Tips for cutting out door panels on a Sprinter Van > ?

[Bravo30]

i went with the tracing paper method. it worked out well for me but i caught a lot of breaks along the way. its not the easiest stuff to work with. it tares easily and can difficult to tape down outside. fortunately for me, it all worked out on the first attempt.

after tracing the basic outline i cut it out with scissors an held it up to the door to make adjustments. again, i caught few breaks and eyeballed some cuts along the way. I then traced the outline onto the 1/4'' plywood and cut it out with a jigsaw. I made sure to do a tight job on the paper so that i wouldn't have to make any major adjustments when it came time to use the wood. i was able to use the same outline for both doors except for the passenger side is a bit narrower and the bottoms are shaped differently so i just traced the bottom again an trimmed for width then overlaid it. after cutting out both of the panels i sanded down the edge and primed both sides. i do this for every panel in the van. prime/paint both sides and edges. in total it took about 3 hours from start to finish.

 

[Hillbilly Heaven]

Very nice job!! Now since you are the expert at it you can come help me make the stainless rear quarter panels I need to make LOL.

 

[southpier]

good move. every edge of wood benefits from sealing. you'll never notice the benefit if you do it, but will certainly lament if you don't.

 

[Bravo30]

good move. every edge of wood benefits from sealing. you'll never notice the benefit if you do it, but will certainly lament if you don't.

this is the back side of the lower door panel off of the slider. there was always a bulge there on the finished side. now i know why.

 

[Bravo30]

middle side panel for the slider. this one wasnt so bad. the only real issue is how much to trim and where to draw your lines. a lot of that is personal preference. I just picked a line an went with it.

 

[southpier]

obviously using what's on hand is never bad, but if starting anew and buying a dedicated product, usually a "sanding sealer" will do the job without raising the grain as much as paint. just a personal preference.

 

[Bravo30]

making progress on the van. i went with a multi use model for the van so im running all of the wires then enclosing all of the walls. any cabinetry or sleeping platform i add will be modular so if need be i can remove it. before i closed up the lower walls i added a few extra wires for future considerations.

 

[southpier]

what weighed in on your choice of color?

 

[Bravo30]

what weighed in on your choice of color?

ill list them in order of importance. i put a lot of though into this

1- Privacy

were not introverts or anything but we are very private people. the one thing i noticed about all of the vans online is that they were mostly white and INVITING. we didnt want an INVITING van. we keep to ourselves. last thing we want is to pull into an RV park and have a bunch of strangers walking up trying to have a look inside. NO.... when i open the doors i want people to see black and thats it. they will have to rely on their imagination for anything else.




2- Style

black van, black wheels, tinted, Black interior, black everything... every build has a character. I was a painting contractor for about 20yrs so ive been around a lot of black and when done correctly it looks sharp. The sprinter van in my opinion looks the best in Black. if the van was a different color then i wouldn't have went with a black interior. im going with all black semi-gloss inside with stainless fixtures and trim. any cabinetry will be black. the floor will be grey to match the plastic upfront. I get a lot of compliments on the van just for the fact that its black. who doesnt love a black benz?

3- Dual-use Van

this van is going to be dual use so everything will be modular so that afterwards i can remove the piece and return the van to cargo configuration. When were not camping were delivering furniture so painting the inside black works well for both uses. Black does a good job of hiding all of the scuffs from work.


4- Practicality

you ever go into a nightclub during the daytime ? there's a reason why they're painted black. black hides a lot of stuff and sprinter vans have notoriously bad angles so trimming out the inside can be difficult. Black makes the job a lot easier. with the black steel behind the wood the transition between the 2 materials is seamless and any imperfections get lost in the shadows. the same goes for white wood on white steel and so on. my van was already black so my color choice was pretty limited. i could have gotten away with a few other darker colors but they wouldn't have went with my overall concept so black it was.



in the end my color choice this time around was more a matter of what i had to work with on hand than anything else. like i said earlier if i had a different color van then i would have went with another color. one thing for sure though is that i dont like light INVITING colors so whatever other color i would have chosen would have had the same dark demeanor just not black lol.

 

[southpier]

well alrighty!

if I see you 'round, i'll be sure not to stop over and say "Hey!"

 

[Bravo30]

well alrighty!

if I see you 'round, i'll be sure not to stop over and say "Hey!"

you know what i mean. were fine with somebody introducing themselves. thats a normal part of social interaction. we just dont want the ''omg hunnie look they have a ceiling fan just like us. come have a look'' next thing you know i have an entire family wondering around inside my van lol. stop by, say hi, and introduce yourself. if you click then you offer to show them around. nothing wrong with that but everybody should practice a certain level of privacy when out around the general public. i look at it like having a garage full of nice stuff. do you leave the door open? nope...

 

[southpier]

I get it. my welcome mat is, well, I sold it at the yard sale a while back. a couple of years ago there was a beautiful truck, maybe an Iveco? with a nice "expo body pod" on the back parked in the local beach parking lot. off season, all alone up near the fence along the dune (on asphalt surface). so I turned around and drove into the lot for a better look.

now this beach is the one I've been going to since I was old enough to swim - maybe 7 or 8? so being the oldster I am I figured a had the right to cruise the lot. I stopped what I thought was a respectable distance away and just sat there, engine running, and looking at all the nice details of the truck.

next comes a RAP! ******, over? then again. and another one. evidently the owner of the "rig" read somewhere the best way to scare off lookie-loos was to bang on the walls.

in any event, the truck & box were khaki, so it probably wasn't you!