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brianjwilson

Some sort of lost...
Buy a high roof transit or sprinter like the cool kids do. Ride your bikes right in. You'll miss the cool factor of the Ford 4x4, but not for long. ;)

There is a nice shift change in the attention too. GUYS used to drool all over my ford van and want to see it. But the GIRLS love the sprinter 4x4. Just saying.
 

sakurama

Adventurer
Buy a Transit... I'm not cool, what would I do with one of those? Drive it? I mean, how often are you working on it? Never probably. Have you seen my house? My garage? I am not a person who gets things that don't need work. I wish I was. But I'm not. This van is a project among many.

Plus, it's pretty awesome off road.

Yes, the KTM will go right under the door but once inside it hits the last edge of that box. Tomorrow I'm going to play hooky and ride the dirt bike so I've left out the back bulkhead and I'll have a better idea of how it works as the cover is several inches lower and father forward than the cut roof section. I was at Josh's today and saw his new high top and boy, is it nice to be able to just stand up inside. But I'm staying the course for now and looking to just fix this issue.

I'll report back tomorrow.

Gregor
 

kylemathews

New member
Cut away. I cut the roof all but the last 6" or so. No problem. Just make sure you fasten it back together well. It won't move when you take it apart. You couldn't pay this redneck
Enough to drive a sprinter van. I don't think my wife would ride in one!
 

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brianjwilson

Some sort of lost...
If you were just st Josh’s, you saw that we cut his roof pretty far back, right back to the frame around the rear doors if I remember right? No issues with his, I wouldn’t be concerned about trimming that back.

Have you looked at some of the handicapped ford vans that have lifts in the rear and taller rear doors? Im sure there is no easy way to adapt those doors to your roof, but if you really love projects....
 

FDM2012

Adventurer
While it is commonplace to have people honk or takes pics in a parking lot, it never gets old. It seems I find myself giving the
"show and tell" more and more lately. Most recently to a couple of very intrigued store employees at Duck Commander last month.
No sign of Si, though..... lol

Cool to see rigs getting driven and used!



"I kid you not. If that sort of thing didn't happen about once a week I'd be freaked out. He was perhaps the most enthusiastic person we've encountered and he stood by his car while we started up and when he heard the diesel he jumped in the air and whooped and hollered until we were out of sight."
 

sakurama

Adventurer
Like most of the projects in my life I think they'll be relatively simple and they end up turning out to be way more complex than I anticipate. This tends to have two results; one is that I tend to take on more ambitious projects than the average person might and two, is that I tend to take way longer to finish my projects - some are currently in the "taking forever" stage.

Like how hard can it be to make a new panel for the rear speakers? Simple right? Maybe a couple of hours.

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I used a jigsaw to cut the bulk of the roof sheet but it wasn't the right choice. It vibrated and wasn't able to get close enough to the edge. In the end I used the aviation snips. All of them.

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This cleared the whole area so I could make a new brace for the sides. As a side note the existing brace was doing pretty much nothing and nothing happened when I took it out.

Also, having seen the inside of a high roof van I hope we never roll over. Just saying.

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Since the roof has a slight arch in it I laid the 1-1/4" square tube (what was in the material rack and seemed strong enough) on the edge. I zeroed my digital angle block to compensate for whatever tilt the driveway had and measured the angle from edge to center. 2.8 degrees wasn't much but I went with it.

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I cut the center of the tube at 1.5 degrees and welded it up. I haven't been welding much so my first ones were my warm up and by the last weld I was getting back my groove.

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That is 1-1/4" angle that I used for the sides.

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And another view but painted.

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And then I got frustrated and quit taking photos because, seriously, how long and complicated could this be? It took me two days of making and remaking this to come up with that very simple looking panel. That doesn't even cover the sides. To be fair to myself I didn't want to just screw it in everywhere so I took the time to make a tongue and slot affair at the top and then drilled and tapped the metal bar so this whole affair is solidly held with only three screws. I'll take it back out to cover it and I'll shoot some photos then. I wanted to make sure that once the speakers were in it didn't rattle or vibrate or otherwise make any annoying noises and surprisingly (or not) it sounds much better than the panel that was in there before. It's certainly more solid and rigid and being much closer to the back of the top probably helps as well.

The next thing I wanted to address was an outside temperature gauge. I don't care what the temperature is inside because, well, I'm inside and can reach the thermostat. I prefer the old style slider of red to blue over the "pick a number" settings on the new stuff. But outside temp is something I missed from my F150. It was always really helpful when you were driving in cold weather - is that ice or water? Is the road frozen? These are really important questions when your driving almost 9000lbs of van down the road.

SIDE NOTE: I pulled off the last time I was coming back from dirt biking. The van with me and my sister and two dirt bikes came in at 8850lbs. Just sneaking over the 8500lb Oregon limit of no inspections or emissions. Not that I'm against that but generally my vehicles on are the ragged edge of legality.

