Introducing O'Billy - our new Type-II Ambulance

[mike.marcacci]

Operation #2: Sound Proofing (part 3)

To finish up the cab, we fixed the screw holes from the demo with bondo, then continued the carpet up along the partition and the passenger's side of the portal







We fashioned a bit of trim to secure the edges and look pretty, and added some rubber conduit for the factory airbag sensor, which we didn't exactly feel comfortable splicing and re-routing

 

[mike.marcacci]

Operation #3: Module Floor

Before we could get started on the rest of our interior, we needed to fill in the space left by the bench with a subfloor to match the other half. This took several hours cutting out a cardboard template, refining the final piece, then installing it. The floor itself bends, and the plywood had to flex about an inch over the length of the van.

We adhered the plywood with an entire cartridge of liquid nails and, taking cue from the original Leader install, sank self-tapping weather-resistant screws directly into the sheetmetal.

We didn't add any insulation because we needed the wood to perfectly line up with the original floor, and didn't think to lay strips of insulation un the recesses until the floor was already down. That's probably the one thing I'd change about the way we built the floor, but I still don't think it's a big deal: my research suggests that my 0.688 inch plywood has a similar R-value to Reflectix (which is ~1.0, despite the 4.2 it claims on the packaging). Still, I would have liked to add some more for good measure.



We made sure to fill all our screw holes (which were recessed with forstner bits), the seam, and anywhere that was left uneven by the removal of the old vinyl floor.


Emily sanded everything down until it was perfect.

 

[mike.marcacci]

Operation #4: Bed Frame

Emily and I spent many nights researching and arguing about different bed frame designs. Since we plan on living in the van near-full-time for a year or so as we map climbing routes across North America (the van is actually a sub-project for the app & content we're developing at boltline.net), we have a LOT of requirements for our space:

1. We need a full-size bed that doesn't require huge set-up / tear-down effort.
2. We need lots of storage space for clothing, ropes, trad racks, cameras, drones, etc
3. We need a setup that can facilitate long hours on laptops
4. We need to be able to cook basic meals inside with relative comfort

Since we expect a great deal of time to be spent in very remote areas, we agreed that any sort of permanent internal plumbing is undesirable.

Eventually, we converged on a bed design that features a permanent bed with two large clothing drawers accessible on the inside, and one massive gear drawer accessible from the rear barn doors. The two internal drawers double as a support for a bed extension when pulled out.

Day time:


Night time:


Exploded:

 

[mike.marcacci]

Looks good, and looks like you guys are doing it RIGHT! Your hard work and expense now, will pay off later ten fold.

Thanks, I hope so It's been a really educational project so far, and I've got to say that my brother and I discovered we both have a little bit of OCD... which I rather enjoy, actually.

 

[mike.marcacci]

Operation #4: Bed Frame (part 2)

Building the frame took a bit more effort than we initially expected – there is NOTHING in this van that is either parallel or perpendicular. Like, nothing. Every possible dimension curves according to its own polynomial function.

On a couple occasions, we took over our unit's driveway with plywood, saws, and drills.



We had to repeatedly cut, fit, then refine each piece, trimming and filing the edges to mate with the floor's strange curves. In anticipation of installing drawers, we did our best to share the van's skew between all the openings, to minimize the amount of shimming we'd eventually need to attach the slides.



To keep everything attached firmly, we used wood glue and screws for each joint. When adhering the frame to the floor we used a Kregg jig, and when attaching two frame pieces, we carefully pre-drilled and sank long, aggressively-threaded wood screws into the adjoining plywood edges. In total, we only damaged one ply from one screw out of the several dozen edge-set screws (yes, it is definitely over-engineered).







While I don't have any photos of it, we ended up using two pieces of 90° aluminum angle to reinforce the rear opening, notched into the side supports and bolted to the top.

 

[mike.marcacci]

Operation #4: Bed Frame (part 3)

The sections of the bed frame on the passenger side are going to be used for additional storage, and will be accessed from the top. We added an inner sleeve to the openings to support their top sections, and made sure they all fit correctly with carpet spacers, as we plan to apply carpet later in the build (there's no point in adding carpet to the module when we'll just get it full of metal shavings and dust). We'll probably also drill a thumb hole in each one of these so they can be lifted out easily, but haven't done so yet.



We water sealed the the entire interior - old floor, new floor, and bed frame – just in case. The last thing I want is separating plies. You can see the space for our two inner drawers, and the side shelf which we plan to coat with raptor liner. (We're actually going to be painting the entire van with 75% gray raptor liner, but that's for another post.)



