My simple interior build

[E-350]

Hey guys

After taking care for the exterior with my big repaint project, it is now time to work on my interior of my 2006 5.4 E350 EB.

When I initially bought the van early Covid I took out 10 of the 14 seats and replaced the carpet style floor with a sandwich of Styrofoam, ¾” plywood and a rubber diamond floormat up to the driver/ passenger seat.
I also added a quick and cheap “podest” where we could put our air pads and sleep.
Now all that cheapo wood studs I used for the podest started to squeak more and more and the regular wood screws (taking them in and out) didn’t make it better. I was also annoyed by the space the regular plastic trims take up space, that would reduces the bed width and head space.
Another issues I had was all stuff loaded under the podest jumped up and smashed down on bumpy trails.

Means:
I had to rethink the interior!

My general plan:
I need a simple build that fullfills 2 main purposes:
1. 2 people need to sleep in the van and my camping stuff needs to fit
2. I need to be able to easily remove the interior whenever I haul stuff (rounds of wood, wood sheets in 4x8 size, put bikes into the van, …)

I don’t need a kitchen, don’t need shelves or anything around “bathrooms”: a) we’re here in sunny California and b) we’re always cooking outside, don’t spend time in the van beside driving.

So all that said the basic idea came up quick:
- Remove all plastic trim and the stock headliner
Provides ~4” in width + 4” head space due to the rear A/C ducting integrated in the headliner
- “semi permanent” boxes over the wheel wells, so wide spaced, that a 4x8 sheet fits in
- Access point to the boxes so I can store recovery rope, jumper cables, spare parts in one box and can store dirty cloths, jackets or whatever we “might perhaps need” during the trip in the other box
- Easy to remove bed panel in between
- Tracks everywhere to tie down anything we carry: L-Tracks on the floor & bed frame out of 1” 80/20 extruded aluminum profiles
- Lower the floor:

Before:
Van floor + 1” tall brackets for the single seats
¾” Styrofoam on top
¾” plywood on top

After:
Van floor without brackets
No Styrofoam anymore (as we don’t do winter camping)
½” plywood
Savings: 1 ½”

- “sliding 2nd row seats”
Use L-Tracks and an adapter to move seats back- and forward

At the day of this post I’m far from being done. But I have a basic idea where I want to go and will improvise along the way :-) The latest picture is still showing the “mock up phase” and I will provide more details to most of the steps when I finally install everything. But I was motivated by motovan’s UJOR 4x4 MTB camper update that I wanted to share my status.

As an example: I haven’t figured it out yet, but will for sure add a small storage on the head liner at the driver/ passenger seat. I also plan on integrating my compressor/ locker buttons and eventually I need some lights (interior/ exterior) that will also find their switches up in the headliner.

I also need to figure out exactly how to route the rear A/C and heater further to the front, whereas this will be a simple setup. Routing of the A/C will just go up where it used to be, but then most probably being ducted in the driver top corner forwards the end of the bed/ second row.

As you can see: I’m not CAD’ing it, but more start walking and plan along the way :-D

So let’s get to work and have fun reading!

Step 1: Everything out!
I took out all trims, headliner from front to back. The insulation left on the ceiling was “my first job” years back and it will stay.

[E-350]

Step 2: Body mounts
I will never touch that floor again and therefore I thought it’s a good idea to replace the body mount.
So I ordered all the mounts and started. Didn’t take pics, but here are the basics. Keep in mind I’m in CA so not much corrosion to expect!

General:
- One side after the other

Removing the bolts:
- First shot was always an impact wrench and it typically worked well
- If the bolt didn’t move I moved over to a breaker bar and this solved again 80% of the cases
- If the breaker bar wasn’t enough I used a torch and then the bolt came out
- Finding: driver side was easier than passenger side
--> Didn’t have any relevant issues


Removing the bottom part (washer/ nut):
- This turned out to be more difficult than removing the bolts
- Finding: difficulty driver vs. passenger confirmed. Looks like the heat of the exhaust corrodes the passenger side stronger than the driver side
- We had different approaches:

Easiest/ first:
use old bolt, turn it in by 2-3 threads, BAH and most of them came out with that (all driver side + 2-3 passenger)

