Pre-trip Checklist with Revel Expert: Mike Faber

Pre-trip Checklist with Revel Expert: Mike Faber

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Hi, we're recently back from Baja. One of the things we learned with a multi day trip where you're going to spend a lot of time n trails and rougher rides and longer rides in the van as it can be a good idea to check over things a little closer than you would for just going up the road to the state park or uses that you might use the van for. 

We picked up a bit from 7P. It's a thing they called The First Parade. Duncan calls it that. But I came up with some ideas from the 7P ideas on what to check and added some of our own and developed a little checklist and I was just going to run through that quick. 

So the pre-trip checklist breaks into 4 sections.  
It's under the hood and you can see that's what I'm getting ready to do. 

Wheels and suspension, so walking the wheels and tires and suspension.

The body, which is a broad category for, well, the body… doors, windows, rear carrier boxes and bolts that hold those on if you got them. 

And then lastly the camper, making sure the camper is secure before you take off.

I'll get started and I'll just do the under the hood part here first. 

So under the hood the first thing you can just glance around and make sure everything's where you left it.

If you're not familiar, get familiar your van under the hood, where the different things are, and make sure stuff stays secure. 

The basic checks are:

• Coolant level - and you can do that visually. That's this thing, it's got a min/max mark on it This one's a little warm right now so it shows a little above max but when it's cool, it should be between the min and max marks. If it's warm or on a hill, it might be a little above max or a little below min. 
• Oil level - if you've got a dipstick (and on the older Vans the NCV3s and I think maybe the first VS30s had one, or maybe you put one in,) it's right there. Good to look at the oil, besides just checking the level, and just make sure the condition's good.There's no kind of foamy or frothiness from any kind of issue with coolant getting in it or anything like that. 
• Other kind of fluid, your brake fluid reservoir is here. There's a min max level and you can see that through the reservoir you can see it. This one's at max. The minimum is down here and you can see it visually. 
• The next I would look at are the air filters and the cabin air filter. The cabin air filter on the old vans here. I got a crappy Chinese 1 from Amazon so it doesn't fit correctly and I have it duct taped in right now.
• The air filters in this box. I won't go through it in this video, but to check it and you would want to do it and you can see this van's been on some dirty roads in Baja…  
• And then there's these, I forget the number, but there are those torque screws that you remove around the perimeter. You can pull that off and then you can pop this whole housing out and it's easier to kind of get to it. Alternatively, you can just pull the screws loose, take that loose and just pop the cover off and pull it out. But either way, just pull that out and look at it. If it's bad and you don't have an extra one with you, just beat it on the side of the van and get the dirt out of it.
• Another thing to check, power steering clamp on these vans. And I think if you've been in any of the groups, you've heard about the recall and the clamp. I'm going to try to show you where that is. It's a little tricky with one person. But if you stand back from here, so I'm on the driver's side, I'm going to take you down to where it's at. Just going down past. And you see right there that lower hose with 2 clamps on it is the lower power steering hose that's been known to move on the four-wheel drive sprinters.
• If you see a gap of more than like a quarter inch  between the thick spot and the hose, it's moving a bit too far, especially if you only have 1 clamp. The Mercedes recall that's been done on that does add a worm gear clamp that holds it tight but bottom line is the hose is kind of short and it's always trying to get off there so it's good to keep an eye on it.
• Other stuff, check your serpentine belt just visually. Make sure you don't see any fraying. I'll just shine a light on it. That's right there. Just make sure it looks in good condition. You know, no obvious issues before you take off. If you've got one of the newer vans, I don't. Or a third party second alternator, check the belt on that. Make sure it's well lined and in good shape. One last thing I'd like to check, and this will be kind of hard to show, you can't see them all, but I'm looking below the brake reservoir on the driver's side. Down there it is coming out of your differential in the front. You can see it from above. That's a CV joint. And there's been instances of their Torx bolts working loose. It seems rare, but it's easy to check while you're in here. And you can visually look and make sure none of them are backed. And I can see 3 of them that look good. I think there's 6. You can visually look at those. They're below the brake reservoir and backside of the engine on the driver's side and then passenger side. Same sort of deal. You've got to peek below the coolant reservoir and you can see them. 

So that's about it under the hood.. a fluid check, filter check, belts, a couple key Mercedes issues namely 
the power steering clamp and those drive bolts. 

Alright, so next thing and probably more important if you're out in the middle of crossing some trails and spending an overnight and getting going the next day is making sure the wheels and tires and the suspension are all staying p ttogether and inflated.

First basic thing to check is just have a look at the tires. 

