Check it out. Its got a cool Flash header that does some subtle alpha effects based upon mouse movement. It's a Wordpress backend, and uses some interesting wordpress plugins including Kimili Flash embed, GigPress, the XSPF music player, Flickr Manager, FeedWordPress (in conjunction with www.makedatamakesense.com), and MailChimp's Wordpress plugin.

UPDATE: The Flash Header proved to be very cumbersome, and was abandoned. A great photo by our friend cyril was used as the basis of a new design. Regardless, check out the site, it looks good.

        

So, we stopped yesterday after james complained that the van was surging, loosing power suddenly, and just not behaving right. I found a Dodge dealership in Toledo Ohio that apparently does has tons of sprinter experience and parts.

Two hours of diagnostics later, I was told we needed a new fuel pressure sensor, a $400+ part, that would need to be ordered. Not an option, had to be in Cleveland for the show last night. So, we hit the road, and tried to just deal with the problem, the sprinter slipping in to "Limp mode" as mercedes calls it, until we eventually lost power on the highway at full speed, a little scary. We eventually made it to the venue, and after we played I inspected the fuel pressure sensor as seen above. To my surprise the wiring harness was damaged. Really?!?! why didn't the techs at the dealership catch this. Two of the wires shorting out. I used a bit of electrical tape to insulate the wires, pulled out my OBD2 pocket scan tool, cleared the codes, restarted the van, drove it 10miles on the highway at full speed, with no problems, rescanned, No Codes! Any competent tech would have caught this immediately. In the service manual it explicitly states after scanning the code P2306 Sensor Supply 2 Voltage Low that the first thing to do, is to turn the car off, clear the code, and then rescan. The second step is to visually inspect the wiring on the boost pressure sensor, and the fuel pressure sensor. Either the tech didn't read the manual, or didn't follow the directions.

        

So the idea is to cut this blank out, you can see that I've already got starting slots cut in the 4 sides. I used my angle grinder with a cut off wheel to make these cuts. You want to cut just on the outside of where the sheet metal transitions from being flat to bubbling out where the window should be. This is where the window is designed to fit, and this is the smallest cutout you can make while still leaving a flat edge for the window to grab on to.

Below is the window. It is split at the bottom with a small vent opening. You can see my greasy paw marks all over it, nothing windex won't fix.

Okay, so now we cut a big gapping hole in the side of a perfectly good van. (Thanks for the reciprocating saw Danny!) To my surprise the 18v cordless black and decker firestorm reciprocating saw, while not the finest piece of machinery, does cut through sheet metal like butter with a good blade on it.

One side left to cut.

Cut out done. All i did then was grind down the edges to get rid of any burs, and clean any dust and dirt from the edge. Then lay down some weather stripping along the inside edge (Note: the side window required weather stripping inside and out, this one has a rubber gasket on the edge of the window, so only weatherstripping inside was required.)

Window in. There aren't any pictures of the window going in, because I was more worried about the window not breaking or falling than I was concerned about taking pictures. But you set the window in from the outside, check that all the edges have a good place to seal, then there is a flange on the inside the screws in to the frame holding the window securely in place.

Voila!

        

Oh my goodness gracious, it's been too long. I'm a slacker, my camera died, and I missed some exciting installs.

I don't have photos of the install, but below are some pictures of the window that was installed in the sliding door. It was surprisingly easy to install. Simply cut out the factory stamped panel with a sawz-all, line the inside and outside edge of your hole with weather stripping. Drop the window in from the outside, and secure it from the inside with the supplied flange, that will sandwich the edge of your cutout between the window and the flange. This was my first time installing a window. They were ordered from C.R. Laurence Company, the only supplier I could find for 2004 Sprinter windows. There is a second window going behind the driver as well, but this one has damaged TWICE in shipping, both times UPS delivered a box full of bits of safety glass, the box damaged in the same spot. (Update, C.R. Laurence finally delivered an intact window today, but it had clearly already been installed, uninstalled and returned. small marks on the inside of the window and flange as well as pre-worn sheet metal screw holes, they are goign to get a piece of my mind on monday morning, completely unacceptable, but I'm not risking a third shattered window, just happy to have one that isn't broken.) See below.

I put in a cargo wall to protect the band from betting impaled with guitar headstocks in the event of a high speed crash or an abrupt stop. This my first experience with expanded metal sheet, it's 1/8" thick, and is super sturdy, and much lighter than a solid steel wall. See Below.

The loft got a plywood platform to support a mattress, and also you can see that I finished the framing for the hinged bench seats, there will be lots of storage below them. The hinges are secured to the plywood bench seat with bolts, and to the steel bench frame with large sheet metal screws.

Hinges!

I needed to think more before proceeding, so I moved on to the cargo areas which I had a firm grasp on how to finish. Step 1 was to insulate it. The custom cut panels are similar to the closed cell bubble wrap you would use in packaging, often used as sun shields in car windshields. So the outside is shiny, and the inside is white. They came from sprinteraccessories.com. They definitely were easy to install, using double stick tape (included in the kit) and came with a self explanatory map of where each panel needed to go, but they took FOREVER to process my order and deliver, beware. The insulated cargo area, is shown below. Then I cut the original plastic side walls of the van to fit the new cargo area.