Anyway, thermometers! I bought this one off Amazon: TmallTech DC 12V Digital Thermometer

Again, I didn't bother with photos because I thought it wasn't a big deal and for the most part it was simple. I just used a small cut off wheel (and file and sandpaper) to enlarge the existing hole to fit this new digital thermometer and then I extended the probe wire and ran it out by the door.

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I figured for placing the probe the trick was to keep it away from engine heat (not under hood or behind the grill) and out of the sun (obviously) and since the van is white hiding it behind the door near the hinge wouldn't catch heat sink as it might if the van was black and also was out of direct sun. I used gaffer tape as I wanted to be sure that the location was going to work. So far it's great and quite accurate. Well, compared to my keenly honed sense of, "Hmm, I think that does feel like 42degrees..."

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So next up is to finish the back speaker set up. Not sure if I want to make the sides part of the panel or if that will prevent me from being able to refit it. I'll need to experiment and then, when it's resolved, I'll come up with some sort of covering. The good news is that dirt bikes now roll in with no problems. Success!

So with the summer quickly approaching I want to knock some things out on the van. Next up on the punch list: New door seals, new rear seats with better seat belts, redoing the floor in the back and sound deadening the interior a bit more. The front doors were fixed when the stereo was installed and they're so quiet that I want to do the sides and back. MG sold me his prototype floor plate and Transit seats so I'm going to get that in.

Lots of stuff on the way. More updates soon.

Gregor
 

sakurama

Adventurer
There are no small van projects.

I'm beginning to learn that...

Although! Here's one that wasn't too bad.

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The door seals were getting a bit ratty. The doors still shut fine but they didn't seem "tight" although they weren't leaking or anything.

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There are inner and outer and they are left and right handed. The inside ones are dead simple and I don't believe they are sided. They come a bit long so pull up the door step cover and then just peel the old one off and press the new one on and then trim to fit. I took the opportunity to also clean the step area while I was in there.

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The door seals use these small plastic buttons and if you rock the seal back and forth while pulling them they seam to come out easily enough. I didn't have any broken ones and the seals on the door were intact but a bit compressed.

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The seals I got were genuine Ford and from LMC - Here's the catalog page for the door weatherstrip. The weatherstripping for the door should be marked but here's a tip: the left door uses red clips and the right (passenger) door uses green ones. Find the top corner, which should be pretty obvious as seen here, and hold that up and the pins should line up with the holes.

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Just like that. The top of the seal fits in a channel while the bottom is held by the clips. I use an old flea market screwdriver that I've rounded and smoothed out to help push the seal edges in along the top.

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The left side was pretty easy to push in by hand. The other side needed some persuasion in the form of the other side of the flea market screwdriver.

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And that took all of about an hour. So perhaps I found the only small van project. Of course I haven't done the back doors so who knows - that might be the part of the project that takes the whole day. Otherwise the doors are super tight now - in fact they need a bit of force to close completely. Not slamming but a very authoritative shove with a solid sense of commitment. You know.

If anyone has a source for the side and back door seals let me know. LMC's prices are reasonable but they don't have them in stock. I called the local Ford dealer and after about 20 minutes of searching they found them, but only the door side, not the body side and they were $350 per door. The front pair were less than $200 so I'm not keen on spending $700 for the back doors.

Next up are the flooring parts. Everything is ordered and on the way.

Gregor
 

eporter

Adventurer
Nice work on the seals, I've been thinking about redoing the front doors on my '97 ambo.

Any idea why the driver's side front door seals cost TWICE as much as the passenger side door seals?!

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sakurama

Adventurer
Nice work on the seals, I've been thinking about redoing the front doors on my '97 ambo.

Any idea why the driver's side front door seals cost TWICE as much as the passenger side door seals?!

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Uh, yeah, no...

No idea other than maybe they can make more money since it would be replaced more often? They are identical so it makes no sense. Considering how much tighter the van is up front now I'm very interested in doing the other doors in back. Plus the other doors I know to be empty with no sound deadener and I've ordered 100sq/ft of FatMat so I'll have enough to do all the doors, the floors and whatever else rattles.

Okay, random question - what are the best ways to quiet down the sound of the 7.3? Cruising isn't too bad but accellerating pretty much drowns out conversation. I'm guessing doubling up the insulation on the doghouse and then the floors. I know that “it is what it is” to a degree but since I'll be tearing into a lot of it I figure I'll try to knock down a few dB's.

I'm going to jet down to SF to pick up a motorcycle tomorrow so I'll make some sound readings as a reference before I go to town. I did some before and was getting 65-75dB's which isn't too bad if you compare it to the KTM 990 I just sold at 122dB's... The van is practically silent!

Gregor
 

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