04 E350 EB Build Thread

[kbeefy]

Got the dodge done...






found a little 'mouse house' in the bellhousing.






Then I put a Carli leveling kit on my F250...









Now my calander is cleared, time to start modifying thes seat bases to work in my van.

[h.grenade]

Looking good! The floor sag looks pretty scary - why would it be like that? Rust? Overloaded at some point with heavy cargo. crazy.

[kbeefy]

Work van. Must have had some heavy stuff.
There's really no rust on the van, that's part of the reason I bought it. The body bolt heads are rusty from the rubber mat that was on the floor, but that's about it.

After seeing how easy the floor was to bend I imagine some heavy stuff would beat it up pretty bad. Noone will ever see it again....

[kbeefy]

OK, back to van stuff. Seats, specifically. This took a bit longer than I expected, I had to modify or fabricate every part to make them work.


How to make these seats and swivel bases, from a 1980 E150 fit into a 2004.





Well, first the mounting holes are quite a was off between the two.
I used some angle iron to make some extension legs and redrilled some holes for the rear bolts.





That seems like it will work OK. A bunch of cutting, grinding, and drilling, a little paint and they're in.


Now what about the seat belts? There is no easy or clean way I could think of to retrofit the tensioner assemblies from the 2004 seat to the custom seats without butchering the upholstery or mounting them externally. I pulled some rear seatbelt receptacles from a 98 E150, they are different and won't work. After rummaging about for quite a while, staring at the interwebs till I had a headache, I decided to wing it.


I looked through all the vehicles I have around, even including my tractor and suzuki samurai and found that the second row seats of a 2004 suburban have a receptacle that may work.


I built some little brackets to attach the receptacle to the seat base...








No pictures of them painted, but I'll get some when I get a couple receptacles installed.


I did figure out that if you happen to loan this van to someone 7' tall, you can install the seats with the swivel backwards and get tons of legroom.
After I removed and reinstalled the drivers seat, This is what I was left with.

[kbeefy]

Got the subfloor painted and everything glued down.
I was originally going to use joining biscuits to help keep everything aligned/flat, but due to the way I cut all the pieces it would be impossible to use half the biscuits, so I bagged the whole idea. I just layed everything down and weighted it in an attempt to make everything flat. Due to the waviness of my floor, it's not perfect but it's pretty close and will suffice for me.


Oh look, most of the easily moveable heavy things in my shop...





It's pre-mature, but I was just excited to have the floor in so I decided to do a mock up placement of the big chunks. The couch is a bit larger than ideal, and the fridge wound up being bigger than expected as well. I'll have to shave a bit off a few other areas to make everything work, but I don't think anyone ever complained about having too big of a fridge or bed.





I wanted the fridge under the pop-top, but the size of the couch and the room required to swivel the drivers seat pushes the fridge back to the edge of the roof cutout. It still works, but I lost almost a foot from my original idea. I'm not sure how useful the drivers swivel will be with this floorplan, you can spin it 180 as it actualy goes under the bench, but you cant sit in it that way. At least it provides a little 'elbow room'.





I wanted to keep the bay doors clear of furniture, so I think the sink will land at the threshold. The cardboard box represents the countertop and drawers.





Since I lost some length due to the bench/swivel seat and fridge, I'm still up in the air for the rest of the drivers side. I want the microwave as high as possible, and the electrical bay on the floor. I'll see where I wind up, I suspect there will be a few cabinets in this area.





The cardboard 'countertop' will actually stop about 18" short of the box in this picture. Our portable toilet will live it that area, with a tip up countertop to cover it when not in use.

[h.grenade]

Thats a great layout - pretty similar to the sportsmobile RB30 (might be wrong on the number). Our front seat wont swivel all of the way around either because of our kitchen cabinet, but I still swivel it 90 degrees and sit there all the time.

[kbeefy]

Yeah, RB30 was what I am going for (EB30 I guess).

We had a westy style (RB50) layout in our syncro and wanted a bit more standing room in this build.

[SteelheadJones]

That is a nice, big fridge. I’ve never seen that one in a van before. Is it 12 or120v?

[kbeefy]

12v. It's a bit bigger than I expected. It was listed at 4.5cf so I was expecting something about the same size as a tf130. Oh well, if there's one place I always run out of space it's the fridge.

[Twoxentrix]

Originally Posted by kbeefy

Oh well, if there's one place I always run out of space it's the fridge.

Can't agree more!