The building process begins..

The beginning was daunting to say the least. Great, we have a van…now what?

There was lots and lots of planning. We spent hundreds of hours watching YouTube videos, exchanging emails, doing drawings, and reading everything we could. But at some point you just have to start. We had to get the van ready.

We knew we needed to remove the partition so after a quick sweep of the dirt, it was removed. Wow what a difference!

After…

No partition!

Now a rear view mirror installed, windows, fan, heater, flooring, insulation, interior prepared, etc. Just like a we did in life, they were baby steps at first, but at least a start.

Removing the Partition

We knew from the beginning we did not want a partition. We even tried to sell it back to the person we bought the van, but there was no interest. It came out relatively simply (less than an hour) and it was quickly listed. What a difference it made…some good and some bad.

The good: It opened up the van considerably. We could now install a rear view mirror to be able to see behind us. We had not even considered there was no rear view mirror, but there was not. A few quick searches and one was sourced quickly. If you have a Promaster and are in the same boat, here is what we got. Cheap and made a big difference.

I will say that removing the ‘button’ on the window was a bit of a challenge as I did not know how it was attached. In the end, grabbing it with channel lock pliers and twisting is what was needed. It was held on with adhesive.

More of the good included being able to install swivel seats for additional seating. Check out the separate blog on this. There were some things that we did not see addressed anywhere and want to pass along some food for thought.

The bad: The noise level while driving went WAY up. It was alarming how noisy an empty van was. Even bought a decibel reader to fact check our concerns. It was loud. When riding with someone, we had to speak loudly…just short of shouting. We had a major concern about this and it drove us to install soundproofing. See the soundproofing blog for more details. In the end though with everything installed, there was nothing to worry about. If we were to do it again, Erik would not do the soundproofing, but Carolyn said she would, at least over the wheel wells.

Another ‘bad’ was the van was being converted in Texas. It gets hot in Texas. The divider made the cab area very cool in the Texas heat. Without it, the AC was trying to heat the entire van. It was not too successful.

Next step - windows:

The next step was to install windows. We wanted lots of light and the only windows in the cargo area of the van were the ones on the back door. Check the windows blog page to read more about this nail-biting procedure.