Well I haven't updated this because i have been making somewhat slow progress on it.
I pretty much finished the insulation at least for now, I used the foil-foam-foil for most of the van along with some reflectix. The foil used in the foil foam foil is pretty wimpy and can tear very easily while the relectix is much more durable. While it was providing some insulation I decided it wasn't providing enough so I added some foam board to the walls and floor. The stuff i used for the floor was pretty tough and i could walk around on it without it compressing at all...how it holds up in the long run obviously remains to be seen....i'll have to go back and check the name of it. The next step was to put down some laminate flooring from costco, i'm very happy with how it looks and so far it seems sturdy but like the insulation long term durability remains to be seen!
These pictures are before i attached the floor to the bottom of the van, it now has about 20 screws in it with nice big washers on them.
My next step was I wanted to get the electricity going in the van. I want to be able to use this van as a remote office very simliar to how they do over at badgertrek.com so I figured i'd need some decent power. Originally I planned on 2 group 31 AGM's and I would put them where the factory auxillary battery was on the passenger side frame rail...well after playing around with it a bit i realized a 3rd would fit in there just perfectly! Off to ebay i went and found a local place selling Group 31 AGM's for $96 and they allowed local pickup! :Wow1: So i picked up my 3rd battery from them...it's a rebadged version of my original 2 batteries so they're all the same.
Now it's really nice that i've got these three batteries sitting next to my van but i need to somehow get them mounted up under the beast. I thought about having someone fabricate something for me but I've always wanted to learn to weld myself so after a bit of searching around I picked up a lincoln mig welder from craigslist.
Great now i've got a welder but i have no clue where to get steel! Off to yellow pages i go and i find a couple steel stores that do not require minimum orders. I have to admit i was a bit intimidated I've never done any metal work what so ever and figured i'd walk into this shop and not even know how to order steel...i had in my mind what i wanted but now i needed to explain that to them.
I went to metals supermarket in tempe and browsed through a little book they had describing the different metal types. This helped a lot and the people there were really nice and helpful. They even let me walk around in the back to look at all the different metal. I gave them the exact sizes of the metal i wanted and they cut it to order right then and there...cool! I also grabbed some little pieces of metal they had so i could practice the welding a little bit.
Good thing i had the practice metal cause my first welds were awful :xxrotflma After a little bit of practice I decided to tackle building the battery box...the welds aren't pretty but they have good penetration and look to be pretty strong welds. The box attaches to the frame via 4 brackets and then 3 brackets in the front attach it to the body. It only hangs down a little less than an inch below the body of the van which is actually less than the factory auxillary box hung down.
These pictures don't show the 3 brackets i put on that go in front of the batteries to hold them in place and attach the box to the body of the van.
continued...
