Up and Running

The mechanic replaced a number of other things when he did the timing belt. Since he was in there, it made sense to also do the:

• Water pump
• Front seals (camshaft, crankshaft, oil pump)
• Power steering belt
• Fan/accessory belt of some sort
• Valve cover gasket
• Valve cover half-moon seal at the rear (this was a last minute thing that I was able to get from Rock Auto, surprisingly, after cross-reffing Isuzu P'up parts)
• Coolant hoses (whatever I had basically)
• Tensioner pulley
• Idler pulley
• Thermostat gasket (I think? I should check...)
• Power steering pump

Maybe some other stuff, too? It's been too long.

I can't forget the huge difference made in getting power steering back, of course. I remember being super thrilled that the used pump I bought from some guy in Greece actually worked! It was 95% identical but one of the hose flanges needed to be modified a bit. Interesting that even though it really seemed identical, there was a small difference. I'm glad it worked out!

I really should have had him do the fuel filter. That thing is hard to get to without removing the driver-side seat. Ugh.

Speaking of removing seats, I managed to swing by at once point and get a shot of the engine bay while it was disassembled for access. Both the center console "hood", driver and passenger seats were removed for better access. It's really quite impossible to do anything beyond an oil change with that stuff still installed.

The lighting was really bad...you get the idea

At this point it became a kind of back and forth waiting game. Admittedly I wish I pushed harder to get the work completed so I could start messing with other aspects of it. Weeks went by with intermittent progress. And then Covid-19 hit!

At that point, I didn't really want to push my mechanic to work faster on something I could genuinely wait for. He was dealing with his own issues relating to the pandemic. So I tried to take it easy and let him work at the pace he needed. I think it was for the better. We seem to be on pretty good terms and I think he was able to do the work on the engine in a methodical manner.

During the waiting period, I spent a lot of time researching this and that about the camper. I probably bought a few too many things in anticipation.

When the week of finally getting the camper back arrived, I made a beeline to the Interstate Battery store in town to get two brand new deep-cycle RV batteries. I needed a pair of batteries which didn't cost an arm and a leg, and would offer a good middle ground between starter battery and house battery. I didn't want to (nor have the patience for) finding some ultimate battery pairing that was meant for boondocking for a zillion years. I just needed a new battery to start the vehicle, and a battery which could handle a day or two of camping without charging. Thus, the Interstate SRM-24 was my pick. 

Oh, and I also needed to fit two of them into a tiny storage space! If you'll recall from other photos (or the ones below), there was minimal space for big fancy American batteries. I took some measurement and while I haven't actually tried to get both in there yet, I think it will fit into the space.

The two batteries are stored at the base of this cabinet.

The old batteries, very snug

One drawback to these batteries which I do wish I could have gotten around is that they require some amount of venting. The storage space does have some little vent holes that lead outside the van. And the cabinet itself can be pretty airtight otherwise. Maybe I'll add a dinky fan to the vent hole and run it off DC power?

Okay, van acquired and battery swapped in! The only remaining thing was to affix the super awesome collector license plates! I don't want to revisit that whole thing but basically just know that if you're importing a car from Japan, just go for the collector plates! I tried to do the whole motorhome plate thing, but it got rejected for "reasons" and the nice person at the DMV said to give the collector plate option a go. So I did, and to my utter relief the plates showed up not that long after! It's hard to convey how happy I was to have them!

Super cool blue and red color scheme!

One of the nicest things about these plates is that they don't need to be renewed. One and done! The unfortunate thing is that you're not supposed to drive a "Collector" vehicle in January. So...I won't be doing that I guess!

Having brought the plates, I knew beforehand that just affixing an American license plate to a foreign vehicle was probably not straightforward. Fortunately, I was able to get the rear plate on with a single screw that would last for the 5 mile drive. Good enough!

I said goodbye to the mechanic, hopped in and starting driving home. Not 5 minutes after leaving did a middle-aged guy yell out his window at a stop light that the camper was indeed "fucking awesome". Yes, a trend would soon be established in which middle-aged men would do a double take and stare, thumbs up, or yell in excitement upon seeing this small camper. The attention is kind of fun, I'll admit.

The fun begins

Present day circumstances aside, at the time of receiving the camper back in March I was pretty excited.

Right as I was about to drop off the camper with the mechanic, I snagged a hasty walk-through video. As I mentioned in the last post...snowstorm! Plus, I had to get to work :(

What I definitely did not have time for was any sort of quick joy ride.

To my benefit, the mechanic was enthusiastic enough about the camper himself that after I returned from a rather brief work day, he urged me to take it for a test drive. My wife was able to meet me at the mechanic, so together her and I hopped in and went for a quick spin.

I was nervous about not having any sort of license or registration. I did have insurance, however! I think that would have been enough to sway the police officer to let me off with a warning. I heard various stories about getting insurance for Japanese imports. A few weeks before the camper arrived, I was able to set up insurance through SafeCo, which is part of Liberty Mutual. They didn't blink when I explained the situation and didn't seem to care that my vehicle didn't have the typical 16-digit VIN number. And because it was insured as a motorhome, the overall price per year was quite inexpensive.

Once on the road, we quickly noticed that the fuel gauge was reading alarmingly low. Running out of fuel in a diesel vehicle is problematic if they don't have the right fuel pump setup that can push air out of the lines. Even on my Sprinter that I used to have, getting air in the fuel lines meant you had to screw around for a bit in order to get it going again. For our first outing, the last thing we wanted to do was run out of fuel and get stranded. So we made a beeline for a gas station, hoping it would sell diesel.

Approaching the gas station, we saw it was also a truck stop. That meant diesel for sure. But unfortunately it only carried diesel on the pumps meant for semi trucks. That 

it was very obvious that this was not going to be a fast vehicle. Granted, we didn't take the chance of running it on a freeway or anything. We only had a short loop planned. But I wanted to see how quickly it might accelerate. Could it even get out of its own way?

This video my wife took speaks to that a bit...

Yeah...about that acceleration. Not too quick! Okay, so maybe getting up to speed takes a while. But what I wanted to know (and still don't, as of writing!) is how fast it will go and what speed I can hope to maintain. Are we destined to take backroads everywhere we go? Maybe that's the more relaxing way to travel anyway. Doing 80mph on a Wisconsin freeway has never been overly pleasant. But if we want to go cross-country in this, we might have to budget some extra time.

Delivery!

Radio silence, I know! Well, unless you follow us on Instagram! But yes, the camper did arrive! Awesome! Here it is showing up on the flat deck. This was back in February, I think?

That is a lot of tongue weight on that trailer!

It arrived right before a sudden snowstorm!

Fortunately we were able to offload it before it really started coming down. I must say that the towing setup it arrived on left a lot to be desired. I think this is what you get when you try and cheap out a bit on car hauling. I really think a lot of weight must have been on that hitch! It probably ought to have at least been a gooseneck trailer.

Without going into the the painful details too much, one cause of delay is the driver's truck breaking down somewhere in Ohio. I guess his DEF heater failed and put the truck into a limp mode! And then he had to wait for parts, etc. At the time I couldn't believe my luck. This delay came right after I had spend so long waiting for a driver to even pick the vehicle up.

Because I was about to head off to work for a very important meeting, I just had a few moments to look inside the camper after it was unloaded. The driver had to jump start it, because the batteries were old and dead. It has two batteries and so it was good to get a quick idea of which battery to jump in order to start the vehicle.

I had arranged to have the camper delivered at the mechanic's. So once said mechanic showed up, I basically rapid fired an explanation of who I was and what the vehicle even was. I think it took him a second to realize that it was indeed THE JAPANESE CAMPER which I had been telling him about for the past month and which had failed to materialize until now.

Now we were on the same page, but I needed to make haste and get out of there. The mechanic gave me the go ahead to park it inside of his shop. Because he works only on diesels, the vehicles he works with are usually pretty sizable and his bay doors are pretty big. This was good because I needed to quickly figure out how to drive this incredibly peculiar vehicle.

I'm pretty sure I immediately tried to enter the cab from the left side of the vehicle, because I'm completely used to American cars that of course have the steering wheel on the left. It was kind of enjoyable to make that sort of mistake. It definitely confirmed that this was not a normal vehicle.

Running over to the other side, I hopped in. I knew I was dealing with a 5-speed but I honestly knew little else. I played around with the shifter a bit, felt the clutch pedal, and just tried to establish myself in space. It felt pretty funny, and quite tiny in there. The vehicle was already running because the driver hadn't shut it off after unloading it from the trailer. If I stalled it...I'd have to jump start it again!

I tried to be overly cautious with everything, making sure I was in the proper gear so I could maneuver the incredibly short distance into the shop. Even with such a short distance to go, I realized that the visibility behind isn't too great. Complementing this short challenge was a lack of power steering (mentioned in prior blog posts). Still, the overall lightness of the vehicle meant I could, even with a little bit of fore or aft movement, turn the wheel easily enough.

My curiosity got the better of me when I started fiddling with the transfer case lever. I recall noticing that the front hubs were in the "locked" position for some reason. I put them to unlocked, and also tried to make sure the transfer case was in 2WD. Of course, that meant popping into 4WD first. A bit of a mistake, because I had a heck of a time getting back to 2WD. There's a small light on the dash that indicates 4WD, and I had a heck of a time getting it to go away.

After much fiddling, the light shut off, and I could tell the shift lever was in 2WD. This meant I could reverse a bit to ensure the system was fully uncoupled. I recalled from my childhood that older '90s 4WD vehicles needed to be reversed a bit after coming out of 4WD. Not sure if that was actually needed, but I wanted to be safe!

Right, so I then proceeded to make a multi-point turn to get the camper into the shop. Phew!

Safe and sound in the shop

From there, I handed the mechanic the keys and ran off to work. I knew I'd return in a handful of hours. I couldn't possibly stay at work all day and miss an opportunity to start looking over our camper.