Building an Adventure Van

[Hotspice]

You had me at van build

[Geek]

It has been a productive day. That said, I feel like less than 1% of the project is finished

So when I headed out to the van 7'ish this morning... I felt a bit overwhelmed with the mess....




I decided to start with the swivel seat for the driver. 4 bolts removed the seat...



revealing the wiring underneath. Hey! There are a couple of convenient ground wire locations

so I ran the subwoofer's ground wire through the hole and onto the terminal. The subwoofer is going to be behind the driver's seat so this is perfect.



two bolts removed the park brake (note the state of the dashboard & such at this point... )



..and I installed the driver's swivel. Pretty much the same as the passenger's except it spins the other way.



reconnect the seat wire... hmmm.. I suspect this is the "seatbelt detection circuit" - I need to figure out if I can just close this circuit and leave it disconnected. I'm a seatbelt wearer. Always have been. That said I don't need the damn seatbelt reminder donger donging at me if I'm moving the van around the campsite or across the driveway. I'll have to pursue this in the future



Testing it out:


Woot! The "living room" is going to be a lot more livable now



That took me until about 9am.

[Geek]

Next up I decided to see if I could finish the cockpit's sound damping.

Lifting the wiring loom I found an open hole. That's the pavement below (no restriction). That's gotta be good for snow & ice in the winter coming straight in onto my wiring loom

Apparently there are 4 open holes from the factory in the floor of the sprinter. I've found two so far (and filled/plugged both).





I added a bunch of Damplifier to the driver's footwell to augment the stuff MB put




I threw a big swatch of Damplifier on the bottom of the battery cover just to deaden any chance of vibration




Then I loud out the Luxury Liner Pro. I laid it out in such a way that there is a "door" of it over the battery lid so it'll be easy to get to the battery in the future



I then test fitted the mats.. .I was a bit worried that they wouldn't fit with the extra inch of insulation they now have under them..


..but they fit ok


So I started reassembling the instrument panel/dashboard. You basically have to build it from the bottom as as everything is nested and you start at the A-pillars at the top to reveal screws as you work downward..



If you look at the photos above of the flooring, you see it gets cleaner as the day goes on.
Tweetie spent 6 hours scrubbing the floor mats with rubbing alcohol and then with pinesol. I don't know what the hell was on them.. it was sticky (almost like post-it notes... sticky but didn't come off) and she wasn't happy until it was all gone. Turned out to be a helluva job but she came through with perseverance



We are going to lay carpet over the cockpit floor.. but in the winter we'll pull the carpet and run these floor mats for snowboarding. They are designed in such a way to route/hold water.



As I got up to the driver's "tray".. I decided to stealth wire the ScanGuage and the Ipod interface by taking advantage of the overlip to hide the ugly holes..
Here is the scan guage's wiring ran up inside the dashboard (the ODB connector is down by the driver's left foot)

And then here you can see the ipod coming in from the otherside.

and then here is the cool "overlip" that makes it all look good:


You can see the GPS antenna loose in the middle needing the same treatment when I reassembled the center..

Piece by piece it went back together.

I re-installed the tweaters in the front corners and the center channel.
I re-installed all the vents.
I re-installed the a-pillars and eventually...

VOILA! good as new s (better than new? )

[Geek]

That took me to mid afternoon.

I needed to go for a test drive.. I needed to know there was SOME sort of transformation taking place..

I threw a bunch of luxury liner pro mats down in the back and we went for a spin.



The difference is substantial. You could actually hear the wind noise from the ceiling over the road & engine noise (usually road/engine noise is extremely dominant).

This was very encouraging so I found my second wind and started into the back...
I fear sound proofing the back (floor, walls and ceiling) is going to be the bane of my existence for the next several weeks.

Basically here is what I'm doing:

Cheryl wiped down the entire interior of the van with paint thinner to degrease it.

