Hi everyone, the first step in motivating myself is always making an update post to try to get some encouragement. Alot of updates since the last post!
another motivating factor saw one of these at the RV dealer when dropping off our trailer for consignment:
Hows that for 200k$ worth of motivation to build something on the cheap!
First off. Finally got the correct antenna adapter and a working Chinese Android head-unit. This fine piece of electronics has no name brand and was sourced from Ebay: I also got the metra dash kit which doesnt actually fit a double din. Alot of shaping with the dremel and sander and we got it to fit.
All installed and we are hard at work watching some live String Cheese:
Next we turned our attention to some family friendly seating. After scouring the internet, Facebook Market and CL; I decided i simply wasnt going to fuss with putting strange seats in the vehicle. I looked long and hard at minivan seats, looked at some junkyard seats and really anything that i thought could bolt in easy. After deciding the kids are worth it, we splurged on some 2019 transit takeouts with rails. They were pricey but had all the car seat anchors, seatbelts and other hardware we were looking for. We ended up spending a little shy of 500$ to get them to our door, however they were in brand new, never used condition. I think we did pretty well. In order to get them mounted, we decided to do some exploratory surgery and rip our the vinyl sheet flooring to see what we were working with:
Test fit:
Since the plywood was in decent shape and glued down really well, we decided to notch it for the seats and leave it in place for the future build: Enter the oscillating tool (wish i bought one of these years ago!)
and Ta-da! Seats are in. With that taken care of we could start to use the van and do some day trips to the park enjoying the fall weather: This is what this project is all about: great day trips and long vacation get-aways!
With the maiden family voyage complete. We realized we needed to turn our attention to some items:
- The vibration was horrible about 40mph. I ordered a new "used" driveshaft and u-joints
- The sound deadening was non-existent - This is going to need some work.
So this is the new shaft being torn down with new U-joints: Pro-tip, they are different between the front and back... dont make the same mistake i did while installing!
With 3 kids, 2 dogs, grad school, a demanding job and oodles of other hobbies it took about 5x longer to install than i was hoping! But eventually got it in! Vibration gone!! Thanks to all who assisted. I wanted to make note of two repercussions:
- While the shafts were the same length and swapped fine, the old one was about 1" larger in diameter, do you think that matters? Is that a "superduty" thing?
- The van now makes a bit of a clicking / clunk, when it gets shifted out of park. My research indicates not catastrophic, any thoughts guys?
So to test the shaft, I did about 40 miles to get to a biking spot (French Creek PA; holy rock gardens!)
So nice to just throw the bike in the van and also to get changed out of cycling gear in a dry, clean place!
Another question for the masses, the van wanders big time on the highway, perhaps as a result of the initial accident. I had it "aligned" by the seller and while it drives okay at lower speeds, it wanders like crazy at highway speeds. Ideally these vehicles should be able to do long distance highway cruises pretty effortlessly. I am seeking to a reputable alignment shop to really dig in and tell me if anything is wrong.
Also another issue, this silly handicap interlock is occasionally preventing starting in park and locking out shifting. I am sure hoping removal will alleviate these issues.
