Last2ConvertNV

I just installed my diesel heater and I appreciate the input that others have provided in this thread. I'll provide some aspects of my install for anyone deciding to do the same. Sorry for the long write up, but it may be of use to someone. 1) German versus Chinese manufactured. Everyone wants to save money and this seems like a no-brainer decision. However, after giving it some thought I did not want to go the cheap route on something as important and vulnerable as the cabin heater. I did not see any heater reviews on the internet that saw the Chinese model as superior to the German brand in any way. I went with the Espar AS3 D2L. Tip: You might save some money as I did by buying the Espar heater from a Canadian eBay vendor. 2) Gasoline versus Diesel. I really wanted to tap into the gasoline tank to feed my heater. I wouldn't have to worry about running out of fuel with the 28 gallon tank. However, it appears that the Espar gasoline heater does not work well above 5000 feet. That's a deal killer. With most of the national parks that I'm going to visit being above that altitude, it would be a big letdown to not have heat when you need it most at altitude. Who needs a heater when camping at sea level on the beaches of Mexico? 3) Keeping the heater exhaust away from windows and doors. Most YouTuber state this precaution in their videos but rarely show where they place the exhaust exit. The fact is that most people mount the heater under the front passenger seat. The espar kit contains only 3+ feet of exhaust hose (and the muffler). If you extend the hose any any direction from the passenger seat position, you are going to place the exhaust under a window or the sliding door or in the center of the van which is deemed unacceptable. This is simply the geometry. I bought an additional extension of the pipe and exited in back of the slider door and just in front of the rear wheel. This left me right at the maximum length of 6.5 feet recommended by Espar. More on this later. 4) Tank location. I really wanted to place the diesel tank in the engine compartment, but after a few hours contemplating possible locations there, I decided it wasn't an easy thing to do. And I was concerned about engine heat affecting the fuel lines and tank. I did not want to mount the diesel tank inside. One spill and you have the attractive aroma of dinosaur juice forever in your van. I decided to mount a rotopax tank on my T-rex ladder at the rear of the van (as Andy has done on his van). 5) Air Ducting or Outlet Error. After installing the heater, I could not run the heater for more than 30 minutes without getting this error. Digging into the "workshop" portion of the menu, the error code is P000115 - over heating. Suggestions to correct this on-line were to reduce the length of the intake and/or exhaust hose. I removed 3 feet of the exhaust hose and the muffler and dangled both hoses to the ground without any 90 degree bends. Still would not run beyond 30 minutes. Granted, I'm running this in May when my ambient temperatures outside are at 65-70 degrees, not like 30 degrees when I'm camping in the Rockies. But I was told that this should not matter with the P000115 overheating error. OK, so I'm a bit frustrated at this point and I reached out to Esperspacher (Espar) 800 customer support. They are terrific and this is one big reason to choose Espar over the cheap internet heaters. There is support and replacement parts when you need it! Alex from their support line informed me that it was probably a problem with the angle of the fuel pump causing to much fuel to reach the heater. He suggested going way beyond the recommended 30 degree angle and that I could go vertical if needed. I changed the angle to over 45 degrees and that extended the run time to over an hour but would eventually shut down with the same P000115 error. My next step was to remove the rotopax gas tank from the rear ladder and place it on the ground. This seems to have solved my problem and the heater has stayed on for hours without error. Attaching the fuel tank 2 1/2 feet above the heater location I believe is causing to much line pressure to the burner. Time will tell and I'll update this post if I have any further problems. 6) Smooth conduit pipe versus the supplied ribbed flex exhaust pipe. After I installed the ribbed flex pipe (6.5 feet total), I started having the overheating problems as mentioned above. I decided to go with 1" rigid smooth conduit (EMT) pipe instead. I got this idea from another van-lifer who stated the fact that the ribbed nature of the Espar supplied pipe causes a lot of friction in the exhaust line. After replacing the Espar ribbed pipe, I just like the look and durability of the electrical conduit pipe much better and I know the flow of exhaust gas is much smoother. Pipe and fittings can be purchased at Lowes and Home Depot. JB high-temp epoxy works great at making a tight strong seal. The conduit pipe does not fit the muffler or the ports right off the heater, but you can use small sections of the ribbed pipe and a couple of strands of aluminum reflective tape to make the transition to the conduit pipe coupler. 7) Heater Mount. The NV van floor has a ribbed nature around the passenger mount location. I strongly recommend mounting the heater first to a metal mounting plate and then installing the plate to the van floor. This way you can install the intake/exhaust hoses and the fuel line right to the heater when it's on your work bench rather than on your back underneath the van - fighting gravity. Cut out the 3" x 4" hole in your van floor and drop the hoses down beneath the van. Put a few screws through the plate and van floor and you are ready for the next step of running the hoses underneath the van. I recommend high-temp gasket maker. You might have to chip out some of the hard white insulation that Nissan as sprayed on the interior floor to get the plate to mount flush. 8. Espar funky electrical connectors. Eberspacher requires you to assemble ("pin") metal prongs to plastic connectors to make the necessary electrical connections to the controller and fuel pump. I chose to use solder butt connectors and heat gun to make these connections instead. I guess it's a German thing. 9) There is a fan option on the Espar heater. On this setting the burner does not fire. Air is recirculated through the van with no outside air being exchanged - the burner intake is not used unfortunately. No better air to put into the van than the cooler air that resides underneath. darn. 10) Recommended sources. https://www.youtube.com/@BoChuonOUTDOORSVANBUILD - The wiring harness is not easy to sort through. Bo does an excellent job of explaining what portions of the harness are not used and where each segment goes. He also explains the use of a mounting plate.

