Ujoint Offroad Colorado van build thread!

[Farfrumwork]

I'm pretty sure that 2000 v10 chateau lives near me (in Louisville). I talked with the owner briefly just last week as we were walking by (him poking around under the hood).

Cool van!

 

[UjointoffroadCO]

Got some updates on my personal van! Been tinkering with a Chinese diesel heater I got from a customer. This was one of the heaters that is self contained in the big red box. Got it for free from a customer, so I just sliced it all up to make it work for me. Little one helping me tinker



Pretty happy with the results. Not crazy about the fuel being inside, but my free time is about nil these days, so this was as good as I could come up with for now. No smell of diesel, just gotta be careful filling it. Eventually I think i'll go to a gasoline heater, but for now this will do.
I've also been having some issues with an intermittently low brake pedal. At first I discovered there were internal seals that had failed in the ABS hydraulic control unit, replaced that with a junkyard unit and it helped a lot, but it just gradually got worse. After discovering that e150s have a smaller master cylinder I decided to upgrade to the 250/350 master. Wasn't quite as easy as I hoped for, but I got it done. The fitting sizes on the two cylinders are backwards, so you've got to cut them off, swap them, and then re-flare the lines.

I also fluid filmed the whole under carriage as they decided to start salting our roads here. Great stuff besides the smell!

Had a customer van in the shop for service that was built by Ujoint back in 2017 a while back for a bunch of little repairs before being listed for sale

This week we started on a quigley to Ujoint conversion for a good customer. Pulled in Monday morning and started tearing into it!

Things get a little messy and hectic in the tear down stage. Plasma cutter and a grinder got quite the workout cutting all those damn quigley brackets off the frame!

While my apprentice got busy yanking the trans and t-case to be rebuilt, I started prepping the donor axle


Housing blasted and ready for assembly on monday!

Ran out of parts for the week, so I decided to mount up the wheels and tires. Black rhino something or another wheels with 37x12.5 km3s. This van was previously trimmed to clear 35s in quigley form, so fitting 37s on a 6' Ujoint kit shouldn't be an issue.

More updates on this one next week!

 

[b. rock]

Oh sweet, always good to have another 4x4 van shop in town. Looks legit!

 

[UjointoffroadCO]

Getting the gears setup in the front! Going with 4.88 ratio on this one.

Front axle about ready to go in!

Finally in its forever home!

Rear full float 60 all wrapped up! Went with a OX cable locker, yukon gears, and chromoly axle shafts in 35 spline. Also had to weld new shock tabs from UJOR on as quigley just does a hell of a job destroying the factory tabs so they didn't have to find a 2" longer shock.

Decided to replace the leaky oil pan gasket and rear main while the trans and t-case were out being rebuilt.

Test fit before the weekend!

On the ground for the first time! Wound up completely rebuilding the front shaft as it wasn't long enough and the slip was pretty much frozen up. I think on future de-quigs I'll recommend that we do a slip yolk eliminator on the rear shaft as it has a little driveline vibration over 70 due to not having a 1350 CV of the back of the t-case

Alignment time! Nice to have all this in house so we don't have to farm a bunch of work out to other people

All done and ready to go back to the customer! Little before and after

Got another one coming up in the next few weeks!

 

[RVflyfish]

Stance looks tough! Wheels and tires help. You just know that one’s gonna make heads swivel. Big thumbs up. ??

 

[SchultzBurrey]

Hi Justin,
Awesome job, I love this post! My name is Luke , I was passing by and couldn’t help but speak to you about your sweet van a few months ago on Tennyson st. Anyways I’m picking up a B190 in a couple of weeks and have been talking to Chris at unjoint on a quote for parts for the conversion. I don’t mean to hijack this post just wanted to know when would be a good time to talk with you about having you do the conversion for me.
Thanks Luke

 

[UjointoffroadCO]

Hi Justin,
Awesome job, I love this post! My name is Luke , I was passing by and couldn’t help but speak to you about your sweet van a few months ago on Tennyson st. Anyways I’m picking up a B190 in a couple of weeks and have been talking to Chris at unjoint on a quote for parts for the conversion. I don’t mean to hijack this post just wanted to know when would be a good time to talk with you about having you do the conversion for me.
Thanks Luke

Hey man! Yeah I remember you! You are more than welcome to come by the shop any time. We are there M-F 730-530. I always encourage people to come drive my van first before they commit to anything as Its a big expense and you should know exactly what you are gonna be getting for it!

