GoLucky buys a big van

Is it at your house yet?

I have no idea why I am so excited about this specific vehicle on GRM, but ya got me hook line and sinker!

Well...

There are some rust issues: like all of the seat bases. 

And holes through the floor. 

And missing pieces here and there. 
 

And everywhere.

So, in a disappointing turn of events, I am not the proud owner of this one. 
On the plus side the area is beautiful and we found a cool camp site last night.

Plus walking the dog this morning I found a new to me hammer 

I REALLY wanted to buy that wide van. It could have been half as rusty and that still might have been too much though. 

Wow.  I don't think I could have said no!  

Well done!

Bummed it didn't work out (both for you and, selfishly, for my enjoyment) but very impressed you said no.  I think all of my inhibitions would have been eliminated around the 2-hour mark and I would have made a very poor decision

After the second round of "Drive and don't buy" a different van my partner expressed some dissatisfaction with the appearance of the current van. A decision was made to spend part of our Sunday and try to improve part of the vans look. The goal was to spend a day on the project and to make it better without any super high standards. 
I started removing parts in preparation. Tail light and corner lens out in a jiffy. T15 screwdriver needed as per my previous experience. Most of the van is SAE but not everything. The door handle uses metric nuts to retain it. 

also removed mirror and lock cylinder. 
We did lots of sanding. It was hot, difficult and loud when using the electric orbital. Also did some quick rust mitigation. and 

Highly non-professional but better than the nasty mess before. 
I would have blasted some filler over the patch but my hardener is kaput. The worst part of the sanding was definitely the house paint applied with a roller white section. Did not love it. Eventually we reached a point of good enough. We blew it off with air and wiped everything down with acetone. Next we taped up the parts of the van to not paint. 
I mixed some Ace safety green and acetone and hardener. 

Spray time! 

after the first light coat we hit it again. Is it a great paint job? I think so. Despite some runs, light spots, orange peel, no body work, etc. It's still a huge improvement. 

We had fun doing a totally half ass paint job on part of a vehicle. It feels like a nice small win. 

Now you just need a USFS decal on it!

(United States Forest Shenanigans)

I personally like the idea of doubling down on Van #1.  And I dig the color! 

Sorry that Wide-One didn't work out, but my wife always tells me girth is overrated anyway... 

I pulled off the tape and started to return parts to their homes when it struck me that it would be a good time to see about fixing the stereo system. The front doors had 6x9 speakers, non-matching, and the passenger side tweeter wires were laying on the door frame. This is a probable cause of the stereo failure. 
I temporarily connected some extra speakers from my garage to test it out. Passenger side made sounds and drivers did not. Because of extra terrible install. 

When the wires are actually twisted together sounds come from both sides. Mrs. Lucky asked me if I needed anything from the superstore and I asked for 6x9 speakers. She delivered them and I started installing. some trimming of plastic mounts and screws was needed. At the end of it I had a working stereo. Mrs. Lucky brought down a CD to test that function and now I can listen to a pretty skippy Wycliffe album. The head unit install still needs attention; another deck may be moving in too but for now on regular roads it will work. 
This morning I put some tools into the van in order to pull some door replacements at the junkyard. After closing the slider, like 20 seconds later, I was photographing this broken bracket and the spring left the chat. 

The door skin is super ugly covered in rust, dents and that terrible white house paint. Ewww. The stop is also "custom" appears to be a dowel or piece of broom handle retained by a self tapper. This may be related to the bent, held on with self tappers, upper roller bracket. The roller is small enough that it moves quite a bit in the track and is super noisy going down the road. 

My morning mission was to get a better sliding door. This is what I found. The only slider in the yard for my van. Full disclosure: I knew it was there because I previously pulled the fairing that my damaged van couldn't fit. 
There was some clearly aftermarket closing mechanism. I cut the chain and then it unbolted fairly easily. 

The new slider is missing latch and handle and seems to lack power locks. Hopefully the outgoing slider can provide the missing bits. The rear door is also pretty bad on my van so I found a better one too. I transported my finds with this Suzuki yard car. 
After settling up I loaded van parts into my van. 

I am sure that both doors will need some amount of work to function, but I feel like they are better starting points. 

Last night I got started on the slider door parts swap. First up was a check of power lock actuator function. The test light between the pins on the frame lights up when the button is pushed. I used some wire scraps to connect to the door terminals. 
Works! 
I layed out the maroon door on the grass and removed all the things that I didn't want. 

