Beluga Van Build Progress - Our First Van Build

[just kev]

Hi All,

Well I decided to bite the bullet and start a build thread for our van.

We'd been looking fore a van off and on for a year or so when I found a 97 Kroger Salem 4x4 conversion with 64k miles on it for 8.5k.
It's an E150 with the 4.6l 8cyl so good on gas. We picked her up about 5 weeks ago and have slowly started doing the interior. Given
the low miles I'm not going to start mucking with anything mechanical until the inside is sorted out.

I will post up some pics tomorrow but here's a list of most if what's been done so far.

1) Ripped out all the interior (we're down to bare metal).

1.5) Made a rough plan of our setup which by know has evolved to a pretty detailed plan. It's funny how our layout is remarkably similar to a sportsmobile RB50 standard layout.

2) Ripped out the "dual battery system" and it's associated questionable wiring. Basically it was a 20 dollar solenoid wired to a regular car battery sitting behind
the passenger seat. It also had tons of wires to nowhere and just plain strange wiring.

3) Installed 200 amp continuous duty solenoid and 2 agw wire to 125ah agm battery mounted at the read of the van inside on the passenger side

4) Run wiring for speakers (not sure if the van had a blow amp or what but nothing worked), wiring for arb fridge, stove, fuseblock, and other stuff.

5) Installed Fantastic vent fan (still have to put my eternabond tape on but it's not leaking right now .

6) Learned to weld and made platform bed frame (welding is uber fun - did this thursday night after a 10 minute 'training session' at a friends shop).

7) Put in sub floor and a little of the insulation.

8) Mounted wood along the sides of the van to tie into for cabinets and to tie in the bed platform.

9) Spent countless hours on amazon and the web sourcing stuff and getting ideas.

More tomorrow but if anyone has any advice before I start hooking up my plumbing please chime in as that hopefully might get started this week as well as
carpet, and actually tieing the bed frame in (it's currently in the garage, and yes it does fit in the van

kev

 

[just kev]

And to Chris of Ujointoffroad, yes at some point i will need to talk to you about fixing some of the salem krogerness

 

[ober27]

I look forward to following this, sounds like a great platform to start with.

 

[dcguillory]

pics or it didnt happen

 

[just kev]

dcquillory,

Some pics are coming tomorrow!

So looking at your build thread I noticed you have some sort of cap covering the spot where you drop your solar power +/- lines down into your
top. I have 3 questions

1) what is it/where can I get one/why did you choose it (yeah i know that 3 questions in 1)
2) does it leak (answer this first)
3) what guage line did you run? I was going to use 10 AWG since the cable run is less than 10 ft (i'm using a similar 100w panel) which i think should be sufficient
to minimize the voltage drop over that length.

I've been debating different ways of dropping the solar line into the van and was think i want to do it under the panel as that should be 'drier'
then not under the panel but so far don't have an ideal solution.

kev

 

[just kev]

Below is the solenoid and fuse setup. Since it was very tight under the hood this is under where the stock
battery lives.



Below is part of the rats nest i mentioned.



Below is my first welding project! In the background you can see some of the old starcraft interior panels.



The next two photos are from our kitchen table. What do you think of the stove? Its 12000 btu on the big burner.





Okay that's all i've got right now. Tonight I'll post some more current pics as well as a body shot

 

[ober27]

Wow! Great progress. what size is the bed platform? What are your plans for mattress?

 

[just kev]

The platform is 52x52 and is made of 1" square tube steel 1/8" thick. It's 13 and 3/4 high. This height was chosen as it's
the minimum working height to slide in the lexan bins I use to store climbing and scuba gear.

I'm going to tie the platform into the van via turn buckles.

On top of the platform goes some thinish plywood (3/8) and on top of that goes a hinged wooden frame (so it can at as a couch).
The non hinged part is going to be designed by interleaving wood such that half of the pieces pull out and half stay in thus allowing
full extension to 74"ish without sucking up 22 more inches of living space.

Mattress wise we were thinking getting a custom futon mattress made made. The prices don't seem to heinous. Until the platform and
associated wood frame is complete i'm just going to toss my old 3 inch foam from my Tacoma bed if i hit the mountains.

I picked up carpet yesterday so tonight I want to tidy up a little more wiring and hopefully tomorrow partially put in the carpet so I
can install the bed frame. In another life before i went to college I installed carpet...i'm so not looking forward to playing with it
but it will be easy at least.

The weather is really hampering me right now as the van is to large to fit in my garage so i'm limited on really rainy days.

I'm working on an analogy for a first build. I don't quite have it yet but I know it involves a jigsaw puzzle with a few missing and imperfect pieces.

 

[ober27]

Sounds like you,ve got some good ideas for the bed, I look forward to seeing how it turns out. Glad to hear you're getting the wiring figured out, it can be miserable trying figure out someone else's wiring.
Keep us updated.

 

[just kev]

Yeah my solution to the rats nest was to trace it all out and remove it. I dabble in electronics at work so this
wasn't too painful.

 

[just kev]

Here's a link to a 20 second long video of me welding

 

[bdog1]

I picked up a 8" queen futon on EBay from a place that makes them in TX. Sorry I don't know the company name. It was like $80 shipped (vacuum packed) and it's really worked out great in the van.


Sent by wing, prayer & ATT

 

[just kev]

bdog,

I though about a futon loveseat frame but (at least in the two store i looked) it would cost me 6-8 inches of vertical space
(fold up vs be layout) and i needed that for gear storage. Plus i wouldn't have gotten to play with a welder.

 

[bdog1]

Yea. I just used the mattress, not the frame. My platform, in it's second design, is wood with a 18" isle pull out. 14" clearance for storage.

My first effort was more to fold up the bed to a couch, but we found when traveling we never folded it up, and the down position allowed for more storage. Let's just say we haven't mastered the art of traveling light!

Sent by wing, prayer & ATT

 

[Colby Jack]

This looks like a sweet build! Any progress? Outside pics?


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