This would be very appealing to a potential buyer from the camper van crowd
GoLucky said:The hot mitten steaming with hand and car juices helps a lot.
Was anyone else expecting a different picture after reading that?
Also, hoses/wires/retaining clips really take on a life of their own in cold temperatures. To the point I'm convinced they're trying to be a perversely difficult as possible. That you are able to make this much progress this quickly is astounding.
I made more panels today. 
This one looked so nice. Too bad I built it wrong side out. At least it was easy to do another one correctly. 
The barn doors were plastic before, but they were also very broken and ugly. 
Now they match the rest of the lower part with f the two tone. 
I was pleased to see also that my overnight vacuum on the A/C system held. Also no trans fluid puddle. My new cordless jigsaw used for these cuts has a faulty led light so I have to exchange that.
The wood panels are a very nice update. I enjoy these "revival" type builds. This van is headed towards a whole second life after having had a full life already! As others have mentioned, your speed and resilience in this build is commendable!
So, how much for the van?
Nice job! I am a whiny little girl in the cold! You Sir are a raging polar animal!
In reply to Recon1342 :
It's not quite ready yet, are you looking for a van?
Today I put the genies back into the A/C system. 
This is the part where I would normally jump the wires on the pressure switch to run the compressor. This has three pins and didn't seem to want to be fooled. 
And yes, I did take the grille back off. The compressor has just a single wire going to it, so, 12v to that pin for the win. 
The climate control did not seem to want to run the compressor. That is maybe because it knows that it is 9F outside or some such. I turned it to defrost and it did cycle as expected. Check.
Next up, while the sun was shining. "Paint correction" Or, beer van entering rehab. Quick wash with a bucket of hot water and and an old beach towel.
RAGE! Against the decals.
Ready for your company or personal logo!
The rear bumper has those sensor things and the ones on the passenger side were inside the bumper from some previous impact. A few zip ties later. There are some around the sensors on either side of the chrome bumper.
That's my max effort for this part. Should be better than the hectic alert noise anytime reverse is used.
Wrapped up and went to the hot springs for a workout and a soak.
In reply to GoLucky :
Definitely interested-
My mom is planning to move back home to Nebraska to be with Grandma in order to help her out around the house.
The farm is 13 miles from town, and town is ~600 people.
MrsRecon has proclaimed that if we are going to be making trips to Nebraska, we will do so in a motorhome of some sort.
Requirements: Able to carry six passengers. Ideally will sleep two and fit a cassette-type toilet. Storage for cooking gear (we cook outside). Room for additional gear- tent for the kids, sleeping bags, etc.
Looking at the space available in your NV1500, I could pretty easily come up with the right combination of things to check off most everything on that list...
In reply to Recon1342 :
If you message me on FB first name Leif, last name Notleaf I will respond with my # so we can text. No FB on my phone, and I don't know if I get messages here, never tried.
Not going into any sob stories, but I have had numerous unexpected expenses this last few months and this van is my job right now. I have definitely been putting in work in adverse conditions and the $$$ at the end has been a big part of how I kept "warm."
I want to be upfront about my accounting, some of that is here already and more to come. That being said, I am going to price this van according to what it should be worth. We can chat and see if we can work something out, but I do need to come up with a good bit of money out of this thing to get my finances back on track.
Today was nice and sunny with temps above freezing. The downside is that everything was really wet. I did get to finally go to the car wash and spent $17.15 on a mediocre wash job. But WOW! Looks much better. 
Also a recoup of cup holder change. $1.89 
I hated that I had to drive it on the wet slushy roads home, but such is life. Around 2pm my parts arrived. At 4pm I had a trailer reserved to go and tow home my next van project, (more on that in another thread). I jumped straight into taking out the cats to replace the sealing rings. Inner fender out on the passenger side since that one header nut is such a pain otherwise. 
