but the Ryobi was out in the open and I wanted to try it out anyhow.
comments
twitter comment thread for this post
-
and quite possibly part of it. ↩