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Old 03-18-2023, 10:07 AM   #51
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The seat looks great! Were you able to mount it on the factory bolt locations? I tried to find something similar for a "jump" seat but found that I would have to drill through the floor and reinforce it because of the position that I wanted the seat in.

Snow camping looks fun.
Thanks! Yep, it's an OEM Ford Captain's seat that came with some of the trims (chateau and another one that I can't remember the name of?). So the brackets are designed to bolt to the same holes that the bench seat brackets bolt to.

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Old 03-18-2023, 12:24 PM   #52
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Nice! Do the stock bench seatbelts work as well? I need something exactly like this... don't want to mess with transit or sienna seats if I don't have to...
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Old 03-18-2023, 03:47 PM   #53
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Nice! Do the stock bench seatbelts work as well? I need something exactly like this... don't want to mess with transit or sienna seats if I don't have to...
Yep, stock bench seat belts are compatible as long as they are from the correct generation (I believe it's broken down into pre-08, and 08+). You can see my seatbelt saga here. My van is a 2013, but these seats are from a 2006, so i'm struggling to find parts to make the seatbelts play nice.

I will also say that these OEM captain's seats were shockingly difficult to find. But in the end, when I wound up with 3 and tried to sell one, it was incredibly difficult to sell. Maybe it's because I didn't have the bracket to go with.

The OEM captain's seats are nice enough. Nothing special, but more comfortable than the bench seats, and allow the user to recline. No fore/aft slider like I had hoped.
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Old 03-19-2023, 08:05 PM   #54
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Thanks for the heads up. I wish that I knew about them back when it mattered for me haha. That ship has sailed!

I ended up cutting two buckles off of the bench seat and took it to an auto restoration guy in town. He sewed the buckles on to new web belt. It was pretty quick and easy, unlike everything else in this build!
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Old 03-20-2023, 09:07 AM   #55
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Thanks for the heads up. I wish that I knew about them back when it mattered for me haha. That ship has sailed!

I ended up cutting two buckles off of the bench seat and took it to an auto restoration guy in town. He sewed the buckles on to new web belt. It was pretty quick and easy, unlike everything else in this build!
Honestly, if I were to do it again, I wouldn't stress so much about getting a passenger van and using the OEM seat mounting points. I spent more time and money finding the "perfect" passenger van, only to be constrained by the resulting seating choices. Next time I would just buy whatever van met the drivetrain/size criteria, then bolt up some custom seats. It's not exactly rocket science to add steel backing plates and use a seat with integrated seat belts. But I was overly fixated on having an OEM (which, in my mind equated to "safe") seating setup for our kid.


In other news, we have a nice snow pile that built up in our yard from shoveling the driveway. We had a few warm days followed by some colder days, so I figured it would have iced over nicely and I might be able to drive the van on it. Well, it was certainly iced over, and the front passenger tire slid off sideways and crunched the passenger door against the corner of our garage. Had I gotten out to look where the tire was placed, I would have easily figured out what would happen. But I was "just messing around" in a casual environment and didn't bother to check my wheel placement. So now I have a nice dent in the passenger side door.



Luckily it still latches shut and the sealing surfaces don't seem to be affected. However, the window seems to be binding, and the power lock doesn't actuate any more. I'll pull the interior trim and try to push the dent out to the best of my abilities for now. Might try to source a new door from a junkyard, or take the van to a body shop to see what they would charge. Feels really dumb, but I'm glad the damage was limited to the door, and I certainly learned my lesson about letting my guard down. It seems like with every hobby, the worst injuries/accidents occur when you're just goofing around.


The next day, I met up with a huge group of Jeeps to hit some easy OHV trails nearby. The trail network is pretty flat, but the snow was deep and many Jeeps got stuck several times. The snow was packed pretty firm along the tire tracks, but just walking around I fell in waist deep several times. So I would estimate 2-3ft of snow on the ground.



Started out with 20 psi in the tires, but slid off the packed tire tracks and got stuck about 1000 ft from the trail head. Buried to the axles in dense, icy snow. Luckily the person behind me (coincidentally the only other non-Jeep) was able to yank me backwards and back onto the hardpack. From there I aired down to 12 psi and didn't have any problems moving forward. Ended up pulling out that same person at another point down the trail, so we were even. He also high centered his rear diff on a tree stump, but was able to winch himself out of that situation.



It's amazing the difference going from 20 psi to 12 psi made. I was real nervous at first about dropping the pressure that low, but there were some seasoned offroaders there who said that at my van's weight, with the Method bead grip rims, 12 psi would be no issue at the slow speeds we were going. For reference, this is what a 7800 lbs van does to 35" E-rated tires at 12 psi (photo taken on firm parking lot):

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Old 03-20-2023, 10:46 AM   #56
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That's helpful...I'm in the same boat, thinking "safety" for kids = OEM. Thinking about it more, two sienna seats so each kid has their own space, installed by me, is safer than the kids arguing about space on the OEM bench seat and distracting dad while driving!

