Sprinter Van Review at 1 year

hey folks this is Josh Stoney Ridge farmer welcome to the farm vlog today today's farm vlog is going to be a little bit different we're gonna be doing a quick review of our Mercedes Sprinter van as you can tell we are in the desert of Utah what a beautiful beautiful place that's important because we are nineteen hundred and twenty-one miles away from home and I'm going to tell you our experiences with the Sprinter van after one year of use all right let's grab some fun [Music] so for those of you who don't know me my name is Josh and we have a farm blog called Stoney Ridge farm where we go around and we visit farms we show you what it takes to grow a farm to start a farm to live off the land to raise gardens and just have a lot of fun so part of our channel is doing vehicle reviews and tractor reviews this is our 2016 Sprinter van it's a Mercedes Sprinter van it is I guess you'd consider the base model in other words we didn't pay the extra six thousand dollars that Mercedes wanted to have push buttons on the steering wheel to control volume and to be able to get a little more information in the dash now that being said a 2016 model van I'm really disappointed with a few different things and I'm really happy with a few different thing obviously we love the van obviously we use the van we don't camp in the van we don't sleep in the van we're not building it out for a camper the video is about reliability the little quirks that I don't like and the things that I think Mercedes should have improved on and should have done a better job at on this Sprinter van we love it we enjoy it but I'm gonna tell you my opinion okay so for all you folks that are in love with Mercedes oh it's so lovely I don't care I'm gonna tell you the reality behind owning a Sprinter van all right when we started this journey this van had 32,000 miles on it it has 37,000 miles on it now if you want to know about a vehicle go on a 5,000 mile road trip and you'll figure out the things that you don't like the things that you do like and the little quirks that get on your nerves so one year ago to the month we were right here with this van and it had 14,000 miles on it now this video is going to be a quick review after one year if you haven't seen the first video it will be linked up here let me start by saying I love the van I love how it travels I love how it drives on the road on the open road what a great machine for traveling I could not imagine being in a pickup truck or a Chevy Malibu or something like that you know something that you would rent I just could not imagine that riding in this thing for eight hours is easy on the bum which is very important so today we're driving from Moab Utah to Denver Colorado and it'll just go by like that this machine is very good for road trips now that being said a few quirks that I mentioned last year and a few more quirks and I'm gonna mention this year the windshield still makes a noise a lot of noise at high speed now I say high speed this thing is governed at 85 miles an hour the speed limit out here just for all you folks who might live in Europe and don't understand the speed limit out here in the West out in the high desert country and stuff is 80 miles per hour so we set the cruise at about 80 or 82 miles per hour on this machine and we start to hear noise from the windows okay we start to hear noise from around the edges of the windshield now it's better this year than it was last year last year after our trip we had the windshield replaced because one little rock ship went and busted the windshield that's pretty common out west here there are a lot of stones and a lot of winds so the wind blows stones and rocks up onto the road and it slings them onto your windshield and this thing is huge it's like looking out of a giant HD television screen so that's one of the downsides to this thing is the windshield is a rock grabbing fool now it's also a bug grabbing fool that's okay some of the things that we really do like about the van is I'm six foot five and I have a lot of headroom if we were to buy this van again for road trips and for using for the farm so we don't camp in this vehicle we could sleep in it we have an air mattress back there if we wanted to camp it'd be no problem if we wanted to outfit it as a camper we would not buy this model we would buy the longer model the longer wheelbase I think it's a hundred and seventy seven inch wheelbase and we would buy the taller model would we waste the money on the rear air conditioner no we would not if we're going to make this a camper we would not waste the money on the rear air conditioner unless we got the package that you can order from Mercedes that varies the idle speed so this van has a lot of emissions control system built into it and if you don't vary that speed of the engine then you can damage that emission system so if you do decide to build a camper van get the tall one get the long one and make sure you have the variable idle speed switch so that you don't tear up your emissions control system the van rides great the Vance it's great the van is easy to travel in the van has a lot of storage the van is very capable and the van gets good fuel economy we're getting somewhere on the average of 21 or a maximum of about 27 miles per gallon depending on your speed now if we're setting the cruise control to 80 we're getting 22 miles to the gallon out of this thing it's a four-cylinder diesel engine it's a little powerhouse and it really propels this van well unless you're going up a really tall mountain so we were in the mountains of Utah two days ago and we're cruising up the mountain I had the cruise control set at 80 and I just watched the speedometer just slowly dial down so at times that four-cylinder engine will not maintain extreme highway speeds I would say it's it's very rare that you'll be going 80 miles an hour down the highway but it will not maintain those speeds if you're at high altitude and if you're climbing a steep mountain you're gonna have to slow it down to about 65 it's a truck it's a van and it doesn't have all the power in the world now the towing capacity on this van is about 5,000 pounds and that's based upon the chassis I think it would pull more weight but I don't think you'd want to pull any more weight simply because of the transmission now it has an automatic transmission and what I was told by Mercedes is get that transmission serviced at Mercedes and the transmission does not have the same warranty as the rest of the drivetrain I think the Mercedes guide now don't hold me to this some of you guys that work for Mercedes may know this but I think the Mercedes guy told me the transmission is only warranty to 36,000 miles where the rest of the van is warranteed to a hundred thousand miles we clearly haven't reached a hundred thousand mile mark and we haven't had any troubles whatsoever now let's get into a few of the negative nuances that I don't like about the van I don't like the digital display in the van I don't like it the digital display meaning where the speedometer and stuff is it doesn't give you enough information a little display in the dash is highly inadequate for a vehicle that has an MSRP of over 45,000 now as for quirkiness in a high wind