8020 aluminum in your van build? These tips and tricks will help you survive.

[Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] hello my extruded friends look at me i'm amongst the giants i've got an extruded aluminum refrigerator module and another refrigerator module i've got a galley module and i've got a wall cabinet all made from 80 20 extruded aluminum extruded aluminum you all know what this is but i thought i would go in and give you some tips and tricks that i've picked up over the last two and a half years working with 80 20 extruded aluminum and yes i need to get something off my chest right away full transparency i'm working off a list that's right i said it if i just left the paper here or just off camera and every once in a while you saw me do that with my eyes you'd go ah he's reading he's reading from a teleprompter generally i do it off the cuff i don't prepare at all i just hit record and i just throw up but there are some details that i needed to cover so i made a list uh the first thing that you need to know uh when you're working with 80 20 aluminum 80 20 is the brand name the product itself the material is called extruded aluminum 80 20 is a brand name it's the brand that i've chosen to use it's an american company it's a super high quality product precision is their middle name i've never had a problem with them i've been buying direct this is not a paid uh commercial for them not at all not at all i stick with good vendors i stick with good products so let's get into this the first thing you've got to know is when you cut extruded aluminum you need a special blade on your chop saw i went so far as to buy a chop saw specifically made to cut metal the lc1230 and then i put a blade on it that's specific to cutting aluminum non-ferrous metals you can buy a blade for steel you buy a blade for aluminum uh so that's the first step is to get a good aluminum blade now the blade's not made of aluminum the blade is made from steel but it's the teeth are designed in such a way that it cuts aluminum and after three years of working with 80 20 i've come to learn how important precision is for instance i used to make my own corner brackets no more why precision you make your own corner brackets and they're not dead on you're going to bite yourself in the ass down the road you're going to be off kilter you're going to be out of square you try to get drawer glides to run smoothly when your your brackets are at it's not worth it it's not worth the time and effort buy the 80 20 brackets buy the 80 20 bridge plates believe me after three years and four vans i'm telling you that's what i do now yes it costs more long run everybody's happy everybody's happy the main concern when you're working with 80 20 in my opinion is getting all of your t-nuts and your fixtures loaded on the profile before you lock it in or as they call it captivate it okay once you've captivated a channel you can't get a t-nut in there or you can't get the standard t-nut in there let me explain there's a word that you want to repeat to yourself over and over and over like a mantra when you're working with 80 20 preload preload preload what that means is getting your t-nuts and your fittings into the channel before you lock that channel in place and captivate it you see this channel right here this is not captivated because i can still get a t-nut in there this one here is not captivated because i can still get a t-nut in there after it's been assembled the ends are open this channel is captivated both ends have been closed off i can't get my t-nut in there so what you want to do is pre-plan and pre-load your profile put your little fittings and and uh okay i'm gonna come clean with you 80 20 does make what they call a drop in or a roll in t-nut it's made specifically for when you find yourself with a captivated profile channel that you still need to get a t-nut in and you don't want to or you can't take it apart to open the end you can roll in a rolling t-nut they offer the same strength same thread count they're a little bit more money it's kind of like they're punishing you for not planning accordingly you have to pay more for a roll in if you screwed up well you know with me it's a matter of principle i am not going to use those roll-ins that is the last resort so what i do is i will lay down my module and i'll lay it out and i will loose fit the whole thing together i don't bear down i lose fit then i take the module into the van and i put it in place and i study it i see where my anchor points to the van are did i put a t-nut there or do i need one i'll make some notes i'll get all that sussed bring the module back out on the table make my adjustments take it in a second time go through that routine again make sure nothing's changed i didn't want to add anything blah blah blah now comes back out it's ready to be locked down at that point i will take each screw out one at a time and douse it with loctite and put it back in and bear down you don't want to lock tight your screws during the planning stage or the loose fit stage that's just going to waste your loctite you're not going to get a good bond and i have to say that i believe loctite is a big player big important player when you're putting 80 20 in a van these little channel wings these channel flanges are arced in slightly so when you tighten up that t-nut you create a bend you create this force that kind of acts like a lock washer that coupled with loctite you're good to go van number one came back as you know it lives in southern california it's been on the road now for over a year uh she has actually traversed this continent four times in that year and a half one two three four five she's on her fifth trip across the country because she's headed home now five trips across the country in a year and a half and i did the tighten up there was not one bolt that had shook loose there wasn't one bolt i had to rack on now you may think that that's all a lot of work a lot of double work bring it in bring it out loose fat do this in the long run you're going to have a nice piece that was executed properly designed and executed as it should have been when i say preload and pre-plan here here's an example of that let me get this piece over here so you can see it oh i love this wall cabinet i can't wait to tell you about that where are you okay all right for instance this end panel right here this is the end of the galley it's the peninsula that sticks out this protrudes out into the sliding door area so this part of the wall faces out of the van this faces the passenger seat look at all of these elbow fittings i have here right i think there's one two three four five six seven eight nine ten there's ten here and the reason they're there is because i know that at some point in the future alex is going to put a beautiful piece of walnut plywood on the end of this galley module and he's going to need a place to attach it from i know he's going to do it because he's told me dad if it's wood don't touch it he handles the wood so i'm making sure that he has attachment points why so many because we're in a van a van has a varying climate by nature it's damp it's cold it's hot and i don't want this to warp plywood doesn't warp as quickly as some solid wood does but we don't want to warp so we're going to make sure it's been attached properly same thing on the back side you can see i got a a whole bunch of fittings back there now that's not to say