Intermediate/ second option:
for some it wasn’t enough because it was too stuck and/ or the bolt wasn’t long enough to fully push out the bottom part
what we did was cutting the bottom rubber out, holding the top part with pliers and rotating the bottom parts. To knock it out we used a long nail (like a tent nail), grinded the head so it barely fits the inside of the top part and used the BAH again
--> this was still an easy and quick solution and worked well for those mounts you can easily access by angle grinder

hard/ third option:
angle grinder…
after options one and two I had one mount left, that I had to cut. Was a bit finicky, but worked well :-)
For the 2 in the front you don’t have a nut at the bottom. It’s just screwed from in from the top.
Removing the bottom part, you had to remove the power steering fluid reservoir on the driver side and the battery box on the passenger. Then you could access the bolt with a long extension.
The bottom part tends to rotate when removing the bolt, so we used an old leaf spring “to clamp it” and then it worked.

General learning:
Torch helps a lot for the Loctite, but not as much for the press fit connection between upper and lower mount mount part

Removing the tank:
- 1 body mount driver side can’t be accessed without removing the tank, so we lowered it
- Generally easy going, car jack, removing braces, take off hoses to gas fill port, remove 1 connector and it’s on the ground


Lifting the van chassis and swapping the upper part:
- Super easy, jack it up, slide the old out, slide the new in, done
- Car jack + a foot long piece of a 4x4
- Don’t be surprised: while you’re pumping up the whole van moves up before the chassis lifts from the mounts (springs are relaxing…)
- Caution: doing it with the 4x4 as extension might not be the safest way :-D but it worked well keeping in mind that the 4x4 will start tilting the higher you go. You just “balance” this before you start lifting by tilting the 4x4 in the other direction first…
- We lifted three times: once behind the rear axle between the 2 mounts, once fairly in the middle between the axles, once right behind the front axle
- Hint: the front mount has a kind of oval “seat”. The upper mount part is made with a plastic “disc” (once you have it in your hands, you’ll know what I mean). For me this didn’t fit exactly and I sanded it all around slightly. Still didn’t slide in fully by hand, but the rest was done with the weight of the chassis!

Parts I used:
- Dorman 924-055 for the front one (so 2 in total)
- Dorman 924-056 for all others (so 12 in total)

Watch out: all I read/ heard said I need 924-057 for number 5 (counting from front to rear), but for me this wasn’t true! All my mounts (beside the front you access after removing the bumper) were exactly the same. So I could only finish the job 2 days later after I ordered 2 more 924-056!

Here’s just a single picture of the mount driver side. The passenger was more corroded, but by far not to the extend you might see on youtube :-D

[E-350]

Step 3: Layout of floor tie down system

I decided to use L-Tracks for the two seats in the 2nd row as well as “in the cargo area”.

For the cargo area I decided for one lengthwise splitting the area 1/3 vs. 2/3 left to right , then one track across ~1m from the rear doors (length of our camping chairs :-D) and one track comes across at the end of the bed.

After quite some measuring and thinking about flooring (more to that later) I laid down the tracks and drilled all holes through the van floor and I used every single hole the L-tracks provided (every 4”). Some went into the slope of the floor ribs, but worked well using a step drill bit.
The holes were immediately cleaned up and sprayed with zinc spray to avoid corrosion.
All bolts are M8, 10.9 HEX countersink (10.9 will not make a difference in strength for a countersunk bolt, but it’s increasing the wear resistance for the hex) with nylon nuts and a 3mm thick washer. As this is not the seats and I tie down firewood or similar, that will provide enough strength!

The US Cargo Control tracks only have a ¼” hole, so all holes were to 8.6mm and countersunk accordingly. Other suppliers provide bigger predrilled holes, so this is no issue.

For the seats I used 4x 60cm pieces. This gives me 6 M8 bolts per track, 12 per seat and therefore enough safety on that end. The seat tracks partially needed to positioned in the valley of the ribs, so I used ¼” aluminum plates underneath to a) have metal to metal all the way through and b) level out the height for the plywood flooring.
On the seat cut outs on the floor I also added the end caps for the L-tracks so it look nice eventually.

As “washer” I reused the former seat brackets. They’re 3 mm thick steel and I could cut them in a way, that for both seats I now have huge “washers” that at least span across 2 bolts, but (where possible) even connect both tracks on the seat and combine up to 4 bolts! This increases the friction area a lot and also distributes the forces much better than the 1x1” washers that were used before.
The steel brackets were properly primer with a zinc containeing primer + coated with 3 layers of bedliner.
Once the final install has taken place I will additionally treat the zinc bolts/ nuts again!

