The Journey Begins!
Once we bought the van we could hardly contain ourselves and wanted to start building it out right away. So, we grabbed a pry bar and screw driver and went to town stripping out the interior.
Out came the steel cabinets, carpeting, trim, and miscellaneous odds and ends that remained from Beatrix’s past life (oh right, somewhere around that time we named her Beatrix… it just felt right). After clearing everything out, all that remained was the rear heater/AC unit. At the time I didn’t know which it was; a heater/AC or just a heater, and while trying to find out I managed to spill coolant all over myself. Good clean fun.
At first I wasn’t really sure how to remove the rear AC because it was connected to the same compressor and condenser as the front AC unit, which complicated things a bit. After some internet sleuthing I ended up buying a block-off kit from this seller which solved all my problems. Once the thing was out and no extra coolant was spilled, we could finally see how much space we have!
Learning the Ropes
Beatrix came with a few….issues that needed to be addressed. The main one was a leaking timing chain cover. Now, we are anticipating plenty of mechanical issues while we are traveling, and because we will be on a tight budget we want to know the engine as well as possible to minimize how much of our budget goes to mechanics. So, like the cocky engineer I am I bought a shop manual and started tearing into the beast.
Everything was going pretty well- I drained the fluids, removed the radiator fan, water pump, belts, pulleys, dropped the oil pan, and finally got the timing cover off. Feeling pretty pleased with myself, I put the new cover on and started to tighten it all down until….Pop! One of the timing cover bolts broke off in the engine block. And then another. Then I double checked the torque spec, re-adjusted my wrench. Pop! Another bolt! WTF!!
It turns out my shop manual uses ft-lbs for certain torque specs and in-lbs for others, and it isn’t always clear which is which. My wrench was of course in ft-lbs. I nearly couldn’t get the broken bolts out, but after hours of frustration and moral support from Stephanie and our friend Reed, I made it happen. Moral of the story, ALWAYS CHECK YOUR UNITS!!!
This was all happening over the course of a couple weeks, mind you, as I only had a little bit of post-work daylight to get anything done. Meanwhile, Stephanie had already repaired some paint damage on the side of the van and was anxiously waiting for me to put the engine back together so we could move on. I’m sure she thought I was a complete idiot, but she hid it well.
Insulation, Floor, and Walls
Floor
Finally we could get to work on the interior, starting with the floor. We built up a wood frame to hold insulation and support the floor. We insulated with R-Max (polyisocyanurate) panels because we already had a ton of them lying around from past Burning Man projects. On top of that was a plastic moisture barrier and plywood sub-floor.
On top of the sub-floor we laid vinyl plank flooring. It comes with an adhesive backing so it only took about three hours to install and it looks fantastic! Unfortunately I was so excited about it that I jump ed straight into the door frame and split my head open. So far we have blood and sweat; still waiting on the tears.
Walls
One major consideration we have regarding our trip is safety and security, so we reinforced the rear side windows (which are now covered by the wall panels) and decided to build a partition wall behind the front seats. This will serve two purposes:
- It will protect us from flying objects in the event of a sudden stop or crash.
- It will prevent someone who breaks into the front of the van from accessing the back and vice versa. We were particularly concerned with isolating the cab from the living space when we have to ship Beatrix from Panama to Colombia around the Darien Gap.
We constructed a frame out of 2×1 lumber and secured it to the walls and the ceiling of the cab using whatever fasteners we could make work with the odd angles, screwed some plywood on there and voila, a partition wall. Eventually it will have a locking door but for now it will at least keep us from getting hit in the head by flying tools while we’re driving.
For the walls we used several types of insulation. Large rectangular areas were insulated with R-Max. Then we used r-30 fiberglass insulation for odd shaped cavities, and spray foam insulation for small gaps. Then we sealed it all up with a moisture barrier (yes I know this is controversial in the van world) and covered it in decorative wall paneling, using a paper template to cut the walls to fit.
And that’s it! We are nearly finished building the bed but I will save that for another post.
You can do it too!
I’ve had a lot of friends say things like “I want to do that but I’m not handy” or “I’ve never built anything before”. But guess what…we have never done this before either! There’s no handbook on this stuff. Each van is different and every builder has a different opinion. The biggest challenge has been sorting through conflicting opinions we find online and deciding which made sense to us.
The best advice I can give to anyone thinking of doing something like this is to just start! We’ve found that with every stage of this project we have to just get a general idea of what we’re going to do and then dive in, adjusting as we go. You don’t even need to have an extensive set of tools. So far we have only needed a drill, jigsaw, hammer, contractor’s square, and basic building materials.
Future build posts will focus on smaller pieces of the van so they can be more useful to other van builders. If you have any questions about what we’ve done so far let us know in the comments!
-James
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