The Worst Part of Vanlife! [THE VAN BROKE]
Jul 29, 2021 14:00 · 2752 words · 13 minute read
hey guys we just got off the ferry in punta arenas and we’re heading over to see snow and curt to pick up our bushings that curt graciously brought back from the u. s for us emily wanted to give that cat some food and that lady actually picked the kitten up took it out of the road pretty funny double whammy strangers helping out this kitten sombrita wants to play with it though well we’re really lucky that curt brought those bushings back from the US for us so now we can go fix our van tomorrow and uh we’ll see you guys on emily’s birthday yeah yeah that’s the plan hope we do man yeah good to see you guys so we’re here at my uncle’s place this is the car parts it cost a thousand dollars to get here oh my gosh but my uncle’s place where we can stay there’s the van right there black label oh my gosh a ninja knowing the Spaniards i wouldn’t be surprised if this is actually olive oil in here oh yeah that might be oh man maybe it is oil they got some nice stuff so this is the car parts that we ship from the us down to costa rica here’s all the official paperwork so the part list the parts themselves were like 1k the shipping ended up being 1200 and then the guy who was picking it up here i had to pay 500 more in taxes for us to get this back to cheer graham found a box we got ball joints two lower ball joints i’m not really sure what this product is maybe it’s a part of the assembly yeah we got two of those oh this is huge this must be the ball joint here these are the shocks check this out the two big boxes are shocks we got some beefy shocks that are supposed to be really nice graham are you looking for boxes to get into are you looking to get in a box predictable what’s up it’s gonna cost 3000 to ship this cat we’re not doing that you’re coming with us hey we out here in san jose skate park number eight okay huh what up bro wow big day taking this spare parts curt brought off to the mechanic hoping they can find a couple more bushings fingers crossed got the bushings ready we got the security lug nut ready hope everything goes well hey oh man we gotta go pick up the van they weren’t able to get those other bushings when the lady emailed me what bushings we needed she sent a picture with circled bushings that said these are the only bushings you need if i would have carefully read what she said above that she said you need the stabilizer bar bushings and this other thing and then she sent a picture of the other thing and told me which of the other thing i messed up i think the bushings we got are more unique more important for safety and steering but now we have an extra challenge of finding these things and getting them to panama what we need to get some of these components look at this beast he’s calling an old man though we got the band back okay let’s see so put on a little gasp there would definitely be a noise there normally right touching the brakes a little bit turning and touching the brakes i think it sounds way better i don’t hear any noise oh thank goodness yeah and he said that one bushing that i didn’t get one for each side of the stabilizer part it’s gonna be okay it’s not urgent it’s no safety issue anyway even if it was urgent so that was really good news too and now to drive it i guess i can give myself a break on not getting the right ones yes don’t don’t worry about it don’t worry about it well we gotta get some food because we hungry well i guess anytime you do suspension stuff you have to come get an alignment after so here we are and i’m always impressed with this alignment process it’s a crazy machine guy just cranks it out quick but you got to put these things and then those flashing red lights are pinging off of those i guess to give you the exact measurements of where the alignment is and as for that phantom noise underneath man i don’t even know good chance to take a peek though the mystery of the dimmer switch clearly heavily used what’s going on well i undid these screws took this stuff off so i can take a peek see that wire just came undone hopefully i can just you know reconnect that wire somehow i’m gonna have to get that thing off so i’m gonna need some more tools so here’s all my electrical tools i keep in here and you know we got generic stuff but i also have a multimeter ah yeah this is the most common dimmer switch on amazon but i don’t recommend this because they’re very weak you can see here two cables pull out the back so that’s the problem right now but also for the front lights where there’s four of them it just never seemed to work well for four lights in the back that dimmer switch is still working great because it has less resistance over it i guess yeah these things are just cheap i would definitely recommend not being a hassle fortunately we have a backup switch we were carrying with us same diameter it fits through the hole perfect you know the dimmer didn’t really work right anyway so now we got on up the only tricky part is getting in there deep enough deciphering things i should have left myself more room i think we got it all deciphered i was talking with my dad just to double check but uh i can explain what what all this is basically so there’s one line that’s uninterrupted it goes straight up that goes to the fan uh the other line it was cut so we could put the switch in line and that goes up to the lights now the red just connects directly to the next thread so this switch was on the black on the negative even though one’s black one’s red that’s that was the switches colors so i’m just gonna tie those directly together with the new switch in between the challenge getting your hands in here you can see how huge my finger is compared to this gotta strip back those tiny wires to get some metal available then this one’s already stripped take off this black piece easily and then i will tie those together using one of these guys and then i’ll put some electrical tape around there for good measure okay now we got some conductor ready working with wires is small it’s super tricky to strip but you can also put a lighter to it and the housing will melt of course i remove the fuse now these are the smallest ones i have right now thanks to bob for giving me a bag back when we were working on the van so we’re gonna put this that one of the cables just tie it all in there electrical tape same over here before i do that final electrical tape we’ll test a little trick my dad taught me is if you put those two into two like that then you can twist tie this with one side this with the other and then twist tie it all together and have a real nice solid connection got both connected let’s reconnect that fuse where did i put it okay found him it’s gonna go in here hey lights on that must mean this switch is on my moment of truth hey i just have to add some