situation when you're driving in high wind you clearly know that this van is a high profile vehicle that's fine that's just fine don't drive it off-road period point-blank if you get a two-wheel drive model do not drive it offroad we've had several incidents on our farm where snow was a factor where gravel was a factor where blood was a factor where grass is a factor this vehicle will get stuck on a wet banana peel so if you're gonna be doing any off-road stuff if you're gonna be driving up and down gravel roads a whole lot or if you're gonna be driving in the snow I highly recommend you get the four-wheel drive model because in the snow this vehicle is absolutely useless now let's talk about creature comforts in the inside this is a 12 passenger van you can buy the crew van which has two front seats and one three-person back seat that's what I would buy if it were me to buy again because we're not hauling people for church if you're thinking about buying one of these for hauling people or Church awesome awesome vehicle again be aware you can't drive it in the snow so much or you need to have a lot more weight in the back of it in order to keep from getting stuck another little nuance that I don't like about the van is the fuel light so the light comes on warning you for low fuel when you have five gallons of fuel left in your tank so if you're driving long distances across the country you'll find that every three-and-a-half hours or so you're stopping for fuel and your tank is not empty I don't know if it's a safety feature that's built in by Mercedes to keep you from running out of fuel it's a big pain in the butt to run out of fuel on the diesel engine however I think it's a little bit redundant to have the fuel light come on so basically it stays full it works its way down to about half a tank and then it goes you right to the fuel light coming on it'll only stay at a quarter of a tank for ten minutes before it goes down to no fuel it's quite disturbing and it's worries you so basically you end up stopping for fuel probably twice as much as you would normally have to stop for fuel in other words today we should have enough fuel to make it to Denver Colorado for Moab Utah but we'll have to stop because the fuel light will come on somewhere in between when we have plenty of fuel to make it to our destination now I spoke about the rear air conditioner well it was my assumption that the rear air conditioner it has a dial for cold too hot it was my assumption that the rear air would turn hot if you turn it to hot so it would serve as a heater in the winter and an air-conditioner in the summer not the case okay so if you're hauling people around you're gonna have to rely on the heat from the front of the van to heat the rear of the van because the rear air is not rear heat it's only rear air that's something I do not like that's something I think could be totally improved upon now let me take you around the van and show you a few things that I need to point out to you that I don't like okay so beyond the shadow of the doubt this is ridiculous this is where the spray comes out for your windshield washer fluid this just flops around all over everywhere it's it's not secure it's a very poor design and if anybody wants to argue that I'll argue it with you all day long that is horrible now it drifts it'll drift all the way down here so if you look this one sprays in the middle of the window and this one has slid all the way down here now if I slide it up well there's just not enough slack right there so basically when I spray my washer fluid it sprays right there and that's it so the rest of the window doesn't get washed this is highly inadequate cheap and I don't understand why Mercedes would even put something like that on their van excuse the mess but we're driving this van across the country if you're not a tall person where are you going to grab on this van to get in I'm six foot five and right here is where my nipple line is okay so right there is where a normal person would be reaching to grab a handle to pull themselves in well the only handle is up here I'm six foot five and I'm having to reach really high to get there so if you're an elderly person it's very difficult to get in and out of this van if you're an elderly person or if you're a shorter person it's very hard to get in and out of this van all right let's go back over here to this side of the van and talk about the sliding rear door this is the sliding rear door that thing rolls all the way back just like this it's a mess in here okay it locks into place the guy that's sitting in this seat right here cannot reach the handle to release the door so here's the handle to release the door it locks into place a guy cannot reach from this seat to here so how do you shut the rear door well the driver has to shut the rear door that's a pain in the butt alright folks I hope you're really appreciating this honest non biased non I'm gonna make a Kippur Adam a van dude kind of review here this is a review that the average consumer is going to use this van for and these are a few nuances that get on my nerves these are a few things that I don't like will I buy another Sprinter van absolutely do I love my van absolutely are there things that could be different that would make this van better absolutely now if you're gonna buy your own Sprinter van I recommend you go find yourself a used one the MSRP on this one was $45,000 plus I think we paid $30,000 with 10,000 miles on it you just can't beat that still at this price point it's a very expensive van it has lots of head room lots of room inside for storage lots of room to haul stuff around it's a good little workhorse it will tow 5,000 pounds it will get stuck on a wet banana peel and that's it that's just a simple fact of it if you pull it into a place that's not flat and it's wet grass you will be stuck you will be spinning tires we spun tires turning around on this flat spot right here where we're parked we've taken it to the lake and parked on a gravel road and tried to back out and then stuck just on a hill just like that so be aware if you're gonna be doing any off-roading with this thing if you're gonna take it off-road in the gravel stuff like that or camp in it you want to try and get the full wheel drive model next time we'll buy the four-wheel drive we'll buy the high-top and we'll buy the long way so that's it that's the rub these are the things that I don't like it don't like the windshield washer fluid sprayer I don't like where the cupholders are located up on the dash now the Ford cupholders are in the same spot so if you've got warm coffee put it up on the dash if you got a cold soda you're gonna have to find another place so if you're looking for a traveling vehicle if you're looking for a little workhorse for the job site if you're looking for something that's going to be reliable check out the Mercedes Sprinter van we like ours but we don't like some of the little nuances thanks a lot guys and we'll see you next time on the Stoney Ridge farm Channel be sure and click that link down there subscribe the channel pound that thumbs up and we'll see you hopefully next time with our new Sprinter van all right during break [Music] here in sweet and some ways those Denise Tony Reed Oh