I'm rolling Damplifier into the troughs between the floor ribs.. being sure to cut out the mounting bolts for the floor


Then when I have a section done, I lay a sheet of Luxury Liner Pro over it.


repeat.. continue.



It is very time consuming. You cut the Damplifier to the size needed (it doesn't take many cuts to dull the box knife) and then roll/press each stripe of damplifier down. The rollers pictured below are essential... you basically squish the heck out of the Damplifer with the rollers to adhere it and get the air out. You have to press hard. I've only done half of the back and I'm already sporting an impressive collection of blisters (and I have "garage hands" to begin with).
I've basically worn the wooden roller out already.. it is starting to come apart:


I kept going until I had the front half of the back floor completed with Damplifier and LLP. By the time I had gotten this far I was completely soaked in sweat. It is a good workout.



I then laid the front half of the stock floor on top to see how it was all going to fit. Looking pretty good

It'll look even better carpeted



...and that brings me to now (4pm'ish). It started thunder storming so I had to call it a day (way too hot in the van with the doors/windows closed and 100% humidity).



We have 4 days until our next camping trip. Unfortunately my work schedule is completely slammed for these next 4 days so I don't know that I'm going to get much more time to touch the van before we go so it looks like we'll be sleeping on an air mattress crammed between the wheel wells again.

That said, Cheryl is hard at work making the new & improved mosquito nettings for the windows... I'm excited to see what she comes up with.



...to be continued.

[scarysharkface]

Originally Posted by hotspice

you had me at van build

+1

[Geek]

Oops.. it appears I skipped the original stripping of the van... so insert this before the last couple of days

Stripping the Interior:

Pulled the floor and half the dash... holy heck the dash is quite the jigsaw puzzle.

before:


after:


the floor's construction:




The battery quick disconnect is pretty cool beside the gas pedal


The insulation around the cockpit flooring is impressive.. almost an inch thick


This is actually more organized than it looks :thinking:


I didn't know the stereo had a center channel...


The firewall has some significant insulation/sound barrier already installed :


Everything is so nested.. the hardest part is figuring out what has to come off to release what...



Somebody at Mercedes gets it...
The fact that 98% of the screws in the interior are all the same size makes me happy.
I have some vehicles that require a dozen different tools to change the oil; very annoying.

I took a dremel to this torx screwdriver


...and 30 seconds later I had a power drill capable of pulling the 2358008x10e23 interior screws I needed to undo...





before:


after:


before:


after:



I also temporarily installed the ScanGuage II... not sure where I want to permanently mount it yet...



I also learned to be very careful when you take the seatbelts apart :yell:



...took me forever to get it back together correctly. :

[vtwin]

Geek, maybe you can slap a 4 x 8 sheet of 3/4" plywood on top of the wheel wells, cut some 1" x 1" feet for support, throw your air mattress on top of that. It's basically what my wife and I did to an old US Army van and went to Canada in it.

[Geek]

that's exactly what I was wanting to do for this upcoming weekend.. I just ran outta time

Maybe I'll get lucky and a client will cancel an appointment sometime in the next 4 days and I can run to home depot and grab the materials

[tatterhood]

Originally Posted by hayduke

+1

[wagonpilot]

Originally Posted by Geek

that's exactly what I was wanting to do for this upcoming weekend.. I just ran outta time

Maybe I'll get lucky and a client will cancel an appointment sometime in the next 4 days and I can run to home depot and grab the materials

Six lengths of 2x10 cut to length to run between the lower sills where your windows would be (i have windows) is what I did. You lay a queen size mattress on that and have all the space of the floor unfettered for storage of all your stuff. The metal window sills are perfectly strong enough. It just bisects the space top to bottom... perfect.
Home depot will cut to length for you and you don't have to do anything.Plus, when you are done with it, it comes out in two minutes.

20 bux

[Dysco]

Worst build thread evar.

[ganshert]

Originally Posted by Dysco

Worst build thread evar.

+1

[I_FLY_LOW]

[Trust]

[a1fa]

moraaah!!!