I’ve been making headway on the new van. It started as you see above with a bare floor and some factory-installed side panels and head liner but those are about to be modified a little. The trinkets I made for the old van are waiting in the wings for their install into the new van. I’ve been re-painting and reshaping some of that stuff after two seasons of wear and tear or because I didn’t like the how things worked out the first time. The cage you seen in the photo was the first thing I cut out (it was riveted in place). It rattled like crazy and made the van seem like a prisoner bus.
The trinkets I fabbed for the old van are things like pockets in the doors that hold spray cans or bungee cord peg board panels that hold tools. I also made a drink holder for the console between the front seats but I’m scrapping that in favor of the factory piece this time around.
The biggest part of this set up is installing the partition that divides the front cabin from the bike stowage. The partition is cut to follow the complex shapes of the interior walls and ceiling and is held in place with aluminum angle sections that are riveted in place. The partition is made from two, 4×8′ sheets of 3/4″ plywood and when in place creates a reasonable sound and smell barrier between the front and rear of the van. It also makes it so that if you can’t get from front to rear of vice-versa so theft is less of a problem. I hope to never talk about that dilemma in future posts.
The floor was coated with Line-X last night. That made a noticeable difference in reducing the amount of noise and vibration coming from behind the drivers seat. I learned that on my way home from the place that did the spraying. It looks good and makes the van seem much newer and way more suited to what we are going to be using it for.
There’s some wiring that needs to be done for an overhead light in the front cabin and the partition has two cheapy speakers that need power. We will have some electronics that run on 120v (laptops to keep this blog updated as well as phones that need charging) so the converter needs power. The Sirius radio needs a home somewhere, too.
I’ll probably keep the factory side panels on the interior. The old van didn’t have those but they seem like a good way to keep stuff from falling down in the structures around the wheelwells. The rear of the van will also need my tie-down system and some shelving. We hope to put two bikes side by side, one facing forward the other rearward, to maximize the use of space. I devised a tie-down system that holds the wheels of the bikes with webbing and d-rings. The system uses less space than conventional tie-downs and it doesn’t compress the suspension.
This is a busy week at work so I may not get to many of the outfitting tasks too soon. Maybe over the weekend I can post more photos of the progress being made. Stay tuned.