the whole galley gets covered with plywood that's not the point of 80 20. you use your wood sparingly where it's going to be seen for instance this entire face is going to be made up of doors and drawer faces that's it backs are open sides are open floors open that's the whole point in 80 20 is uh you can you can shed some weight by not using plywood box construction you ever heard me say that before this is a wall cabinet and this is almost eight feet long almost eight feet long and it's one single unit and it's it's the same shape and size all the way down so what you're going to have inside is an uninterrupted sight line down that passenger side of the van and the reason i'm bringing that up now is because in the future when we're watching that van tour video i'm going to mention the fact remember back here on the table when i built this this is why that uninterrupted sight line is so important aesthetically speaking it's going to be beautiful now here's a for instance you see this connection where this okay you can't see that all right hold on a second okay now you can see this right all right this runs down into the top of this one now i used an elbow in here right can you see that i could have used a bridge plate right that would have served the same purpose it would have made the connection but i also know that at some point my buddy alex is going to come in here and put a beautiful walnut end panel on the side of this cabinet now if i put my mounting apparatus here it's in the way of his end panel so in designing and putting this together you need to understand in this case this end panel has to be clean and unobstructed so that piece of plywood can fit on here nice now right here i can put in a connection point for that plywood and i can put one in here but look this is a captive channel and i need to put a connection point here so because i have not tightened up with loctite just yet it's going to be nothing for me to loosen this up and slide in the proper elbow another thing that you want to take a look at here now i got to bring it down the other end no i think i can bring this to you the way i got this designed i'm going to use the channel in the 80 20 for the floor of my cabinet and that also acts as the bottom of the cabinet on the outside see i'll cut a piece of plywood i may wrap it i may put it in i may put stainless steel on it over the the stove area but it fits inside the groove it's a very pretty look underneath uh the problem is i cannot put recessed lighting under this cabinet so i will have to put some sort of a strip light led strip light which is fine that's fine you got to really think about how you're connecting these channels up front here i had to use a different type of connector here's the type of connector i had to use up front this is an internal connector it slides in that way and then you can put your next profile like that and it's basically it's buried in there it's with a little set screw and allen key it's not very strong it's not the strongest connection so you don't want to use it where you need to bear a lot of load or a lot of weight but there are certain areas where you want to use that and this is one of them for instance let me take you over here on the fly so you can see it you see it in there and now that is because i have to use my channel for my floor so i'm going to just notch that out and then my wood can go in this channel and then this channel just notch it right out so that's a good use for that type of a connection touching wherever the 80 20 touches the chassis [Applause] you want to make sure that you interrupt the touch with a piece of rubber in a case like this wall cabinet this entire rear plate is going to run along the chassis and be connected to it so you get a nice long piece of rubber and you'll screw right through it you've interrupted the thermal transfer of heat and cold from metal to metal with the rubber speaking of touching and making connections you really have to make sure that your 80 20 is bonded or grounded to the chassis of the van now you could say that we're drilling through and we're screwing all the 80 20 to the chassis in some fashion and ironically if you did that correctly where you drill a hole and then you spray paint it cover the bare metal you've now broken the ground connection there will be no good ground connection there you need bare metal so what i do i actually make my own grounding straps and all this is it's very simple it's a real clean solid connection from the 80 20 to the chassis now unfortunately for some of you who freak out every time i take the paint off the van you have to do that with ground connections you've got to make that connection on bare metal so this is something you can make this up you can buy a grounding strap or you can just make sure that one of your your good uh elbows make sure one of them is on a bare metal where it attaches to the van chassis and you'll be fine but the grounding wire should be of a gauge that can handle the full potential of what might short out for instance if i had my if i had my inverter 3000 watt inverter on here with a that's got the potential for 300 this wire's got to handle 300 amps and it won't this is only eight another thing i would suggest uh obviously you use stranded wire throughout the van do not put stranded wire under a nut it's just not a good connection you need to use i'm adjusting my camera here you need to use what's called a ferrule not feral like a feral cat ferrule that takes all of your strands puts them inside a an aluminum sleeve and now you bear down on that you've got a 100 connection there isn't a wire in the van that doesn't have a ferrule on one end or a terminal full ring terminal not uh not a spade not the fork terminal full ring should be done you've got to ground every one of these aluminum modules to the van very important the one more thing i got to show you look at this thing what the hell is this what is this a pipe no no no no this is my mock-up for my wall cabinet i do this frequently i'll get a few small pieces of profile of 80 20 that are the actual pieces that i want to use in my wall cabinet i cut these to the lengths that i think are going to be appropriate and then i dry fit these in the van come on i'll show you see this i got some screws i mounted in the back of this plate this is the long two inch plate those correspond with the holes i'm going to use to mount and this is how i arrived at the proper length for each of these pieces you know nothing's level in a van but if you ever see cabinets sometimes they're slightly off they look down or they look up sometimes it's a style maneuver but sometimes it's also a mistake so this is how i got to where i wanted to be with this now i applied those cuts to the full and now once i get my rib nuts in boom you

Channel: Humble Road

Views: 234,434

Keywords: humble road, #onahumbleroad, promaster, promaster van build, floor plan, 8020, George, 3500 extended, class b van, class b camper van, motorhome, van life, #vanlife, full time, full time van life, full time van living, galley in a van, promaster galley, fresh water tank, webasto, van studio, isotemp, stainless steel shower pan, custom shower pan, nomad, advanced rv, van build, custom van, sprinter, sprinter van, van shower, van ideas, floor plan ideas, insulation, van insulation

Id: _AhHhmyphu0

Length: 21min 35sec (1295 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 13 2020