 

[SchultzBurrey]

Awesome, I’ll stop by this week! Have a great weekend
Thanks

 

[UjointoffroadCO]

Awesome, I’ll stop by this week! Have a great weekend
Thanks

Do you live of joshipine by the botanical gardens? I saw a B190 street parked over there yesterday

 

[SchultzBurrey]

Do you live of joshipine by the botanical gardens? I saw a B190 street parked over there yesterday

No, that’s ones not mine. I’ve seen that one driving by, it’s a nice one. I am picking mine up next weekend! I’m just wanting to get the ball rollin on the conversion, with shipping, spring wait times and scheduling. I plan on swinging by your shop today around 4:30 if that works.

 

[UjointoffroadCO]

Had my buddy come by and get some professional shots of the big white van for our website

New project starting on monday!!!

 

[UjointoffroadCO]

Not too much to report. Covid shutdowns are catching up with us and its caused major problems with almost all parts needed to convert a van being on back order. Can't get lockers, gears, tires, wheels, nothing. We brought in the next one anyways and did what we could because we've got a tight deadline to get it to colorado camper van by the end of april for a poptop.

2011 5.4 RB with 120k on the clock. Super nice van besides some hail damage, but they got a smokin deal on it. Super cool family of 4 from summit county.

Did what we could. Spring hangers drilled, trans out to be rebuilt to 4x4, rear springs in. Now we wait......

Had wheels and tires show up for the van after this one. Decided to mount them up.

Nice lookin combo. This new yokohama geolander X-AT is slowly becoming my new favorite tire.

 

[UjointoffroadCO]

Just got word this van's front axle is shipping! Getting down to the wire to get it to CCV, but i think we will just have it together enough to get up there.
Got it in and ripped the front end out and installed hangers to start the shackle pivot cutting and welding

trans and t case in so we can at least measure for a rear shaft

Just awaiting its new axle!!

Also had a vanlife traveler pop in for service on her neat little delica!

 

[UjointoffroadCO]

Special delivery! Time to get to work

Hopefully this posts right, fun little time lapse of bolting the axle in

Exhaust mods to get both cats on the passenger side

In its forever home! Stage 2 front axle with tru trac and 4.56s


This van is getting the first new ujoint bumper i've done and I just can't say enough nice things about it. I love it so much that I placed a order for my own!
I bought everything a while back to be able to do my own deutsch connectors, gave it a go wiring up the bumper lights




Man those little rigid reverse lights are bright!

Ox lockers are still on back order and this van has a date with Colorado camper van for a pop top, so we had to call it good there for now.


After getting that dropped off with CCV, I had a little time to tinker with my van with the little lady.

Got the drivers side seat swivel installed finally. Plans are now to make a little platform that sits on the front seats so we can put her travel crib up there out of the way

 

[UjointoffroadCO]

Last saturday I drove with the owner of the silver van up to CCV to take delivery after the tent install. Overall I'm very impressed with the pop top. We sat around with Mark up there and talked vans for a few hours. Great guy!

With the van back at the shop I decided to start tinkering with a new tool I picked up a while back. Its a Ford scan tool called forscan. I'm sure some of you have heard of it before. Since the New ujoint bumper doesn't have provisions for parking aid sensors, I really wanted to figure out how to code them out and also disable the TPMS system. Steep learning curve, but I figured out some stuff that works.
First up is tpms. Go into as built for GEM module, line 726-02-01, change the first two blocks to all zeros. So it would read 0000 0000 009f

Next up is park aid. Go into IPC module, line 720-01-01 Change first two hex blocks as follows


Seems to be working great! Backup camera in the mirror still works too which is nice. Gonna have to put this one aside for now until we get ox lockers in.
Next up was a quick aluminess ladder and spare carrier for our friend scott's v10 chateau

Also had my good buddy Theron stop by to diag a clunk in his vancompass lifted AWD transit and mount up some new ko2s

So vancompass supplies these wimpy little steel plates to extend the sway bar link up further. Well theron's apparently had been flexing so much, one side broke in half, and the other was bent at a 45 degree angle. Almost took out the CV boot.

heres the original piece.

I get why they did it, so you can have a easily serviceable part, but the execution was poor. Would need a few bends along the edges to make it stronger. My solution was to just shorten the factory link and then brace it with a 3/8 tube


Next up was another 2021 awd transit in for another vancompass lift! Overall their lift is awesome, my only beef is with the sway bar link issue.



I'm just gonna shorten the links right off the hop now

Tight squeeze

How these vans should have come from the factory


This one will be returning shortly for a lithium electrical system and a eberspacher heater
Got another pallet of junkyard conversion parts to get going through for a upcoming v10 b190 conversion!