This all went pretty well. Fresh gaskets
All buttoned up and with enough time to move it to the front of the house, eat and shovel a bunch of ice and slush out of the driveway before my tow driver arrived at 3:25. On to another ad-van-ture.
Making this thread even better...X1/9
These vans have a loyal following. I'm sure it will sell quickly, even priced appropriately with a lifetime of corporate fleet maintaince, further given a recent refurbishment.
My guess is $8k opening retail. I think you wrote that the replacement engine has 126k but no mention of what the odometer reads. I assume 200k
In reply to Recon1342 :
One of your requirements is to seat 6 people. Do you realize this is a 2 seater?
I used the less stuck green van to pull out the stuck red van. Red van still sounds like it has a driver side exhaust leak. I am pretty bummed about that. This is the side that I did not change with a reused gasket. 
Promaster got shifted over to make room for the NV in the driveway. 
Jumped straight into exhaust disassembly. This is not a Live Photo here, so you won't be able to see it spit here. There's no way that this is the exhaust leak that I was hearing, but it is a small one that I will also want to address. 
The flanges after the second cats each have two nuts on studs. One nut came off of pass side the whole stud came out of driver side and one nut each side rounded into oblivion. Nice. Exhaust typical. Chop, chop.
With the cats separated from everything behind I took the driver side assembly into the garage and welded a big 'ol nut onto the chopped stud.
Impacted it out. Did the same on the pass side, but under the van. Then I noticed the obvious exhaust leak source. The O2 sensor bung is a vent. 
This explains the leak after new gaskets. More to come, heading to dinner.
The o2 sensor did not unscrew; it twisted the rest of the way out. Chopped back and did some grinding.
Welded the piece back on. I took out the O2 sensor once it was reattached enough to do so.
Anti-seize for the threads and put it back in. 
Chased the threads to make it go back together nicely.
At this point in my day I stopped and went grocery shopping. Made a stop at the parts store for supplies. I ended up also removing the driver side manifold, there was probably no issue but I hope that this can be a final assembly for me. 4 of the 6 studs unthreaded out of the head. I pulled replacements from the dead engine and ran them into the head. Added anti-seize for the next guy's benefit. But, sorry next guy, for the Fel-pro gasket instead of the factory metal one. The van will come with spares anyway and hopefully none will be needed.
Also, in a belt and suspenders move I added some high temp RTV to the cat to manifold flange. 
And fresh gaskets for the join behind the second cats. Bolts to replace the missing studs. Still use a 14mm socket so that is nice.
Got it all back together as the light was fading. Test fire...
It's a good fix. Yessssss. There is something noisy in the accessory drive, but not too bad. I couldn't abide the exhaust glad to have that wrapped up.
Doing great work man, keep on vanning!
Man the promaster swarfs the not-so-little NV. I wonder where your Dajiban fits on the size spectrum. Might be a cute family pic?
In reply to golfduke :
They aren't all going to fit in the driveway that's for sure.
In reply to John Welsh :
208k on this chassis. I was thinking in the 8-9 range and looking at what's here, in SLC and Boise I am going to ask 10.5 and we will see how she goes.
Today I cleaned the NV to get it ready for market. Some of my listing pics:
This really is a cool van. In the swap, and I will go back and edit this into the first post too, The differences between the Xterra and NV engine are: Oil pressure sender, alternator bracket and the plug for the brake booster.
Fun project. On the accounting side of things, I am currently at a cash investment of 2,411.40 ish. Haha. Plus
A LOT OF HARD WORK. This has actually been a fun way to hopefully make a good/decent hourly rate for my "off season". I will update as this works its way out of my driveway an into a new life.
Out of curiosity, what do you think you'll sell it for when it's time? It looks very nice!
In reply to brandonsmash :
Listed for 10.5k today, it will be interesting to see what responses that generates.
That looks great!
In reply to GoLucky :
That would be a nice ROI!
The Nissan chassis is beefy; that will make someone a great hauler.
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