electrical tape here shut it off take the fuse out finish up the work there we go got some electrical tape around those i’ll check it again and then we’ll put the switch through now just to get rid of this scuff mark we’re gonna toss this here got a nice round sticker i crossed the arctic circle i’d love to be reminded of that every time i turn on the lights now we just gotta put this guy on from their side ah so there it is finished up i’d like a classier one but you know what this is gonna be fine i think this is a switch you can get at a car store a lot of dc car things so now just gotta get this all buttoned up take this boy put in these screws and this cover all right done added swag and we got lights another van maintenance project down it might seem like things are falling apart in here but honestly i’ve known people who bought their rvs you know vans pre-built and a lot of stuff broke too and in that case they didn’t know how to fix it so at least you know we built it was a lot cheaper probably a fifth the price because of that and we got it how we wanted and i know how to fix things when they go wrong we carry a couple extra parts like that switch i better pick up another just in case but yeah any autozone kind of place has that on to the next one we got lights okay just a little bit of a lesson so we got these locking lug nuts so that no one can seal our tires and it’s it’s a special piece it’s basically a key and we accidentally left it at the place that put the bushings on the van well they accidentally forgot to give it to us yeah they forgot to give it to us but we’ve also forgot so i think it’s a good idea to have them for safety i mean it’s kind of nice that i mean i don’t think anyone would be able to steal our tires while we were sleeping in the back anyway make sure you have everything that you own before you leave anywhere so today we’re gonna get the pet paperwork done to cross the border soon it’s going to be about 100 per pet which is extremely expensive but she’ll give us a new health certificate and also take the paperwork to sanasa which is the government agency for costa rica they’re just gonna get looked at by the vet they’re not gonna get any shots or anything so they should be okay yeah buddy look at this place owned by kenneth tencio pro bmxer from costa rica here i haven’t seen anything this sick in a while it’s big though thankfully it’s undercover because it’s hot but emily’s gonna be awesome and brave the heat for a bit in the van there so i can get in this ride really been meaning to check out this place but it just hasn’t worked out every time we’ve been around the owner’s gonna come maybe in an hour it could be epic thanks for coming over to film a couple clips for me this place is on my overlander you can sleep here this is a bit of a humbling experience i haven’t ridden anything this big in so long that it’s like scary you really gotta be in peak shape it’s gonna be crazy to see the master here in a bit but might as well use this opportunity to try to relearn a trick here on this resi this ramp is called a a resi because this landing has padding underneath you can learn some tricks on this i’m going to try running there and tail whip air i’ll get that trick soon you know i remember when i learned that trick was uh the first time i grew my hair long trying to keep it on my face right now but and i had a gift certificate for my parents for a really fancy barber tried to trick me to cut my hair it was when i graduated college and there was a little skate park right there i think bothell washington near seattle and uh just a tiny quarter but i learned tail with bears on it and did it for years so i gotta relearn that one soon wow well starting to get a little tired when you get old sometimes you just start getting more into tech tricks instead of big tricks and it’s fun to do and not as dangerous to keep myself young i try to do a crank flip bar spin and a tail up every day so let’s see if we can get that done one down that’s the crank let’s get the bar spin that’s the bar spin now i gotta knock off the tail light and that will complete spinning every part of the bike probably just gonna do a cop out tail whip since not on my game modernizing the bike a bit here new bars this putting on the brakes tencio shop we got the bmx sponsored by red bull wow what did you get fresh bars stem wow the bars are clean a lot of other stuff very nice so we’re heading over to to danny’s uncle’s vacation home for some down time it’s super nice with a great view and it’s close to the skatepark danny really likes we love that rice and beans so much on the caribbean coast i’m gonna try to cook it here for me and emily we’ll put a link in the description for the recipe so what do you think of the rice and beans oh my gosh that is so nice oh my god look at this side dish babe thank you you’re welcome little vegan side dish for my vegan life so one really amazing thing that we’ve learned since we started in this little house is that graham loves seaweed look he’s standing on my he never does this for food never does this for food he’s obsessed with seaweed it’s nori for sushi and i looked it up but it’s okay for him to eat there’s vitamins in it that are good for him he loves it he loves it so much he’s been eating like little pieces for three days now and every time i get out the seaweed he runs over and jumps on me you love seaweed it’s probably the fish it smells the fish so what’s your plan now man back at the shop in jaco have another sesh it’s devon master of the bricks right here this guy my bike is killing it thanks to him get a couple clips that was sick kenneth tencio is super chill one of the best bmxer’s i’ve ever seen super nice even ask the people hey can you guys line up better so danny can have some room here nice so i guess they all live together the bmx senior is pretty sick because kenneth has a place it’s like a land with a bunch of little houses and all the bmxers live there in the different places so a couple of them mentioned that i should come by and check out the bowl there which i’ve seen a video of it looks insane too anyway i just took a couple clips of kenneth but he was doing over and over a backflip double tail whip on a hip so that’s a turn 90 degrees like on that softer landing definitely getting back to going bigger and enjoying that and a lot of tricks i want to relearn watching those dudes ride so just hell of a scene good music nice people crazy skate park has been amazing thank you tio alejandro and tio santi for letting us stay at your place you guys are the best by the way kenneth tencio is competing in the tokyo olympics this weekend check it out and good luck kenneth thanks so much for watching we really appreciate the massive amount support we’ve been getting if you like our video let us know in the comments like and subscribe see ya.