Lockdown Part 2
Following on from our last post. April seems to have rolled by, albeit rather slowly. As the world attempts to pick up the pieces from the virus and with travel uncertainty still and issue, we are still in good spirits to finish the van. We are looking forward to having a week away in the van in the UK, in order to test things out before venturing further afield. There is a very nice scenic drive called the NC500 in Scotland, which could prove a good option for us. At this moment in time it’s very difficult to even guess when travel will return to normal, but you can rest assured that we’ll make the most of the van whatever happens.
May
Back to the lock saga and fast forwarding to May. In England, business are now being urged back to work and we are allowed outside for more than just one walk a day. Finally able to call someone out, we decided to go with the same company who had made the spare key for the van some time ago. After the Saturday afternoon arrival, the team gained access to the vehicle in just a few minutes which I found somewhat alarming. After checking it out they told us that the manual key likely did not work because of a common problem with the lock mechanism in Mercedes vans. Apparently inside the door there is what was described as a ‘little bar’ that is clipped on, apparently they are prone to falling off if the door is slammed a little too hard. Once it has fallen off the manual key will no longer work, this sounds like another cracking design failure by Mercedes to me!
The guys had a look and confirmed that this is what had happened in our case and advised us to either purchase the part or told us we could take the inner door panelling off and have a look to see if it had dropped down into the door cavity, if we were lucky enough to find it we’d be able to fit it back on. Funnily enough a few days prior when looking for something else I came across a video on YouTube showing you how to remove the panelling, and had watched it out of curiosity.
Before leaving the guys attempted to jump start both batteries, the van has one under the hood and another under the passenger foot-well. It turns out that the battery inside the van is responsible for the central locking, and things became tricky when the guys told us that the jump starter they had, was not powerful enough to charge that particular battery. Quite an inconvenience, but we were not too worried as we had the NOCO up our sleeve. As the guys left I rushed indoors to grab it along with a solar panel trickle charger that we had purchased to keep the van going, when we did not know how long lockdown would last.
Not quite that easy…
I scrambled to open the box and get the NOCO out, only then did I realise that it was not pre-charged as we expected! What a nightmare! We were now unable to lock the van as we’d have to call someone out again to let us back in, the solar trickle charge would likely take days to charge the battery up and it would be a gamble just to close up and leave the panel to do all the work. Rather disappointed and in a bit of a bind Ben headed in and put the NOCO on charge (charging time anywhere from 3- 24hrs!).
I stayed outside in the van feeling rather frustrated with the situation, especially as it was not cheap to have the van opened and whilst we now had access we had been left without a solution to lock and unlock the van again. After a while I decided to find and re-watch the video I mentioned, I felt removing the inner door panel in search of the missing piece, was really our only option. I felt hopeful about finding the missing ‘bar’ rattling around in the bottom of the door, we could hardly sit outside all night or leave the van unlocked on the side of the road. After an hour or so Ben popped back out to see me, bringing news that the NOCO was still not charged. I explained what I planned to do, and he was onbaord for giving it a go. Then the fun began…. We need our tools from the back, as the side and rear door would not open because of the security lock, which is wired into said battery. This meant that it was time for me to rather un-glamorously test the hatch!
After the relief of fitting through the hatch and getting down the other side in the dark without injury, I went on a hunt with my torch for the tools we needed. After emerging back out the other side, we got stuck in and quickly removed the screw caps and all six screws holding the door panel on. With it removed I quickly un-clipped the electrics for the window and the mechanism for the inner door handle. It was now time for me to reach down into the dusty door and feel around for the missing piece. The way it had been described to us was as some kind of metal bar, this turned out to be only a partial description of the part. In a greasy dusty crevice right at the bottom of the door I found the part! I was ecstatic! It was indeed a small metal bar, albeit flat, and mostly covered by the plastic ends.
With the part in hand we were hopeful of a quick end to the excursion. It, however, took some time to figure out how the bar actually attached back on. Not to make things easy, the handle mechanism is actually hidden away behind the metal of the van door and behind other un-associated parts. It’s dark and dusty and there’s was a surprising amount of moving parts. Eventually with Ben trying the handle from the other side whilst I shined the torch into the dark gap I could sort of see where the ‘bar’ attached. At each end of the bar was a plastic piece that had a round cap with a clip on each end. It was rather flimsy and you could see why it would fall off easily. It was a fiddly job even with my really small hands and after some trying I managed to get it secured back on.
Ben tested the lock a few times before we were happy with it and started the long slog of putting all the panelling back on. Finally we were done and ready to call it a day, we headed in happy.
Great work you two! Love the pics! Its always nice to be able to ‘see’ what you’ve been up to as well as hear about it. xxxxxx