Day #38 Van Build – 7/21/25

This was my first day back working on the van after a week-long mission trip to the Appalachian Mountains to do some mission work repairing houses that were damaged by Hurricane Helene. I was fortunate to have Artie helping me today and we tackled two big items.

I started the day at 8:00 in the morning working by myself. I was able to locate and cut a hole in the roof of the van for the cable gland that will pass the wires from the solar panels and the Starlink antenna into the van. I had to peel back some of the ceiling insulation inside the van to make this cut.

After cutting out the hole, I filed off the burs and then gave it two coats of paint to seal the exposed metal. While the paint was drying, and now with Artie’s help, I began work on wrapping the rear columns with fabric. If you remember, I had wrapped the rear columns previously with vinyl fabric, but it failed to adhere. So, I purchased some cloth fabric and it arrived while I was away. This seemed like a good project to work on while the paint was drying.

We cut twelve inch with strips of fabric and used spray adhesive to secure them onto the rear columns. Artie was a big help, as the strips of fabric were too long for one person to handle easily (I know this from doing the vinyl fabric myself). We wrapped the two vertical columns first, then did the upper column above the rear doors. Finally, I made some match cut pieces to cover the last of the white Landau foam. Overall, I think it looked good. I pray that this fabric will stay attached. Here are some pictures of the process.

By the time we finished with the fabric, the paint was dry on the hole in the roof for the cable gland. So, we adjusted the cables in the gland to length and installed the cable gland. It went together very well. The picture below shows the cable gland before we applied self-leveling sealant to it to prevent any leaks. This cable gland will also be located under the solar panels, so it will be further protected from the elements. The two bigger wires in the picture below are for the solar panels, and the gray wire is for the Starlink.

Artie and I then worked to install the two solar panels on the roof of the van. We had to rearrange the roof rack supports, so that we could slide the solar panels onto these supports. We also had to remove one roof rack support that interfered with the solar panel installation. But, once we had the roof rack supports in the correct location, the solar panels slid nicely into the channels on the supports. We then secured the roof rack supports and also tightened down the solar panel support brackets. We did not connect the wires from the solar panels to the wires coming out of the wire gland, because I don’t want the wires to be live when I’m connecting them to the van electrical system. So, I’ll finish connecting the solar panel wires on the roof after the van electrical system is completed. Here is what the solar panels looked like on the roof of the van.

We finished all of this work by noon, which I thought was pretty fast. It was getting very hot outside, and I had some errands to run in the afternoon, so we called it a day. Tomorrow, I’ll have some time in the morning and hope to install the linoleum floor.