Budget Van Conversion | Ford Econoline $3000!

[Music] there it is it's your classic kind of line work vine dime a dozen it's dirty and it's gonna need a little cleaning that's where we're gonna start [Music] okay we got all the uh we got all the construction shelves pulled out it wasn't too bad this morning and we're giving it its first clean oh yeah coming off cleaning right up dude like brand new and we're done with it the first edition there's a new seat covers we got always one of these massage beads got those going all right so now it's coming out once i got the radio out and i just used a couple flathead screwdrivers here [Music] now we're just gonna use a seven millimeter screwdriver again send it in let's see if we can get some gauges working on our van visually it's still very dirty cleaning up this armrest starting to tear out some of the trim pieces [Music] all right we got the floor all cleaned up okay we got the sound ending installed next we're gonna do the ute uh floor underlayment and then carpet jute um i got the track cleaned out a little bit more found a bunch of nails and some saw blades yeah there's what came out of the track right there [Music] so i wish i wouldn't have used the uh template because i think i could use a bit more in places like that in that corner all right so i got the carpet super rough cut using the old template outside and now i'm going to use an x-acto blade and try to cut off the edges so that it matches up perfectly [Music] hey that's what it looks like brand new carpet looks like it just came out of the factory installed here [Music] so [Music] refinishing the rack so basically just ground off some of the rust with a wire brush and a drill and repainted it with some rest reformer and black spray paint on amazon the nice thing about these agm ones is they're sealed so you don't have to worry so we just got this uh cardboard template cut out here and this is what we're gonna use to trace onto the one-inch foam and then probably just use the one-inch phone to trace onto the plywood for fitting it in here around all the four features there's the tracks for the car seat second seat we're gonna install there are already installed oh figured out this insulation knife is actually the best tool for cutting this insulation so we got all the uh subfloors fitted in here so there it is again one inch of polyiso foam over with the uh half an inch plywood over the top of that and we got the seat fitted so over here the feet are gonna sit in there and this will be able to get covered up by the vinyl flooring so that's pretty slick shouldn't trip over that too much at all floor is all bolted on here so there there it is t-nuts and they're just countersunk in so that they're level um so that we can put the vinyl flooring on now and we did uh four t-nuts in the larger panels and two in that smaller back panel [Music] [Music] [Music] got the vinyl installed pretty good look even better over here in the front i used uh this hemlock molding to make a uh threshold over the flooring here and kind of lock the floating floor down so that worked out really well so i got these uh frames built three of them um most of the structural support is going to come from the two by threes here and these are just kind of laterals to hold hold the support together over here is going to be the battery box and electronics area so i'm going to make a hinge that opens up here i think the next step here is to make a frame that goes along here for that hinged area so i'm gonna have to make two more little frames here all right so we kind of taped out over there where the sink is gonna go and then we got the bed frame in these frames are bolted in on the sides above the wheel wells and in the center frame it's kind of its own unit and we're just letting the wood glue dry on these two by two cross beans so we got the bed frame installed and we got the little doors done so just put some hinges on these side parts and over here we've got the jack and jack sand and some tools and on this side i put in all the electrical yesterday which well actually the last two evenings after work i spent two very full evenings installing all the electrical it's a relatively simple electrical system we just got our agm deep cycle battery over here we've got a battery isolator coming from the alternator that's coming from this four gauge wire up here that goes all the way up to the starting battery and then i got my lights and some in the fan wired up as well as a inverter i'll do a separate video with more detail on how i did this electrical installation so anyway that's all on that side here i just had to build this little cabinet so that i could mount the inverter and the light switch and things like that they needed somewhere to mount so i went ahead and built this little cabinet and this is where our dishes are going to be stored i'll probably put some cabinet doors on the front of this it's basically just a 1 by 2 with half inch plywood trying to keep it light with the pocket screws holding it all together so here we're just gonna make this little cabinet for the water system and uh right now what i'm doing is uh drawing how they're gonna go against the back here so you kind of have to take it in small steps you can either scribe along the contoured surface with a compass where you have one straight edge along the surface or you can just kind of draw little bits and cut them off as you go show me the pencil okay so i'm just going to cut off just a little bit just to get it in there a little easier [Music] so i'm going to start doing paneling so i'm going to use 1 8 inch it's called luon or kind of a plywood to panel everything and that way it doesn't waste up much space because we're trying to keep everything really tight as much as we can against this more concerned about space than looks so we're going to use that for the paneling so the hardest part is going to be cutting it out so that it fits over all these contours and things in here so that's going to take the most time so i'm going to start out with a four foot by five foot panel and then just make little templates out of this paper board for some of the contoured shapes that i need to cut out of it and it'll probably take a couple times bringing it in and out of here to get it fitted just right um the nice thing with this ford van is the width from this ledge here is exactly four feet so i'm hoping that i can just use the width of the board because they're four by eight sheets to set in here and not have to make that cut at all so hopefully that'll make it a little bit easier a bit faster that one bag turns into a lot more right here and it's growling [Applause] smells like ohio okay so we got the first panel fitted up here and uh looks pretty good so we kind of just opted to hot glue we just used some dabs of hot glue to hold the sheep wool insulation up and then stuffed it in where we could we did the same thing behind this panel so it's just hot glued on there and the panel is really going to be what holds it on there so now we're going to use some self-tapping screws um some short ones look like these there's a self-tapping screw that's what we're going to use to uh hold it on um probably just you know five or six of those holding it onto the metal frame back there a couple other things we got the brackets sticking out of the paneling that's where the sink is gonna be held on and then we just yeah contour it around everything else so that it fits in there pretty nicely took a few times of bringing it in and out okay so for the roof we did uh the string trick to hang up the insulation it's not perfect we're hoping the panel so we cut panels to go along these frames right here so hopefully the panel will kind of push it back up into place and then you just want to make sure your wires are hanging through so i cut holes for the lights and then the wires will be hanging through those holes all right let's try to put the panel up finish wall ended up moving the bracket on top of the wall which made a lot of sense and uh yeah it looks pretty good i think each one is only held in by one two three four five six seven or eight um self tapping screws so it didn't really take much to hold them on and they're really solid and it's not they're not gonna be weight bearing or anything so they're just free looks [Music] okay we got the lights all strung up here oh this one right there update here we're working on the upper cabinet here so i got these cabinets all finished and now we're going to be installing one up here so most of the weight is going to be hanging on these and these are just strips of wood three-quarter inch wood that i put up here with some uh longer self-tapping screws self-drilling screws and so those are gonna mesh in with the cabinet i'll show you here in just a minute so those wood strips that are already installed in the van are going to be used to attach to this piece of wood along the back of this cabinet just with wood screws and that'll make it easy to come in and out and then i've got some other uh wood strips down there to put a few more screws into and i think i'm gonna do one more on top here and then i'm going to put the face on and shellack it and finish it up the other little cabinet that's going to go next to that one down [Music] we ended up spending just over three thousand dollars converting our van into a camper so grand total is just over six thousand dollars for our simple camper van our next episode will be the final tour of the finished van please like and subscribe you

Channel: Find Out

Views: 658,412

Rating: 4.8939066 out of 5

Keywords: Cheap, easy, vanlife, #vanlife, camping van, old school, Ford

Id: lRsOAsUETiQ

Length: 17min 49sec (1069 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 30 2020