Hey Yall - I thought the day of owning a van to build out would never come but here we are. I got a lot of inspiration and info digging through these forums and I wanted to share my build with everyone in hopes it may help someone else out one day.
Here we go...After a long search, I found this local 04 E350 XLT V8 that had a past life as a mobility van. It was built out by a company in Los Angeles. They extended the rear doors, built in a frame for the high roof, put in the vinyl flooring, steel tie downs, bench seating, and did some custom interior fab'n like a wood/foam cover that molded into the factory trim paneling and a vinyl cover cargo area. It eventually was sold off to the guy I bought it from. He had dreams of building it into a camper van but ended up just sitting for years and decided to part ways with it. It needed a bit of work to be road-worthy but seemed like a good situation and checked most of the boxes. I jumped on it.
First step was cleaning out the interior, and seeing what was under this floor. I started with the plastic paneling, and then worked my way down to the floor. The floor had some steel tie down strips that were bolted through the van so had to get under to unbolt them. I wanted to scrub down the rubber matting in teh cabin area so I unbolted the seats, pulled the mat and discovered the underlayment was a bit wet. I was a little worried what I was going to find when I pulled that up, but turned out to be not too bad, just a bit of some oxidation here and there. So after treating some potential leak points, I grinded away the oxidation and coated the areas with rustoleum. While I was at it, there were some other spots throughout the van floor that I treated as well. So after a handful of weekends, I had a gutted van.
The day I bought it:
Paneling, flooring removed, helper hammocking:
After grinding away some oxidation, treating with rustoleum, and cleaning:
HALF of the junk pile that accumulated
Here we go...After a long search, I found this local 04 E350 XLT V8 that had a past life as a mobility van. It was built out by a company in Los Angeles. They extended the rear doors, built in a frame for the high roof, put in the vinyl flooring, steel tie downs, bench seating, and did some custom interior fab'n like a wood/foam cover that molded into the factory trim paneling and a vinyl cover cargo area. It eventually was sold off to the guy I bought it from. He had dreams of building it into a camper van but ended up just sitting for years and decided to part ways with it. It needed a bit of work to be road-worthy but seemed like a good situation and checked most of the boxes. I jumped on it.
First step was cleaning out the interior, and seeing what was under this floor. I started with the plastic paneling, and then worked my way down to the floor. The floor had some steel tie down strips that were bolted through the van so had to get under to unbolt them. I wanted to scrub down the rubber matting in teh cabin area so I unbolted the seats, pulled the mat and discovered the underlayment was a bit wet. I was a little worried what I was going to find when I pulled that up, but turned out to be not too bad, just a bit of some oxidation here and there. So after treating some potential leak points, I grinded away the oxidation and coated the areas with rustoleum. While I was at it, there were some other spots throughout the van floor that I treated as well. So after a handful of weekends, I had a gutted van.
The day I bought it:
Paneling, flooring removed, helper hammocking:
After grinding away some oxidation, treating with rustoleum, and cleaning:
HALF of the junk pile that accumulated
), I vacummed out the floor and did a test fit. I ended up having to do a little bit of trimming for the factory AC in the back but for the most part it was a good fit!