That's a lot of jeeps!
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Old 04-08-2023, 03:26 PM   #57
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I've got a few items I want to knock out before we depart on a week long road trip through the Upper Peninsula. Some friends are getting married in Ann Arbor, and the kiddo is off from school the following week. So this seemed like a great opportunity to explore that area.

What I want to get done before the trip:
  • Acoustic/thermal insulation
  • Plywood flooring w/ L-track
  • Storage bench/sleeping platform
  • Upgrade stereo/speakers
  • Backup camera and rear-facing dash cam

Acoustic/Thermal Insulation
I began the nerve-racking process of removing all of the plastic trim pieces from the interior. This is one of my least favorite jobs because I always manage to break some of the brittle plastic clips. This time around I only broke one clip and found one previously-broken clip. Not too shabby considering how many trim pieces I had to remove.



For sound, I'm taking a belt and suspenders approach. I've seem a handful of people claim that 3M Thinsulate alone will provide sufficient acoustic insulation, but I decided to also add some foil-backed butyl sound deadener (Noico 80 mil, because I found a deal on some leftover stuff locally). Not doing full coverage like I've seen some people do, but rather ~25% coverage on the large panels. Purchased 30 sq. ft of 3M SM600L from diyvan.com (a great resource over on the Transit forum).



Plywood Flooring w/ L-track

In the rear cargo area I'm going to put in a 3/4" thick plywood subfloor w/ 1/2" XPS foam underneath and rubber flooring on top. I'm just going to let this sit on top of the factory carpet and bolt it in place using the 3rd/4th row factory seat bracket mounting locations. The L-track will be mounted only to the 3/4" plywood. I figure it will be strong enough to hold various cargo items like rubbermaid bins full of gear, but I won't be using the L-track for tying down heavier cargo like motorcycles. For that I'll be designing/building a wheel chock + tie down point solution that bolts to the 3rd row seat bracket locations.

Storage Bench and Sleeping Platform

I'm going to build a simple 2x4 mockup of a bench on the passenger side of the cargo area, which will be bolted to the 3/4" plywood floor. The bench will be ~20-24" wide and 7 ft. long to be able to sleep an adult, but will primarily be used for our kid. Initially I wanted to make it short enough such that it could be used as a couch, but that required too much of a sacrifice in the available storage height underneath. I figure we'll probably change this up a couple times before settling on something that meets our needs, hence the 2x4 mockup for now.

Stereo, Speakers, Rear Dash Cam

Nothing fancy here, but while all the trim was out I figured I should run the wiring for the backup cam and rear dash cam. Also decided last minute to upgrade the stock speakers. Will also be wiring a front-facing camera, since the head unit supports it.

Went with the Boss BV850ACP package and a mix of Polk DB 572 and Infinity REF-8632CFX speakers. Haven't installed these yet but will report back on how it all works. The main hope is to be able to hear music/podcasts/audiobooks more clearly without having to blast the volume.

Side note - Crutchfield's customer service is AMAZING.
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Old 04-11-2023, 02:58 PM   #58
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Began the process of haphazardly adding the Noico all over the van. Quickly realized that the only really nice, big panels were on the ceiling. Everywhere else is annoying, convoluted, and broken up pieces of sheet metal. As I mentioned before, I'm obviously not going for full coverage here - just trying to strategically add pieces of sound deadening at locations that seemed as though would benefit from some added mass.













Also sprayed Fluid Film (lanolin-based undercoating) in the bottom seam of all the door cavities. This is to prevent the doors from rusting from the inside out, as is so commonly seen around here. Will probably have to reapply in a few years, but it certainly won't be the annual reapplication process required by the undercarriage.

Next up is the Thinsulate. There are a handful of easy-to-access cavities in the van body, but I'm leaning towards attaching the Thinsulate to the interior trim panels instead, as described for the front doors by FarOutRide.
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Old 04-27-2023, 10:08 PM   #59
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Hey the van is looking good! Keep up the great work. Doing a passenger van is a serious pain in the ass in a lot of tiny ways. I still love having all of the windows though.

Sorry to hear about the passenger door... oof. Thats something that I would do. haha After doing a 5000 mile/6 month trip towing a trailer without issue I get home and forgot that I put the power jack down for a minute and ripped it in half with my Ram pickup. face palm.

Thanks for the heads up on 12psi w/ the methods too. I didn't realize that you could go that low.
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Old 04-28-2023, 12:53 PM   #60
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Cool, time to tease my current efforts, own thread will follow: looks like we’re at a similar stage [emoji23]

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Roughly prepped the layout already:
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Looking forward to see what you’re making out of it :-)
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