Alpha Van: The Ultimate Ford E-350 Overland 4x4

[MUSIC PLAYING] Hi. I'm Chris from Ujoint Offroad in Fletcher, North Carolina. This is a 2003 E-350 7.3 diesel van that we call Alpha Van. We built it specifically for a customer of ours out of Colorado to his specific needs. This van has a 7.3 diesel built by Swamp's Diesel in Tennessee. It dynoed at 435 horse. That was a conservative number. Our number-one goal was reliability, because this vehicle sees a lot of back road travel in Baja, Mexico to Colorado to BC to here in North Carolina. So reliability was our number-one goal. We did a full front mount intercooler, which this is the first that I've seen a full front mount intercooler on a 7.3 van with no body lift. It's got a BTS transmission to hold up to that power. We literally took this van down to the bare metal. The chassis is completely powder coated. We basically built it and then took it all apart, blasted and coated everything, and then reassembled. The high top is from a company in California called Fiberine, and then we built a custom roof rack on top of that. And then once we were finished, the van went to Sportsmobile in Texas to get a full interior build. So for the travel that this customer does, we obviously did our four-wheel drive conversion on it. We build all of our four-wheel drive components in-house at our shop in North Carolina. This van has our six-inch lift spring suspension under it, so custom spec springs in all four corner, dual shock towers with Fox 2.0 reservoir shocks. We've got duals up front-- singles in the rear. It's got an NV271 T-case, 1350 CV driveshafts front and rear. The front axle is what we call our Stage II front axle, so it's a Dana 60. It has a Detroit Truetrac, 4.10 gears, and it has our RSC upgrade. Our RSC upgrade is basically from the knuckles out are all Dynatrac parts, so it has 14.5-inch diameter rotors off a F-550. 35-spine axle shafts-- all the cool stuff that everybody wants-- crossover steering. The rear axle is a Sterling 10.5 out of a Super Duty truck that we welded and packed with an ARB Locker and 4.10 gears. Tires are a 35x12.50 17 Nitto Ridge Grappler. We've got KMC wheels, 17x9. In the back, you can-- here's a good view of the Aluminess bumper, the deluxe box, and the 1Up bike tray. There's a lot of storage built in. Here you can see our under-floor storage, which is good. We cut out the spare tire cross member, and then we put what we call a little basement in the back of the van. There's more storage in the rear bumper from Aluminess. You can see our rear OBA port, the four-inch reverse lights-- we've got a camera up there and a Rigid diffused six-inch light. The interior-- so the spo-- Sportsmobile has a lot of options with their interiors. This is I guess considered-- it's an RB-50 layout, but it's a little bit customized for this customer's exact needs. He doesn't have all the bells and whistles in it, just because he's had then before and he never used them. So it's a sofa, it's a bench that turns into a bed-- he's got a sink and a fridge and just a lot of storage in here. Because this rig sees such varying loads with gear and sometimes towing, we do have our rear overload airbag system on it. It has a-- it's tied into the OBA system and it has an in-cab control under the steering wheel that you can control each airbag individually. Got dual ladders from Aluminess also so you can access the custom roof rack that we built in-house. The roof rack has 200 watts of solar built in. It has clearance for the Maxxair fan. It has three Rigid six-inch diffused floodlights, and we did some custom dimple-dyed aluminum flooring for the rear to hold the Maxtrax and some gear bags that the customer puts up there. [ENGINE RUNNING]

Channel: Driving Line

Views: 591,760

Keywords: ujoint off-road, 4x4 van, Ford E-350 van, 7.3L power stroke, Fiberine van tops, Sportsmobile, 4x4 van conversion, aluminess, overland van, nitto ridge grappler, overland, overlanding, overland van build, overland van conversion, overland van tour, overland van project, overland van life, off road van, off road van build, off road van 4x4, off road van tires, off road van life, 4x4 van camper, 4x4 van off road, 4x4 van life, ford 4x4 van, ford 4x4 van conversion, #PitCrewVAN

Id: jVJ1dPVoVt0

Length: 4min 41sec (281 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 24 2018