Herbie's Chevy Astrolander/ZMB Build Thread

[Herbie]

Do the hinges on the lid of the Pelican case have enough strength to use the lid as a small table surface? A couple cables that fold to the interior of the box to support any weight would work.

Yes, I'd say with cables or the Pelican lid stay kit, this would be just fine. In my case, it would be a bit low to use for say, kitchen prep work, but I may still add the kit just to have a flat surface to put things on if I find that I need it while rummaging around in the box. I almost mounted this box on the passenger side for use as an extended chuck-box, but the relative height was one of the factors against. (Going to play with the loading, but may still add a shelf to store certain deeper items that don't fit in my current chuckbox.)

 

[Corneilius]

Looks great I have a very similar case and am planning something similar. I go back and forth between hinge mount vs spindle mount for my swing outs on my E series.

 

[tequilasunset]

Take my money and build me a rack too :Wow1:

 

[Herbie]

Part 2 of the rear-rack project is now complete:

I relocated the fuel to the passenger side so that I could connect to the propane tank and use it without removing from the carrier. With the big awning, I typically setup my chuckbox right near the rear of the van (but in the shade), so this should work well.

This rack uses the same over-hinge setup, but is scratch made to fit around the door-latch mechanism.

As with the other rack, bronze bushings are pressed in to the over hinges:

You can also see that the propane carrier now bolts directly to the main rack, instead of to the jerry-can carrier. The old way mostly worked, but there was always a nut on one side that interfered slightly with either the jerry can or the propane tank. Going this way let me use all low-profile button-head cap screws on all the "insides" of the carriers.

Unfortunately, with a jerry can in the rack, a good chunk of the license plate area is obscured, so I brought out the plate-lighting circuit through a grommet in the plate surround. Then I made a harness to attach to a plate-mounted LED light strip. Everything license-plate attaches directly to the jerry-can carrier with chicago screws.

I still didn't want to put any visible holes in the door skin, in case I ever move to a swing-out bumper system. On the driver's side, attaching to the inside "jamb" of the door is easy because it's flat and square to the door skin. The passenger side has a pronounced "lip", so I had to form a pretty complicated shape to fit around the lip. I'll need to shoot a separate picture of this. Also not shown is that this time around, I cross drilled all my replacement door pins for some stainless steel cotter pins. I never had a pin work loose, but I was always a little worried about it. Now I don't have to worry.

 

[tequilasunset]

BRAVO

Well done me very likey!:coffeedrink:

 

[spencyg]

Nice work! Looks great and super functional.

SG

 

[philos]

Great, as usual!


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[Herbie]

A Dozen Small Jobs

In preparation for our big summer Highway-1 expedition, I've been banging a lot of weekend time on all the small issues on the punch-list. I don't have great photos for all of it, but I can give you an idea of how busy I've been:

Added a small hardboard shelf to the Pelican case that now rides on the left-side door rack. This lets me stack the leveling blocks and compressor kit over all my recovery gear without having everything fall out if I need something on the bottom.

For now, I've added a z-folding mattress/topper kit. This smooths out the lumpiness of the conversion-van/bed platform transitions, but it eats up a lot of the upper cargo room in the back. Long term, I plan to rebuild the sofa seat and have it reupholstered with new foam so that everything sits nice and flat.

Added a fairing to my solar-panel rack, since wind was getting under it at freeway speeds and making a lot of noise and turbulence. This is some ABS sheet I had lying around coupled to a bit of stainless piano hinge. The whole rack has since been offset to the driver's side to make room for a set of TRED Pro recovery ramps and their mounting bracket which will attach to the same set of cross bars, as soon as my Kickstarter shipment arrives. ;-)

After more than six years without a headliner (since I originally pulled it to start looking at pop-top options), I have finally finished the forward area headliner. I started with cardboard templates, then transferred to 1/8" hardboard (semi-rigid, but flexible enough to curve where needed). I added some dense closed-cell foam, then finally covered with matching foam-backed headliner fabric. I still need to get finished pictures, but I lost the light on the day, and it requires careful positioning to shoot photos of something like this without a wide-angle lens!

Finally wrapped up on the curtain installation. I added aluminum curtain track (mostly screwed to the plastic trim), and sewed shirring tape to the curtains I inherited from my GTRV donor van. Created tie-backs from some matching 1" nylon webbing and snaps. Those curtains were odd, in that they didn't match up to the actual windows in the van (not really the correct number or shape of curtains), so I didn't use them for a long time. Since installing my fridge cabinet and semi-permanently using the left-rear window area for soft storage (see photos above), I finally realized the curtains I DID have would be good for the remaining windows.

Added a Mob Armor phone cradle to the dash. My RAM-mount for my navigation tablet is now rock solid, but the old cradle I used for my phone didn't hold things tightly enough, and the phone would rattle out over washboard roads. This thing holds the phone very securely (clamps top/bottom). Downside to the Mob Armor magnetic mount was that I had to bolt a metal plate to the dash fascia, but at this point I've drilled so many holes in things I kind of just said "fark it".

Picked up a set of Front Runner Flat-pack storage boxes. Very efficient since they're totally rectangular, but most importantly they happen to be the perfect shape that I can fit three of these under my conversion van seat. (The left side is two boxes deep, the water tank eats the space behind the rightmost box.) We'll use these as luggage for our trip - one container per person, hopefully corralling the bags that typically get shuffled around the van 20 times per day. Also visible in the right corner is my Iota DLS-55 charger which I've now hard-wired in to the house battery. I haven't documented that yet, more to come soon.

Stuff without photos:
* I've swapped out a flaky secondary O2 sensor to clear a P0137 code.
* Fitted a fresh fuel filter.
* Replaced the 20+ year old and failing bulb seal around the perimeter of the GTRV pop-top

Lastly, I've exchanged the old aluminum-hard-case Northman Apollo awning (also inherited from GTRV donor van) for a new ARB 2500x2500 bag awning. It's lighter, easier to deploy solo, and offers a critical couple of extra feet of deployed shade/cover. Northman awning will be for sale to any interested parties... Photos of the new ARB awning and the LED strip lighting I've attached to it to come soon.

Whew. That's a lot of work!

 

[dar395]

Herb, Looks like all of our own list, but look at the bright side; you don't need to worry you'll never get it all completed so you'll always be needed! Enjoy the trip I'll watch for an update.:Mechanic:

 

[coronan]

The photos in post 188 wont load for me.

 

[tequilasunset]

The photos in post 188 wont load for me.

Ditto

 

[Herbie]

The photos in post 188 wont load for me.

Ah, yes. Google made a bunch of changes with the death of Picasa. I need to go back and massage some permissions on the photos. I'm on my way out the door right now, but will hit it later today. Sorry folks!

 

[philos]

Ah, yes. Google made a bunch of changes with the death of Picasa. I need to go back and massage some permissions on the photos. I'm on my way out the door right now, but will hit it later today. Sorry folks!

How will I ever wait?!?!
hehehe

 

[Herbie]

Photo links should work now! Apologies and let me know if there are any dead images.

 

[nobodyhome]

Awesome stuff as always Herbie, thanks for sharing. I'm real interested in the rear racks, especially the tilt out feature on DS rack, because this is something I have planned for my van soon. Do you have more build details on that? Specifically, the hinge, attachment to the arm and the plate that fits between the doors? A few close up pics should do it, if you don't mind that is.

Thanks again for your kind words on the Jeep bumper. I posted that on a different forum too, at least 1 person has done it already and sounds happy. The next gen brackets are still a couple months out, which should adapt most JK Jeep bumpers to our vans.... interested?