[E-350]

Step 3: Flooring

I think this step is shown in so many videos and report, that I don’t have to go in detail.
I made a template of the floor, cut out the area where the L-tracks go. The former seat bracket locations will be used to additionally secure the floor from vibrating and in addition close the existing holes in the van floor.
Then I cut the rubber flooring to fit each floor board and test fitted it.

As mentioned above the floor is ½” plywood. When I did it the first time some years back I thought I need the stability and chose ¾”, but now I don’t think this way anymore…

[E-350]

Step 4: Seat mounts

The seats I have right now and not perfectly suitable for the tracks so I made an adapter using a 1 ¼” square tube with 2.5mm thickness and drilled the access hole for all bolts. Pictures say more than 1000 words :-)
Not super comfortable to move the seats back and forth, but possible until I have finally decided to invest in new seats. Most probably I’ll go with the smart leg of AMF Bruns, that nicely clamps down over a longer area and is easy to move.
Smartleg - AMF-Bruns of America (amfbrunsamerica.com)

[E-350]

Step 5: ceiling

I had already glued some insulation to the ceiling in the past and decided to keep it. Main reason for me is not insulation but noise cancelling. I’m not willing to pay so much money on the killmat or others and for me this is good enough.
I have not yet decided on where to put light and whatever, but the basic setup is done. I’ll be using multiple panels, each sized to fit from one roof support to the next. And those panels will not be directly screwed in, but I’ll use a metal strip than clamps them down. This way positioning and aligning is easier and I will have multiple locations to hang a magnetic lamp, to add a small thread to hang a jacket or similar.
I’m using ¼’ plywood, will use some putty for the main “damages” on the surface and eventually cover it with a foam and then a textile layer, once all interior is “mechanically done”.

Will post pictures later.

[E-350]

Step 6: Bed and side boxes

This part took most of my thoughts as I on the one hand want being able to load 4x8 sheets and on the other hand didn’t want to waste too much wood for the bed itself.
The decision on 80/20 came quite quick and ¼” paneling on the frame was also set.
The horizontal part of the bed panels are ½” and I’ll be adding two 1” 80/20s below. I’m not convinced this will provide enough stability, but let’s see.

Following to the design:
The L-tracks splits the cargo area 1/3 to 2/3 and is 5cm wide. With 122cm (4’) width of a sheet I needed at least this. So I decided on 125 space at the bottom rail of the box and added another rail at the top that only has120cm spacing in between.
This way my bed panel have 1cm each side to lay on the rail + 2 80/20s per panel. Each panel is 70cm deep so that I come out to 210cm length of the bed (7’).
The 80/20 under the panels will sit on a bracket of the side boxes and this will later be the point where I attach them with any kind (don’t know yet) of easy to remove handle so that I don’t need tools to take them out.
The height of the boxes and podest fits our cooler as well as the typical black storage boxes with the yellow lid and I don’t need more. This provides max. height when being in bed.

The boxes are attached to the floor with self made aluminum brackets and T-nuts from under the ¼” plywood floor.

On the wall I added 5 steel brackets using rivet nuts and also added a first side wall panel.

This goes up a little over the podest. I’m planning to add another kind of track/ attachment points to also secure whatever we transport on the bed.

This will roughly be the final setup and is the status as of now.

[rpoole]

I really like the the thoughtful, multi-purpose approach to the build. I don't have the luxury of a dedicated build, the van occasionally has to earn its keep doing other chores.

[campism]

Here's a simple bed build I was working on when I sold my Dodge project.

There's one IKEA Skorvo bed support (this hangs on body interior edges on the left and right sides--I was planning to use three of them) and a wood plank mocked up, then the IKEA bed pieces I got free off CL, then one of the memory foam mats from our VW Westy.






It looks like enough room for a permanent bed with good storage and space for other living and is easily removable when you need an empty van.

[E-350]

Yeah, saw those IKEA setups, but eventually decided against it as I was afraid it rattles [emoji23] so chose the “bolt on 80/20 version”

Just waiting for sound proofing mats coming in today to finish the floor. Did the rear wheel wells and 2nd row area yesterday, finished the floor and bolted the seats back in.


Hope the floor is finished by tomorrow evening and then I can install the side boxes + bed panels.