(G)rape Vanning

Holy fucking shit, I cut a giant hole in the van today (well, 14"x14"). Talk about a moment that will make you second guess yourself over and over and over and over.

Anyway, that means the fan is in! It actually went pretty well outside of the fact that I have a Ryobi jigsaw and despite the fact that it takes "T-Attach" blades, it didn't quite sit in the saw right. I guess it's my bad that I didn't check that before I had already drilled holes in the 4 corners of the fan hole. Went to Home Depot and they didn't have anything that would fit either. I ended up trying it with the lock "mostly" on.

Got some pictures of some of the updates. I think the next few steps will make it really start looking more finished. I'll be adding the ceiling, floors, electrical, and cabinets.

Still have to finish the insulation around the roof in the section the fan went in, as well as where we're considering a window. We ended up using wool for the hard to insulate areas like the ribs. That's also still in a work in progress, as I'm doing it in conjunction with conduit (only ran one so far, from top back corner to bottom corner behind the driver seat).

Passenger swivel seat (and the rough cut reflectix window covers; will eventually add backing fabric with magnets on the edges):

Upper rib with wool insulation. There's 1/2" conduit behind it.

Added furring strips to the walls. They're bolted in with 2" bolts. Used 5/16" rivnuts and bought a $60 "Astro Pneumatic Nut Setter." Thing works fucking amazing once you figure it out. And I'm also not entirely sure how you'd even do a van build without either rivnuts or plusnuts. Most of the ribs you attach stuff to have no rear access, so it's the only way I can tell to attach shit. The blank spot on the wall is where we want a window, just not sure exactly where (also means cutting more holes).

And finally, the fan. The wood around it is kind of janky (it measured correctly on the ground, not sure where it went wrong). It'll all be covered by the ceiling though, so not a big deal. It's mostly there just to give the screws that go through the fan and roof something to bite into (and also not leave jagged screw ends sticking out of the ceiling).

How much weight is all this adding?

So far not much. The insulation weighs almost nothing. Probably less than 10 lbs for all of it.

The wood we'll be using 1/4" plywood when we can (probably on walls and ceiling, if I can find it). Most of the cabinets will be 1x3's and 1/2" plywood. Floor was 1/2" plywood. Battery we're going with a lithium so that's only like 25 lbs (50 if we upgrade to two).

Overall, I'm going to say it'll probably be under 1000 lbs extra, fully loaded (not including people). Considering it's a RAM 2500, it'll be fine.

More than total weight, I'm more concerned with balancing between the left and right side (not as much axles, as I think that'd be impossible to load the front up much). The electrical will go on one side, and water tanks (fresh and grey) will go on the other.

Super behind on what I've been up to. Wife helped me put in some vinyl flooring. Our original thought was laminate, but vinyl is pretty waterproof so we did that instead. Framed up the lower half so that I could build the bed, as I wanted the walls to be finished there so I wouldn't be trying to work under it. I also needed the wall framed out for the electric.

Photos I have are from a while ago. The cabinet is "complete" outside of the facing and doors, but I'm actually going to rebuild it with 3/4" plywood. I went with 1/2" for weight, but it's just not super sturdy. At the moment I've got a 100 amp lithium battery, fuse box, battery isolator, charge controller, and inverter hooked up. Have the fan and two lights also hooked up, but they're in an unfinished state since the ceiling isn't up.

The bed is also complete. I'll have to take pictures of the electrical cabinet and bed. I've also been dicking around with adding wool insulation and covering it with 1/4" plywood covers.


Anyway, about two weeks ago we spent 2 nights in Joshua Tree. Didn't get nearly as cold, although part of that is because it's just...less cold there. Having lights was fucking awesome.

That shit is awesome. I want to spend a night in your van.

No homo.

My wife and I built a camper van/ moto/MTB trailer .. We used the same pattern vinyl flooring. You are cool and you grape van is cool. We went away for the weekend with the kids, it so nice just throwing a couple of bags of cloths in and driving away.