I had been out of town for the last ten days, so there has been a gap here in my blog posts because I wasn’t working on the van. While I was gone, I received many items that I had ordered, so there is now lots of things to work on.
I started at 8:30 and my day started off on a bad note. When I opened up the van to begin work, I saw that the vinyl fabric on the rear columns was peeling away from the white Landau foam that it was attached to. The vinyl fabric on the front columns was fine, but on those columns I glued the vinyl directly to the steel column without any Landau foam. I wasn’t really happy with the job I did wrapping those rear columns, and it is clear that I’ll have to do it over. But I wasn’t going to do it over today, because I needed to noodle a little over how I was going to fix it. Here are a couple of pictures of the vinyl peeling off.
One of the items that arrived was the replacement for my broken rivnut tool, so that’s where I started my day. I put in the remaining eight M8 rivnuts into the ceiling of the van and then had Elizabeth help me to hold the unistrut up to the ceiling so I could mark where I had to cut the unistrut for the bolts to attach it to the ceiliing of the van. I made the cuts with the jigsaw and painted the exposed steel.
While the paint on the unistrut dried, I prepared the five beams in the ceiling of the van for furring strips by putting in rivnuts. Not all the holes in the beams were the same size, so I had to open up 10 holes a little bigger to take a M6 rivnut. On the outside of the ceiling beams (closest to the walls) there was an existing M8 hole, which I decided to use instead of drilling additional M6 holes. I installed 25 M6 rivnuts and 10 additional M8 rivnuts (for 18 total in the morning). These were especially tough because they were all in the ceiling and the manual rivnut tool takes a lot of strength to set the rivnut. So, I was worn out after all that work. Here is a picture of an installed rivnut.
By the time I finished with the ceiling rivnuts, the paint on the unistrut was dry. So, Alexa helped me to hold the unistrut to the ceiling while I bolted it into place. I used M8 bolts with loctite on the bolt and wide washers to ensure good contact with the unistrut. Afterwards, I hung on the unistrut and it is very solid. Bolting anything to the unistrut in the van will secure it very well. Here is a picture of the installed unistrut in the ceiling and you can also see lots of rivnuts in the beams of the ceiling.
Then I got some help from Elizabeth to put a fresh 4′ x 8′ piece of Baltic Birch plywood on the sawhorses so I could cut out the furring strips for the ceiling. I cut eight foot strips off of the sheet of plywood using the circular saw, then used the chop saw to cut them down to length. This gave me fifteen furring strips that need to be installed in the ceiling.
Then it was executing the Jim Farr process for attaching furring strips. First, I screwed bolts with the heads cut off into each of the rivnuts that would hold the furring strip. Then, I held the furring strip in place with one hand while smacking the board with a hammer with the other hand. This leaves an impression on the back side of the board where the rivnuts are. Then I drill out the hole for the bolt using those impressions as a guide and countersink the hole so the bolt head sits flush with the surface of the wood. I remove the bolts without heads from the rivnuts and screw them into the next set of rivnuts. Then I take the board and bolt it into its location. Rinse and repeat fifteen times. I got the middle five boards up before lunch, and finished the last ten boards after lunch, because I had to stop at Ace Hardware to purchase M8 sized bolts for those last ten boards. Here is what it looked like with all the ceiling furring strips attached.
By the way, the long boards in the middle of the van floor are the pine slats that will make up the roof of the van. They are 16′ long and I don’t currently have a better place to store them.
With the unistrut and furring strips installed in the ceiling, I was able to route the wire harnesses throughout the van. I had made the wire harnesses several weeks ago during a time when I was waiting for Amazon to deliver something and it was too hot outside to work. I installed one harness for the driver’s side electronics (outlets & reading lights), a second harness for the overhead LED lights, and a third harness for the passenger side electronics. Here is what it looked like.
By this time, the vinyl fabric over the rear doors was looking even worse, so I decided to rip it out. The vinyl fabric easily separated from the Landau foam, but the Landau foam was secured well to the metal rear columns of the van.
One of the YouTubers that I watch to get ideas for my van is Humble Road. The guy who makes this video is always saying, “let the van talk to you.” So, after ripping down the vinyl fabric, I stood there and thought about my next steps for the rear columns. I deccided that I would glue in Landau foam to the areas of the rear column that didn’t have it and then cover it with a fabric other than vinyl that will adhere better to it. Of course, I’ll have to order the fabric, so it may be a while before I get to installing it. But I have the Landau foam and can work on that now. You can see in these pictures where I need to glue more Landau foam on the rear columns.
Now that I had focussed on the rear columns and was planning what to do with them, I also thought about how the pine slats in the roof were going to come into the rear of the van above the door. I think I will need some molding there to make it look better. I also need to route the Ford wiring harness, so it is out of the way. So, I started working on a furring strip for over the rear doors. With the furring strip, I can cover up the edge of the fabric above the door. I can also use it to hold the Ford wiring harness in place at the top of the rear wall. Finally, I can use it to secure the molding for the pine slats in the van ceiling, when I get to that point.
So, I then started work on the one furring strip for over the rear doors. Fortunately, there were three existing M6 holes in the sheetmetal of the van that I could use to hold the furring strip. So, I first put rivnuts into those three holes. Then I cut a piece of Baltic Birch plywood for the furring strip and went through a process of trimming the piece back until I was happy with the result. The ceiling above the rear doors is not square, it rounds toward the walls of the van. So, it took a haft dozen iterations before I had something that I think will work. Here it is installed in the van with the Ford wiring harnes above it (that wiring harness is hard to see).
I’ll remove this furring strip for now and set it aside. I’ll reinstall it after I have the rest of the Landau foam and fabric glued to the rear columns and above the rear door.
That was it for the day. Overall, I think I made good progress today. I spent 7 1/2 hours working on the van, which was a lot, especially considering that it was over 90 degrees and humid all day.
Great progress today.