How's dat for a nice simple title? 
I retired a while back... 'k... more than a while... Air Force. Airlines. Teaching.... put a fork in me.
Sue is retiring at the end of this year and our plan (from the last 30 yrs) has always been to travel once we're retired. Not air travel mind you... lord knows I've had my fill of that.
Nope... think Americana... Route 66 and all that. We want to travel the backroads and byways... the road less traveled shall we say. A week here, a month there... nowhere and everywhere. Life in the slow lane I guess you could say.
So the logical choice (for us) is traveling in a van. Even if I could afford a gigantic RV, I wouldn't. Motels and hotels? Screw that. Tents and motorcycles? Man I'd love to, but where the mind's willing, the body's.... um... old.
So van it is. And like everything else I've ever done, it's DIY. And with that....
It's a Ford E-250. Rolled off the line in '05 and straight into a conversion garage called Eclipse Van Conversions. From there it went to Kansas University's Research Department, where it spent it's life until I picked it up this past winter. Has just over 100k on the clock... a 5.4L V-8... it's just barely broke in. For the most part it was well maintained. There's some problems I'll get to here in a bit. But here it is the day after I drove it home. I swear I took some more interior pics. I'll add them as I run across 'em.
KU had it set up as a mobile field office. A couch that folded into a (small) bed, a desk and filing cabinets and drawers. Not really suitable for camping, but stripped down it's the perfect canvas... so to speak.
You can see in the last pic the "deconstruction" is started. I seriously considered saving large parts of the interior. In the end I'm glad I took it all apart... there's zilch for insulation... not even a whiff. Next pic is after about 500lbs of desk, cabinets and steel floor were removed.Seriously, where you see the carpet flattened, was 1/8" steel plate. Took me and two neighbors to get it out. EDIT: That's the actual steel plate you're looking at... before we removed it.
After completely gutting it, I discovered the floor was rotted out where Eclipse installed the sofa and neglected to seal the holes they cut.
The underlying crossmembers and such were still solid so I just ground out the corrosion and screwed and glued in replacement floor that I beat out of sheet stock I found in the basement. Thought about dragging up the welders from the basement and welding it all in... but nah.... good enough.
And with that done I now have my clean slate with which to build "VanGo." Um... that's Sue's name, not mine....
I retired a while back... 'k... more than a while... Air Force. Airlines. Teaching.... put a fork in me.
Sue is retiring at the end of this year and our plan (from the last 30 yrs) has always been to travel once we're retired. Not air travel mind you... lord knows I've had my fill of that.
Nope... think Americana... Route 66 and all that. We want to travel the backroads and byways... the road less traveled shall we say. A week here, a month there... nowhere and everywhere. Life in the slow lane I guess you could say.
So the logical choice (for us) is traveling in a van. Even if I could afford a gigantic RV, I wouldn't. Motels and hotels? Screw that. Tents and motorcycles? Man I'd love to, but where the mind's willing, the body's.... um... old.
So van it is. And like everything else I've ever done, it's DIY. And with that....It's a Ford E-250. Rolled off the line in '05 and straight into a conversion garage called Eclipse Van Conversions. From there it went to Kansas University's Research Department, where it spent it's life until I picked it up this past winter. Has just over 100k on the clock... a 5.4L V-8... it's just barely broke in. For the most part it was well maintained. There's some problems I'll get to here in a bit. But here it is the day after I drove it home. I swear I took some more interior pics. I'll add them as I run across 'em.
KU had it set up as a mobile field office. A couch that folded into a (small) bed, a desk and filing cabinets and drawers. Not really suitable for camping, but stripped down it's the perfect canvas... so to speak.
You can see in the last pic the "deconstruction" is started. I seriously considered saving large parts of the interior. In the end I'm glad I took it all apart... there's zilch for insulation... not even a whiff. Next pic is after about 500lbs of desk, cabinets and steel floor were removed.
After completely gutting it, I discovered the floor was rotted out where Eclipse installed the sofa and neglected to seal the holes they cut.
The underlying crossmembers and such were still solid so I just ground out the corrosion and screwed and glued in replacement floor that I beat out of sheet stock I found in the basement. Thought about dragging up the welders from the basement and welding it all in... but nah.... good enough.
And with that done I now have my clean slate with which to build "VanGo." Um... that's Sue's name, not mine....
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Oop`s almost forgot the optional prism tape marijuana decal.