Andy, I'm just at the end of my van conversion. I bought my 2018 standard roof NV2500 with only 13K miles last November for $30,500. It had some conversion done to it - most of which I have removed due to bad design or things no longer working. In 6 months, I have added over $20,000 in my van conversion. It's also been a lot of work and a lot of "Mcgyvering". I look through your list of equipment that you have added to your van and I know what you have put into this van both in time and equipment. It's a bargain at $49K and if I could turn back time, I'd probably would buy your van with all of the additional equipment. Any one interested in an NV van should consider the total cost. Just start with a low mileage cargo van and then start pricing the add-on's you have put into this van. It adds up quick. I understand the need to remove the dog seat for the original passenger seat. It just makes the van more appealing to a broader market. But I have to say as an owner of a German shepherd, I like that feature. I put in a swivel seat before I saw your dog seat otherwise I would have done the same thing and just used the dog seat as a "reverse" seat to watch TV mounted in the interior. I would swap in the original passenger seat when doing trips with the wife. You must have been an engineer in your career. Your van shows it. Best of luck with your sale.

I just insulated my rear doors last month. My Cargo van NV2500 panels were pretty easy to remove. There are the plastic round clips where you can take a screwdriver and pry the center out. Once the center is pulled out you can take the entire clip out. The handle that opens the door can be removed by prying away from the door surface - just don't go gorilla on it. The larger handle that is used as a door pull has 2 plastic covers on the bottom that can be pulled away exposing what I believe was 2 Phillips head bolts. sorry for the delayed response.

"DC Boost Buck Converter 9V-36V to 12V 5A 60W Stabilizer Waterproof Car Auto Step Up/Down LED Display Regulator" - Free to contributing members of this forum (while quantities last). WanderlustAV. water is getting into your interior step-up through these open holes and is causing rust. You need to close them off.

Some input about adding a MaxAir vent fan to a van with a lithium battery. Lithium batteries put out a higher 14 volts and this can fry the MaxAir speed control circuit board. This was my recent experience in converting my van this year. The fan worked for a while and then it would ONLY run on the highest speed. This is documented on YouTube and the fix is to add a voltage converter that keeps the voltage around 12 volts. A Chinese company called Drok makes this converter and I've installed in right within the fan housing.I I have a few extra of these converters (retail about $15). Send me an email and I'll mail one out to you.

Hi Radin2son, Weather is so unpredictable this time of year. My wife and I drove two weeks ago from our place in S. Arizona to Park City, UT to pick up a horse (1600 mile round trip). We were concerned that it might be a bit chilly for the horse in an open trailer. It turned out to be awesome weather and the concern turned to being too hot for the horse going from Las Vegas to Phoenix in 90 degree heat. We made a trip through Moab on the way up. No reservations were necessary for Arches, but it was crowded and was not the same tranquil Moab that we remember from 30 years ago. I saw a good t-shirt that said "Moab sucks, tell all your friends." Key is to stay off the pavement and explore the back-country. I'm glad you guys have not sold your van yet. You guys are tough using your pop-up tent with no heater in snowy weather. I'm a woosie and I have a eberspacher diesel heater to install soon. I enjoy your pictures and trip logs as well as the phone conversations we have had.