There was a whole lot of evidence pointing to some real homebrew work from the closing motor mod. Mostly self tapping screws but also some weird rivets. Chop chop. 

I pulled out all of these clips and I may never use them but I kept them for now

Took off the body side fairing to allow old door to be removed. 

Next both doors off and leaned up against the van next to each other. 

I began by removing the inside handle and panel.

Next, the lock actuator 

Front pin out

I disconnected the remaining rods from the handle area. (Actuator shown connected) 

Then I took of the rear latch mechanism 

this is where things got spicy: the latch was only connected to one (lower) rod. The upper one I eventually determined closes the latch around the pin in the door frame. I'm certain this had an impact on how terrible the door was to close and some of the rattling was definitely the rod loose inside the door. I'm not sure what these things are called but the one on the handle end was present, but almost worn through. 

I jumped in the minivan and hit the parts store. I was only able to find replacement variety packs that were close. In a extra medium bout of struggling, I tried various orientations and routings of the upper rod. After a couple of hours, I got it to work by running the upper rod outside of the pass through hole for the lower rod and retaining both almost correct clips with some copper wire. 

Around midnight I got the door on enough to close and lock with the switch. Adjustments of the various parts still needed. 

Major victory!!!

I also love the pace with which you work.  

Last night a car guy friend called me from the driveway. He was driving by and saw the partial green paint and called me. I was on my way down to get started on the rear door swap so I roped him into helping. Way easier to do with two people. It did not bolt straight on. The door is from a 2000 van and mine is a 96. The change (that I know of) is the limit arm is different. I started with the arm unbolted and pushed into the door, but ended up grinding the head off the pin and removing the bracket too. 
Even with the whole thing out of the way the door was fouling on the frame side bracket for the 96 style arm. I chopped it off since it is too thin for the 2000 plastic arm and I n the way. 

With those things out of the way it still was a pretty bad fit. The body side of the hinges have some adjustability but the bolts and holes were covered with some sealer. Door off, from the body side bolts this time, and cleaned up the holes. 

Eventually we managed to get it to line up reasonably well and close. I still have to swap lock cylinders and figure out the open limit arm and power lock. Optional additional sun-project of fixing the defroster and adding the body side wiring?

With a helper around it seemed like a good time to address the slider fitment. It is on the van but the upper rear edge is not where it should be. It also does not smoothly nad easily close. we fussed around with it for a while and I broke my T40 bit trying to loosen the striker bolts. 

Slider is maybe a little worse off than before: the upper rear gap is smaller but the front of the door gap is too big and power locks no longer engage. Hard to open and close. I will have to come back to the door sub projects. 

In reply to golfduke :

Thank you. I am having fun with this van project. It will probably be in fits and starts but right now a lot is happening. 

Suspension parts for me showed up at work this morning. 

I've allowed myself the luxury of buying complete control arms instead of fighting the ball joints and bushings on the old ones. Pretty excited to upgrade the drive experience. 

Tonight after dinner and a swim in the lake I pulled all the goodies out of the old rear door. 

AND, I made an exciting discovery. My slider upper gap issue,shown in the below photo, has a likely culprit. 

The rear upper roller currently on the van looks like this when closedAnd the old one looks like this:

It appears that the lower lock mechanism is missing the catch at the end of that finger. The old one locks rigid and that is what pushes inboard on the upper rear corner. Hopefully tomorrow I will be able to combine the working parts of the two assemblies to make a good one. 

I've never heard of mixing acetone with paint. What is the theory there?

buzzboy said:

I've never heard of mixing acetone with paint. What is the theory there?

I am using an ACE hardware Rustoleum knock off oil based paint. In the can it is super thick and has to be thinned to spray .  Acetone and mineral spirits will both work with this stuff. 

This weekend was taxing. I was so excited about the sliding door upper hinge. It was an eventual win and I learned more about how it works. I started with both pieces side by side. I broke down the burgundy overspray one and then moved the good catch over from the green one. Needle bearings and bushings got treated to some waterproof grease. The roller got spray Teflon lube since I couldn't find a way to get the grease in there. 
In the end it turned into a no parts broken version of the green one. I moved the catch cam on the square post to match the way it was on the green one. 
I installed it on the van. But it didn't help the door fit at all, and the catch never engages the cam at all. I took it back off and put it together with the cam in the original burgundy orientation and now it latches when the slider is open. picture of it doing its thing.This is a very condensed version of the time consuming process. None of the adjustments helped me with the fit problem so I started measuring and eying across the front and back parts of the slider. It was sticking out because it is bent. So the donor van for the slider had a motorized chain driven closer attached plus a broken off catch... This door has seen some E36 M3. I took out the window and made a series of relief cuts. And... that sucked. The upright was also twisted some and it just wasn't working. So I marked out both doors and got busy with the angle grinder.

