September 14, 2020 by Eric Weaver

#2 Van Build – Gutting The Van

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This van is a 1997 Ford Econoline-150 conversion van with the 5.4 Triton v8. It started out with a full interior, 4 total captain chairs and a bench that turns into a bed. Also had a second rear stereo that would turn on but didn’t work, or I just couldn’t figure it out. In the top of the front it had a broken tv with dvd player.

The first thing I did to the van once we got it registered was fix the rear door latch. The passenger side would open but not the driver side door. The cable that is used to open the door was stretched out to much to pull on the latch. To fix this I took some para-cord and tied it around the latch and ran it through where the handle is, so to open the door you pull on the ropes. Once both rear doors could open I took out the rear bench and seats. Carpet was the next thing to go. We ended up taking out the side panels too but only the sections below the windows. This allows for more space and we are going to build our own panels that will be functional and take up less space. Since the tv and stereo were broken and not needed for our van I took both of them out. Both of these had so many unnecessary wires. While I gutted the van Brooke painted all the wood trim pieces white to brighten up the inside.

Once we got all of that striped out I need to fill some holes from the seats and seat belts. To do this I used JB weld which I have never used before so I’m sure it could have turned out better than I had done. To start it I used a sander and sanded down the spot to remove all the old glue from the carpet and to clean up the spot. After that I followed the instruction on the packaging and filled the spots. I went over it with spray paint primer to cover any spots I sanded down to bare metal.