You can see the water-sealed frame from the rear bar doors. To keep the frame sturdier, we added the shelf to the left, which we also plan to raptor-line. The two aluminum trusses run across the full length, supporting the wide right opening which will have a heavy duty drawer on 500 lb slides. We also plan on adding a face plate that tidies up the look and boxes in the left section, so that we have a place to drop tall items.

 

[mk216v]

Well done!!
Two questions so far;
--Where does the bed extension panel stay when not in use?
--What if you want to get to your gear when the rear barn doors are closed(ie when stealth camping)? Have you thought about an access hatch door to be able to get to that gear when the doors are closed, or the rear end of the van is stuck in a bog and your recovery gear is in that drawer?

 

[mike.marcacci]

Thanks for the questions! Hopefully you guys can poke holes in our bad ideas before we commit and have to learn the hard way

As for the rear drawer, we expect it to hold equipment that is only useful outside the van in non-emergency situations: particularly climbing ropes, harnesses, helmets, cams, carabiners, ice axes, etc. While I can definitely imagine some downpour scenarios where it would be nice to access everything from inside, we don't expect to do much climbing in those conditions (wet rocks really suck).

That said, we haven't really figured out our recovery system at all: we're *really* hoping to be able to fit the spare in the stock location because we expect the rear barn doors to be a pretty common exit. I LOVE the look of the tire/recover box on the back, but am having a hard time justifying the price and compromising the ability to open the doors from the inside. The roof is going to be mostly covered with the 4x 100W solar panels sitting in my brother's garage, but we still have a few feet towards the back that could be used for the tire as a last resort... but I really hate the idea of lifting our flat onto the roof on the side of some highway...

We've been looking at 35" tires, but we haven't pulled the trigger and could go smaller if we needed to: what's the biggest tire somebody's fit under an extended body E350?

I've also had a nagging question about recovery points: I have a heavy duty snatch strap that I keep in my F150, but I haven't found anywhere obvious behind the stock bumpers to fix hooks. I've kind of just put this off since nothing else really depends on the bumpers, but I'd love to know what people do about recovery without purpose-built bumpers. Don't get me wrong, I'd LOVE a U-Joint or Aluminess setup, but their price tag would cover another drone, a laptop, or a couple big telephoto lenses, which would be much easier to justify at this point :-/

 

[Abitibi]

Looks great. Just did something very similar (soundproofing) to my old 65 Econoline and it made a huge difference. Don't forget to do the rear wheelwell and all doors if you haven't already. That's where most of the noise bullies itself into our vans...

Happy vannin!
David

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[mike.marcacci]

Operation #5: New Windows

OK, more updates. (I have tons of little updates saved up, but can only convince myself to stop working and post when my brain finally quits, so sorry in advance for the inevitably cryptic phrasing.)

The ambulance relied on a rear (still working, yay!) HVAC unit, but we obviously can't have the engine running while we sleep (and there's no point to killing our battery bank for ventilation). So we swapped our our side and barn doors windows for some pop-out ones from a passenger van. If anybody needs OEM fixed door windows, we have them (name your price)!



We also decided to add a small window to the driver's side between shelves (I actually have another thread on that topic). I looked into the CRL windows and some European brands, but really had a hard time sourcing ones that would fit the dimensions and wouldn't seriously warp the body. We finally just decided to use the OEM 40% barn door window, which is almost rectangular (Ford really seems to hate 90° angles), and the perfect size.

We started with a small hole to make sure we were in the exact right place.



Then we taped the edges, traced the lines and had at it with the jigsaw! It was definitely a bit intimidating, but at the end of the day one of the easier projects we've done. Until we build the pop-latch attachment, we're using the old fixed window from our barn door. The window's curvature was really close, despite being further down the van and on the wrong side.



We're really happy with the results.

 

[mk216v]

Cool! Pics of the rear hinging barn door windows?

 

[mike.marcacci]

I'll snap some tonight - they fit perfectly into the factory holes – they're nothing fancy but they make a huge difference to air flow!

 

[mike.marcacci]

Whoops, guess I'm a little late on posting up, but here are some pix.

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[mike.marcacci]

Dropped it off at Diesel Tech this past Monday, and they're starting on our 6" ujoint kit. It's going to be crazy not having it around on the weekends! I'll be able to get so much else done

We're hoping to fit a pretty decent size fridge between the front seats if possible - has anybody had luck shoving the shifter a bit further between the seat and doghouse? Trying to get as much room as possible, but definitely don't want to compromise the usability of the 4x4...


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[patoz]

We're hoping to fit a pretty decent size fridge between the front seats if possible - has anybody had luck shoving the shifter a bit further between the seat and doghouse?

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I would ask Chris at UJOR about that. If anybody would know, he would.