Now I was all the way in this. I had considered moving back to the original door, but it is also a total mess. After WAY too much time and effort I Frankensteined the two together. Much clamping and measurements were made and it actually worked. 

It is better, but still not perfect. Closing is not as straightforward as I'd like. The section between the body lines is actually a bit low when all the other parts are right.  I will keep on the lookout for an actually good sliding door but for now this one is going to have to do. I Put the glass and seal back in. Finished the long workday by moving the old latch and power lock actuator over into the red back door. Made a hinge adjustment and that door at least opens and closes nicely now. Tired from a long day of 100 degree weather and extra challenges, I cleaned up and went to bed. 
This morning I had planned to do the suspension overhaul. I switched the van to nose in and got it lifted and supported and stared taking things apart. 

And then. Uh, oh. The new tie rod ends are much skinnier than the old ones. WTF? I checked the door tag. It says 3600 lb front axles. 
This was the case across the board. All of the control arms, bearings etc. that have an option for regular or HD are too small. Wow. I guess one way to look at it is that I got a van with the HD 4000 lb axle upgrade done. It would have been nice to order the correct parts though. Fortunately, a number of the parts are the same. I did change the drag link and idler arms as well as the sway bar bushings. None of these things should need to be redone when I get the right replacement control arms. 

I wanted to put it back together so it can drive instead of just being driveway art. I had already pulled one wheel seal out and it definitely needed to be replaced. 

After two trips to the parts store (see, I can get the wrong parts locally too) I was ready to install the new seal with repacked old bearings. The bearings look good, races look good and I have replacement bearings from the parts store  but no races. I noticed on disassembly that the locknut was loose, like it spun off with my fingers, loose. I looked up the specs and it said it should be just tight enough to eliminate play. Interesting. 

Tried to press in the new seal and it was NOT happening. The lip around it is all dinged up like someone smashed it clumsily with a hammer. I spent way too long and eventually ruined my new seal. 
I did buy two but the second one was well on the way to ruination when I got serious about making it fit. 

I ground out the areas where the metal was pushed into the circle and added a bevel around the edge to help the seal start. In the end it worked and I installed the less horrible of the two brand new seals that I bought today. It got massaged some to make it hoped round enough. 
At the end of another long day of project work I did get everything back together and then finished up with some sanding before I called it quits. Returns ahead. 
 

At the very least, all of this work is going to amount to a pretty dramatically different van than when you loaded up for your first camping trip with it.  You're in the ugly phase of the project-  nothing 'looks' like progress, but you're sure gonna feel it soon enough. 

Yeah, stick with it! Cleaning up errors from the past is awful. Your commitment to getting the door right is admirable. I don't know if I would have been brave enough to start cutting and splicing but it sounds like it is working!

The Phil Wood grease caught my eye. Between that and the Bontrager and Trek boxes at work, I'm curious to know about your job. It's clearly a bike shop...are you a bike mechanic? Owner? 

Mezzanine said:

Yeah, stick with it! Cleaning up errors from the past is awful. Your commitment to getting the door right is admirable. I don't know if I would have been brave enough to start cutting and splicing but it sounds like it is working!

The Phil Wood grease caught my eye. Between that and the Bontrager and Trek boxes at work, I'm curious to know about your job. It's clearly a bike shop...are you a bike mechanic? Owner? 

Wait, you mean to tell me that not everyone has a tube of Phil Wood on their garage workbench?!?!

In reply to Mezzanine :

Bike Mechanic. This is my corner office. Tucked away out of sight so that I can get things done. 

I drove the van to help teach jumps and drops at  a MTB kids class this morning. Never hit highway speeds, but happy to report that the door 1. stayed on the vehicle and 2. was WAY quieter going up the dirt road to the trailhead. The steering felt a little bit better as well. 

Sanded off the rest of the white stripe tonight after dinner. Set up returns for the incorrect parts. 

In reply to GoLucky :

Your corner office looks pretty nice. I want a tour of your bike collection sometime. 

In reply to Mezzanine :

If you are also a bike nerd I bet you've spotted the forest of bicycles in my garage. I will try and spotlight some of the individual trees.