Sprinter antenna replacement and repair

Fixing a broken Sprinter antenna

The radio antenna on Sprinter vans is badly placed and flimsy. It’ll break if you drive under low branches, wash the van, or let snow build up over it. Luckily, if it snaps off at the base, there’s a fix.

I had read about people breaking their Sprinter antenna off. I thought it must take some effort, but then I did the same thing when I was washing the van. I just knocked it with a soft bristle brush and it snapped straight off.

The antenna/aerial is made of flexible wire, but the base is a rigid plastic. That plastic must be either really thin or really fragile, because it breaks very easily. My antenna, and others I’ve seen, seem to break off while still attached to the metal insert in the plastic base.

After 2 weeks of evaluating the available vans work van shelving and compiled all the options into a spreadsheet that rated each van based on the following:

• Vehicle Type: Ford vs Mercedes vs Other.

• Size: 144 wheelbase vs 170 wheelbase vs 170 Ext wheelbase.

• Year.

• KMs driven.

• Price.

• Location: distance from Toronto, where we were based.

• Condition: rust vs no rust.

• Extras: navigation cams, extra windows, cruise control, etc.

• Type of Seller: Dealer vs Private.

Finishing Touches:

The finishing touches we added in the last few weeks of our camper van build. These helped us take it to the next level and make it feel like home. These include:

Jars & Other Containers :

Most of the dry food and pantry items in our van are kept in our pull out pantry and storage cabinets and are organized using glass jars and bottles. As we aim to live a low waste lifestyle, we prefer to shop at bulk grocers like Bulk Barn. It allow us to bring our own containers and reduce our use of plastic bags. Unfortunately, this has been harder to do during the pandemic. 

However, storing dry goods in jars is still much better than keeping them in disorganized plastic/paper bags. I used a label maker to label all the jars. It makes it easy to keep things organized inside the van.

• Hooks  – surprisingly, we only have a couple of hooks in the van. A few for our big winter jackets in the front cab, a few for our kitchen and face towels. And, another big one inside our shower for our big towels. 

• Mirror – we have a small mirror at the entrance into the van. It’s not full size, but it’s enough.