Okay! So we settled on a rooftop AC/Heat Unit from Carrier, It is a low profile design, only adding 7" to the clearance of the van. Which is good, because it is tall enough as is, and I didn't want to go under a bridge and end up with a shattered mangled ac unit. I decided that the easiest thing to do would be to frame out a hole for the unit out of angle iron, so that the sheet metal in the roof isn't too floppy. The manufacturer specs out a 14"x14" hole in the roof, so I fabricated a frame to that spec and then welded it to the roof. Shown below is the frame in place, and paint sanded away from where I am going to secure it. An angle grinder with a sanding disc is just fine for this.

Next it was time to insulate the rest of the van. I had extra hand available (my band mates), so this went pretty quick. I was dreading doign this alone.

Shown below is the Ac framing, welded and insulated.

I got up the nerve to install the AC unit. After testing it indoors to make sure I wasn't installing a broken unit, I cut a hole in the roof!

Makes me wish a moon roof was in the budget.

AC unit hoisted on the roof. It was fairly easy to slide up the front of the sloped van front.

AC Unit in place

Vent from top unit installed.

Next, the inside unit gets bolted to the outside unit, and the vent is sealed to the inside unit. the Ac is secured to the roof just by these 4 bolts that are sandwiching the ceiling of the van. Its rather secure, and tightening the bolts also compressed the thick rubber foam gasket on the roof around the hole, creating a water tight seal.

Next up is a detailed installation of the driver side window which just arrived un-shattered!!

        

You can see that there is a cargo divder, and no insulation to protect from the elements. The divider has been removed, I've done more work than I have pictures of, so there is a small gap in the documentation.

So here is the basic idea (I love google sketchup, but I really wish it would run on my Linux Ubuntu box). Shown from the behind the driver/passenger seats back. There will be two benches in an "L" shape, a small kitchenette, overhead storage bins, and in the rear, two bunks, with a cargo area below. Windows will be added, to the sliding door, and opposite behind the driver. The interior is getting insulated, and then a rooftop AC unit is going in as well. Electrical systems are going to be 2 AGM batterries, a 2000watt inverter/charger, and the kitchen stove will run off of small 1lbs propane tanks. Some of the design has already changed, but it's all in my head.

        

In an effort to replace the macbook on stage I tried to find something to run keyboard samples that was affordable, sounded good, and was reliable.

I found an Akai S5000 on ebay for about $300, a piece of gear that would have cost an arm and a leg in 1997 is now obsolete, but it has a a USB port (the older S series like the s3000, seen in some of the pics is SCSI only), hot output, decent D/A, and like it's MPC brothers has been on countless platinum records. So is it good enough for the stage?... hells yea. Okay, one problem though. How do you make it totally bombproof. For me the weakest link was the internal SCSI hard drive (which my unit did not have, but is a must have unless you want to lug around an external SCSI device like a hard drive, cd-rom drive, zip drive, jazz drive (oh yea they made those...).

Solution:

1) Internal Flash Drive... Enter the Transcend 2GB IDE drive, I think I found mine through dealmac.com for $70. So this eliminates any moving parts.

2) IDE Laptop 44-pin to 40-pin Desktop connector.

3) Acard AEC-7720U 40-pin IDE-> 50-pin SCSI adapter. I found through some of the Akai forums online that this piece is a cheap substitute (I think mine was under $50) for the $200 Akai adapter.

4) Akai Power Cable, connects power from the samplers power supply to the new drive.

Below: Open Sampler

Below: Modified 40->44-pin IDE adapter, shown with power connector attached. I had some trouble getting the small 2-pin clip to both stay on the adapter, and clear the circuit board on the Acard scsi adapter, so I soldered the connector directly to the adapter (see the yellow heatshrink on the top left item).

Below: The whole assembly.

Below: Temporarily hooked up, testing before securing drive.

Below: Barely visable, but after powering up the unit, it recognizes the IDE as an Internal SCSI drive, and is showing 1.96GB free. Success!

Below: That's how it's getting secured, velcro?!?! Yes, but keep in mind, this is 3M's Dual Lock. This is the stuff they give you with your EZ-Pass, the adhesive stands up to baking on a car windshield, so I'm pretty confident it will be okay with the heat of a hard drive. I always keep this stuff around, it's sooo useful.

Below: Connected, cables routed. The laptop drive does not have the same screw spacing. You could buy a proper mounting adapter, but I'm impatient on this one.

Below: Installed, taking up not nearly as much space as it should. Put the lid on it.

So, this project was completely about a month ago, and so far so good. No crashes in rehearsal. I'm happy with the ability to edit Wave files on my laptop and transfer them over USB to the device. Surprisingly enough the large screen and controls on the S5000 are pretty quick once you get the hang of it, and now I edit programs and samples directly on the unit.