I don't have great light here in the garage so I'll just try to light it around. I will show on this one…
We did recently put a cut in it. So we're looking at one and I know I've got one on the other side as well like this but you can see here in the sidewall this tire I did put a nice little gash in it that was on a trail with some sharp rocks and I obviously got a little too close.

Did have that one looked at by somebody and you know it's probably it's alright. We did drive it home a thousand miles orwhatever it was. I'm still rolling these tires but you know that's the sort of thing you want to look for. If you go anything where you've gotten down into the belts, that's something you want to have a tire guy look at.

Next thing on wheels and tires and you'll know if you've had any issues, but just to be thorough, I’ll show you how to check lug nuts. Maybe you've recently had a shop service your wheels, rotate your tires, and you
just want to be sure they got them on there well. Typically they put them on too tight not too loose. But with the van, you should have gotten, especially if you have the aftermarket wheels, you should have gotten one
of these kind of extending wheel wrenches with different sizes.

Mine are 17 millimeter lug bolts. Just a simple quick check on a couple of them if you've just had it serviced or something. They should move if they put the right torque on them. Do a little tug like this… if they move, they're not tight. Not a bad idea. Not necessary, you don't check that every time you go but if you've had recent service and you're going on a big trip, going on some rigorous ride, not a bad thing to look at.

Okay last thing to check for wheels and tires and suspension Of course you're doing this all 4 corners and it's a little different for suspension in the different places but you'll get the idea…is your suspension connection, namely the shock bolts and where they attach to the van. Just to make sure things haven’t moved or loosened up. You can check them for tightness with a wrench.

Or what I've added on this van is some paint marks. You can see in here, I've got the Baja brackets. If you just have the shock bolt, that's your shock bolt. It's one that's known to work its way loose and break, so check to make sure that one hasn't moved. If you don't have paint on it, you can take a 21 millimeter wrench and… you shouldn't be able to turn it. I think it's a hundred foot pounds. That's just this paint that actually Duncan from 7P recommended that you put on there and if it cracks, the bolt is moved. It's thick and gooey and it dries into a paste so you just check these and make sure that those bolts haven't moved each day. Then there's also one at the bottom of the shock. I won't reach under there because Karen's got the camera. You can check it as well.

Okay last thing is… I call it checking the body. The actual body of the van and things attached on the outside.

Do all your doors open and close properly? That does seem silly, but our slider actually got loose. The latch mechanism worked out of adjustment or something, wore a little bit while we were out in Baja and I had to adjust on the latch a little bit after suffering a day where it beeped every 30 seconds. So check that the doors close and open as they did before you rode in the van so you know it still works properly.

A visual walk around… is there any trim loose or anything like that might have hooked the tree or whatever… make sure everything is attached. If you're going to be driving at night, flip the lights on, flip the blinkers on, make sure everything works. On these vans, the cassette door… make sure it's latched and closed and everything's good there so you don't lose your cassette because they're hard to get. And then the last area, probably the most important, if you've got these rear carriers, just make sure everything's secure.

The same drill and checking bolts visually, make sure everything hadn't moved. Whatever play you have in them, make sure it hasn't changed. Check that your doors are latched and secure so your stuff isn't flying outon the trail. And that's really about it.

It seems like a lot but you run through this in 10 minutes. And then the last thing you do before you go is check the stuff inside the camper to get it secure and ready to roll. I'm gonna let Karen do that.

Okay before you go, last thing you need to do is check that everything's secure good inside. You want to turn on the water briefly and just make sure either nothing runs or the pump runs briefly and then quits because if it keeps running, you've probably got a water leak. Then you want to make sure your water is turned off. You want to go through all your cabinets and doors and make sure the latches are closed.

This one is Closed. Also we've got this little latch on your refrigerator so it goes closed. What else do we need to do? Your fan. You want to make sure your fan is turned off and then if you have a handy dandy thing like this thing Mike made to stop it from being noisy and rattly, put that in there. You want to check all your windows and make sure your windows are closed and latched. So you wanna go through there and make sure they're all latched. The little one in the back is kind of a lot of climbing, so I'm not gonna do that.

I know it's latched, I look on the outside. And I also like to make sure the screens are down most of the way in the windows so that gives the driver to be able to see out the sides once we get going. We want to check overhead and make sure everything in there is safe and secure and not going to come flying out. Same thing if we've got the beds down and we've got our shelf down make sure that stuff is all secure and safe and then a quick look into the garage make sure there's nothing that's going to come flying out and hit a dog in the head or a person or in the containers it's supposed to be in or whatever.

I think that's it and then you're ready to go. 

DOWNLOAD THE PRE-TRIP CHECKLIST

Author: Mike Faber, Expert Revel Guide
The REVEL CLUB and Yellow Dog Van Adventures