I replaced my existing running boards with TXRAX's version. The original running boards are available for the incredible price of $free to any contributing member of this forum. I'm not going to ship these, but I am in the Tucson area where we can meetup.

The owner Juan is the real deal. I've recently purchased his running boards, roof rack and ladder. Good quality. Satisfied customer. Not sure if he sells equipment for other platforms, but can you imagine starting a company that makes Nissan NV after-market parts only to have Nissan stop producing the vans in 2021. bummer.

I've been thinking of ways to use the fully closed passenger seat to work as a platform for my large german shepherd in solo trips. He loves to surf up in the "cockpit". I was intrigued by your dog bed replacement of the passenger seat, but disheartened by your comment not to bring him/her along. Is that the common consensus of the van community that it's better to leave your dog at home?

This post is a bit dated, but I'll include some comments that may be of help to others. There is a good youtube video on how to install the DiscountVanTruck swivel seat. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKXrZeXF-yE Here is my experience in installing the seat. Thanks also to Bilco's post which contains excellent information, some of which I've repeated below. 1) You will have to free up the air bag wires from the bottom of the seat. They are held on by a metal tie contraption that is not easy to release. I ended up carefully clipping the metal tie with a wire cutter. 2) The bottom of the plastic trim that you removed in the video will have to be trimmed by 1/4" - 1/2" or it will catch on the top bolts when you swivel the chair. I did this with a grinder with a tile saw blade. Ascetically looks good. 3) The swivel arm will catch on one of the factory fixed bolts on the chair base about 1/3 into the turn. You can get by it by depressing the swivel arm again, but that is difficult to do when you are swiveling the chair which takes some effort. I got around this by cutting the bolt off of the base with a mini saws-all. This would be easy to do with a grinder at the very first stage when you remove the chair off of the base. I figure it's fine to have 7 of the original 8 bolts holding down the chair. glides smoothly through the 180 degree turn (again with a bit of effort). The offending bolt is the 2nd bolt from the dashboard on the console side of the chair. Perhaps Bilco's suggestion to add washers eliminates the need to cut one of the factory bolts. I had no problem using the sliding mechanism once the swivel base was installed. 4) Reinserting the bolts to the chair and swivel base is not an easy process as illustrated in the video - especially on the console side. I had to get the wife involved to provide a 2nd set of hands. I wish I would have taken Bilco's advice and removed the entire chair from the van floor and did this operation in the garage on a table where I could move the chair around in various positions to get the nuts in place. The chair when swiveled and fully reclined leaves you wanting to recline a little more. I found by swiveling the chair to a position where you are skewed toward the middle of the van, it will clear the dashboard bump out and will allow the chair to recline further. 5) We have a small fridge (costway?) that we put in between the seats. I'm glad that it stills fits between the seats with the chairs facing forward. It NO LONGER fits when the seat is swiveled. So we'll have to place the fridge elsewhere once we get to the campsite. Overall, I really like this swivel base.

It's called by many names. but it is a plastic guard that attaches to the front of the hood and prevents scratches from flying debris. More importantly, I think it looks cool with a bull bar.

Any one know where I can purchase one of these "mustache" hood protectors? Nissan no longer carries the part. I'd be ok with a used one.

Hi Everyone. I live in Southern Arizona and came across a "unicorn" 2018 NV2500 for sale in Sacramento with only 13K miles. In prestige condition, it had already been converted with some issues. Was on the car dealer lot for over a year, so the Renogy AGM batteries were toast. I'm redoing all of the cabinetry/bed and starting fresh. Some additions so far are 1. TXRAX roof rack, ladder, running boards. 2. Renogy solar panels added to the rack. 300 AMP Lithium battery 3. Pair of pressurized water tanks added to the rack. 4. DiscountVanTruck swivel seat 5. Bull Bar added to the front. 6. Kilmat sound deadening on the floor and doors 7. New (smaller) roof vent. 8. Faux windows added to van sides using black acrylic plastic. Makes it look more like the passenger version than the cargo version. 9. WeldTec 2" lift kit. New larger Toyo 285/70/17 tires. I'm currently building the "garage" bed platform. It's truly an engineering struggle to keep the weight down and still provide a sturdy platform for sleeping and drawer slides below. I love this van. I'm currently averaging 17 MPG. Let's see if this holds true when I'm done with the conversion. I hope there are others that are starting their NV conversion. It's late in the game and it seems that most NV vans that are for sale are cargo vans that have over 100K miles. I've acquired so much information already from the posts in this forum. thanks to all that have taken the time to document their van conversion.