Sprinter Van: LHM
Not all #vanlife is fun and games and foot selfies through open back doors from the bed looking out to mountains in the distance. Living the van life requires, well, a van. All said and done, vans are big, mechanical beasts that sometimes have mechanical failures. Especially when they have 240,000 miles. Ten times around the earth.
I was driving it back to the west side so we could install the bench seat with the help of K's dad. An extra set of hands would be nice after Bryce bailed on us. No worries. I had warmed up to the job after ingesting a healthy dose of research. It boils down to drilling four holes in the sheet metal floor and bolting the mounting brackets from underneath. Bother all the fuel tank is in the way.
Cruising along with the cruise humming, all of a sudden the van lost power. It started to coast. I grabbed my phone and called K, ahead of me in our little Mazda micro-van with Squish. Pulling off to the side of the highway, I turned off the engine. Then restarted. The van seemed okay, albeit with a lot less oomph. It crawled along a mile or two before losing power again. We pulled off at an exit. Repeated that process a couple of times before it became clear we needed to dust off our AAA card.
I waited for the tow while K took Squish to her aunt's house, thankfully just a couple miles from us. It turns out, we'd learn a great deal about Sprinters going in what is known as LHM, or Limp Home Mode.
Thankfully, nearby was a Mercedes shop. I knew enough not to take it anywhere else. The codes on Sprinters often require a special reader which, likely, only a shop that specializes in Mercedes has on hand. Turns out that was a good call. The issue was with the transmission conductor plate. Any other code reader wouldn't have been able to access the transmission codes.
I mentioned thankfully there was a shop nearby. In fact, there is much to be thankful for despite a $2000 repair.
- Our van decided to drop its transmission two miles from K's aunt's house rather than on her sabbatical somewhere in the middle of the desert southwest
- Her cousin was home and was happy to watch S while I waited for the tow truck and she went to work to take care of emptying her desk for the last time (REI is closing its Kent campus in anticipation of opening the new one in Bellevue)
- Yes, there was a Mercedes shop that wasn't a dealer less than ten miles away
- We had made the decision last year to finally suck it up and pay for a AAA membership (with the 100-mile towing, which we didn't end up needing… this time)
- K had taken our other vehicle so we were able to still make it to her parents house that night (despite the offers from a couple of friends to help shuttle us, which should really be its own bullet point on this list of thankfulness)
- K's parents who put us up for now three nights while we wait out the repairs
Yes. All things considered, as is always the case and a friend put it:
