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Ford Transit Low Roof Rack AVC Rig V2 (Part 2)
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May 3, 2025
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View Video Transcript
0:00
[Music]
0:31
hey guys welcome back to the live stream we are working on my personal Ford Transit it's a 2019 low roof 148 in uh
0:39
van this is what it looks like and uh we're putting on the AVC
0:45
rig uh roof rack which is as far as I know the one that looks the best for um
0:53
this van and it's the widest too which makes it really nice for big wide solar
0:58
panels up to 60 in wide so we're on the left side we
1:04
did the right side earlier and um we're just kind of putting this together bit by bit
1:13
uh but if you missed the last video what I did over here
1:19
is uh when you're working on a Ford Transit there's already holes inside the
1:24
top of the van but the issue is where the uh
1:31
roof gets laid on can sometimes be offset enough to where you're going to cross thread these bolts so what we want
1:38
to do is get a Dremel and we're just going to drill out just the side here to
1:45
get it lined up
1:54
[Music]
2:24
okay that's pretty much it so now
2:30
this I'll be able to go in there without cross threading so all I need to do is just
2:36
hit it with just a little spray of rust preventative and we can move on
2:44
to the next step which is lining up the
2:51
brackets now lining up the brackets is really important because earlier I was talking about how the brackets aren't
2:58
aligned left to right what'll happen is if you have some really tight
3:04
tolerances with solar panels around the left and right hand side of the max fan um what'll happen
3:13
is you may need that extra quarter of an inch and because you offset the roof
3:18
rack uh like you weren't paying attention um that extra half inch or qu
3:25
of an inch might rub on these Max fans now that won't happen initially with your new Max fan but what happens over
3:33
time is that plastic might uh Bend out and so you just don't want
3:41
to be in that situation if you can help it
3:46
um so I'm just going to hit one this thing with one
3:52
spray that'll get me nice and where I want to be I'm just using rum
4:00
doesn't really matter the color um also you can see I've been putting
4:06
this uh uh tape on here it's like a I'll show
4:12
you the brand in a second but it's it's made for like RV Max fans air conditioners and stuff
4:18
it's just like almost like a be tape um and that is what ABC rig is using so
4:26
I'm going to try it on my personal van I actually I like to use the foam gaskets
4:32
that Flatline vanco has or other roof rack companies have that are made onto this but um ABC rig does not have that
4:40
option which that's it's you don't have to have everything perfect but um I
4:46
would rather put maybe some uh window weld or something like that um because I
4:53
don't intend taking these off ever but yeah we're going to uh we'll
5:00
just check these out for right now um I'm going to let this tack uh dry for a
5:06
minute and while that's drying I'm going to go ahead and get the other rail on
5:13
this side if you missed me taking the uh the heat gun and getting the plastic caps
5:20
off you can check the uh the live stream from earlier today and it'll go
5:27
over how I did that it's just it's pretty straightforward um so now I'm
5:33
going to get the other side bring it over here and keep on working if you
5:39
guys have any questions just hop in the chat I'll be happy to answer any
5:44
questions you got see if I can move this camera over a little
5:54
bit all right
6:02
what'll be really interesting to see is when we get to a point
6:11
where uh we're putting the cross members in um I'm going to see if I actually need to
6:17
move the brackets at all so I haven't really clamped them down on them too
6:27
hard I do anticipate that I'll need to move
6:43
them yeah so far it's been a just straightforward install um I haven't really had to
6:50
reference directions or anything like that um so
8:18
well left it on the other side
8:43
the benefits of the low roof low roof rack is you're going to be able
8:50
to get a lot more area covered on your roof
8:57
um as you go up in roof fracks from low mid to
9:02
high you actually start uh kind of sacrificing rooftop storage but if you
9:10
guys know my opinion on that I think
9:16
um you should only put the essentials on your roof rack so
9:21
don't I don't think you should have any type of gear storage up there as you go
9:27
higher up in the van at uh center of gravity we don't want it too
9:34
high cuz it will change the way the van
9:44
drives I do have uh a video online it talks about is your van too heavy and
9:51
that one is a great video to watch if you're one if you're concerned about how
9:56
heavy um your uh Ford Transit is getting so it
10:02
goes through the weights and stuff like that talks about getting your van weighed at a weight station like a CAT scales um sort of thing so yeah check
10:10
that video out all right so this is kind of where I wanted to get because uh I'm going to
10:17
put the rear crossmember piece on I'm going to see how much it pulls in or out uh because I'm assuming this is
10:26
where it needs to be but it may not be where it needs to be
10:34
um yeah so let's uh get some more tools and let's put that first rear piece
10:45
on see if I can back the camera up just a little bit without making it fall
10:55
off all right let's see if I can zoom out
11:02
all right so we're going to go on the
11:27
back and I'm G to find out what type what size Allen head we got
11:50
here there we go so 4
11:57
mm and I also have think that these rails are 10 series 8020 about 99%
12:19
sure so we'll do our first one all the way back here at the very back now this is my personal van this is your van
12:27
probably want to get like a towel
12:38
at it feels like we're right on the money as far as where the brackets where we might put the uh brackets
12:45
so pretty happy with
12:55
that and so my experience you don't want to tighten the base the these these feet until this part
13:02
that I'm installing right now is um put on
13:12
here now we're planning on putting a RTX 2000 uh rooftop AC
13:20
on so that's another reason I'm putting this in the very back
13:53
all right looks like we got a question yes so Carefree Highway this is
13:59
a this is a
14:13
kit I'll send you a
14:27
link okay let's hop on on the computer really quick um so I already got these pulled up from the previous live
14:33
stream and this is what we got so what we're using is this company so it's AVC
14:44
rig uh and we've got
14:49
a we're going here and here they got components for your van and then down
14:54
here we got the low proo Transit Low Pro V2
14:59
for a low roof this is the only one that I've found that I like the way it looks besides being like a contractor style
15:05
roof rack if you have a high roof medium roof you can go with some other options
15:11
like Flatline vanco has another roof rack um another company is unaka with
15:20
another Sol roof rack so there's a bunch of different ones to to look at um I'll
15:25
just go ahead and copy this link so you have something to to check
15:32
out so that's what we're installing or finishing up installing tonight if you
15:37
are
15:51
interested okay so I want this pushed all the way forward
16:15
okay so so far so good both my dots are lining up um this
16:21
rail looks pretty good I think this middle part I need to push out a little
16:27
bit um
16:34
with this part at the
16:40
end yeah so this rail right here at the end I'm pushing all the way back and looking at my third brake light
16:47
it looks like it's right where it's supposed to
16:53
be so we'll find out later how good it is
17:23
okay so that looks pretty good it's not tweaking this at all so
17:30
I think we're doing pretty good um alignment alignment
17:46
wise okay I think our paint is dried enough to where go ahead and put this middle
17:54
middle bracket on
18:09
okay looks good all
18:15
right okay it's in place temporarily screw this
18:25
in then next we'll get some screws and we lift lift this part up
18:38
[Music]
20:04
so I'm just temporarily tightening this one
20:12
down no if you got a Nissan uh Envy 3500 uh there's companies that they make
20:20
roof racks for that um those companies that I showed you they are
20:26
particularly Transit Sprinter and Pro master um yeah I'll get online here in
20:31
just a minute and show [Music] you ones that might might work for your
20:37
your setup
21:06
so when I'm installing these over here I'm lifting it up as high as it
21:14
goes and the bracket
22:22
uh next we're going to put a rail right here and then we'll move up to this next
22:29
spot
23:37
[Music] and we're doing this front to
23:45
back cuz we want to make sure we're not getting any like weird like bending and bowing if we do these bottom brackets
23:52
are going to need to uh change their position for
24:46
now you can move these wherever you want to I'm just putting them here for setup uh that's that's what I'm doing
24:55
that way once these are in I can actually tighten down these brackets all the way okay
25:29
yeah so I mean this is off just like a 16th or eighth of an inch it's perfect
25:35
it is
25:57
perfect for
26:35
okay that's looking good now like I said you'll you'll want to adjust those to wherever you need
26:41
them to be adjusted to uh these are what are going to support your solar panels
26:47
and other rooftop accessories that you might install on your van
26:57
[Applause]
27:05
[Applause]
27:20
I also have a DIY van build course uh that's now available if you guys want to
27:26
check that out um one thing I talk about in the course is layout and
27:32
design and one way that the roof rack helps
27:37
with your layout and design is there's Sometimes some things you want to do inside the van but if you don't have the
27:43
right roof rack orientation or spacing um it might make it really challenging
27:49
to uh get what you want to get
28:47
and by the way if you guys have any questions that have nothing to do with roof racks I'm happy to answer them too
28:55
this live stream is just really to chat about van build so yeah whatever you
29:00
guys are wanting to talk about just uh let me
29:06
know um so I you can see right here this is the first thing that I was talking
29:11
about earlier uh well actually the Gap is about the same okay that's fine
29:30
this gap on both sides again doesn't have to be perfect but it's nice if you can get it perfect
29:36
I guess is what I'm saying
30:01
so we got about e8th inch over there this one's a little more it might be the way they cut the
30:08
holes out that's fine
32:11
so I'm going to try to get this bottom two bolts in if they can fit then I
32:16
won't worry about how
32:21
perfect this top part is
32:39
okay we we got it we got it
33:13
okay let's get a another cross member up here uh we're going to put
33:18
one probably right here uh let's see how many we got left
33:28
we've got three okay perfect that will work
33:45
[Music]
34:57
[Music]
35:35
that
36:04
have some uh got some aluminum filings in there
36:10
I'm trying to get them out and my threads
36:29
yeah make sure you got clean threads because uh what'll happen is these
36:36
aluminum screws and aluminum it'll just the threads will G
36:41
really easy on this stuff
37:54
yeah this is doing really good you can see here this is just fit in perfect now
37:59
I mean it does help once you have the once you have one of two of these cross members in everything just kind of dials
38:05
in so you just want to have it nice the roof rack nice and square before
38:12
you put your tighten your bases down
38:34
so at the end of this uh live stream I'll go in and we'll start we'll shop for some NV 3500 roof
38:43
racks okay so that's we got three we got three more so we're going to do one
38:49
right here um and then we'll start doing the front uh fairing the fairings they tend
38:55
to be challenging just cuz you're having to to kind of dial in the fit
39:08
um we we'll work on that in just a second
39:45
so Carefree Highway says I ordered a low stool
39:56
on but stool with the wheels with the back rest to make putting up the ceiling in my van easier a good idea uh probably
40:05
keep it so I'm not crouching down on my knees uh moving around the inside yeah anything that you can do to
40:11
help you with building your van I recommend protect your knees doesn't
40:18
matter how young you are
40:25
um just to make it easier easier cuz you still want it to be fun you you don't want it to
40:30
be super hard or I mean not enjoyable I guess is what I'm
40:42
saying like those foam uh kneeling mats I use I use those a lot
40:49
in the shop I've got two of those um one's got a bunch of
40:54
epoxy on it from the uh when I all lawn seal floors so I've got like a dedicated
41:00
one that's kind of messed up man they really have a lot
41:06
of residual from uh metal from Drilling and
41:13
tapping these holes it's to be expected but I know better I should have uh blown
41:21
them out with compressed air but it's all good
41:38
cuz I'm I'm actually just going to be taking these out uh in a little bit anyway
41:55
so this one will definitely come out cuz I'm going to try to mount a solar panel
42:00
all the way up front here
42:11
[Applause]
43:26
a
43:42
all right looks pretty
43:56
good for
44:48
it's not so perfectly straight that's also because this the material is kind of uh
44:58
maybe we'll get this front part it'll tighten it up a little bit you can't notice it from the sides
45:04
but you can kind of notice it from the
45:23
back okay so let's put this front bar on
45:29
then it'll allow us to put the the fairing
45:41
on two three four five
45:49
six going change the camera over
45:55
here so this may be hard to see let me get this box out of the
46:08
way but what we're going to do is we've got this uh essentially 8020
46:17
hardware and we're going to slot it in these channels so that we
46:23
can put our fairing in uh what I do notice is I've got
46:31
two I need some more
46:39
um see what am I trying to
46:45
say I need two more of these screws that or look like they're missing in the kit
47:07
all right guys for you just hopping on in here in the Stream we are installing a AVC rig roof rack for a low roof Ford
47:16
Transit just happens to be my personal van we're doing a little little work on it what we're doing right now
47:23
is um we're getting the fairing installed so we're getting ready to
47:29
slide these 8020 components in here these little roll in te-
47:44
nuts so we get them as close as we can and
47:51
then when we lay it on there we'll we'll dial it in a little bit better but pretty much these pieces is just
47:58
slide they slide in if you've never used 8020 it's a really good material to use uh work with in Vans super strong light
48:07
it is expensive that would be the only downside I'd say is it's quite costly there's some uh offbrand 8020
48:15
products but um if you can use
48:22
8020 it's good you can also use just 2x4 Construction I've done that
48:28
before doesn't have to be completely perfect all right so now we're just
48:34
going to lay this on here and we're just making sure that
48:40
before we put it on here we can actually
48:46
find we can dial in these uh little te Rollin te- nuts they're
48:53
called
48:59
all
49:11
right hey Rod welcome
49:20
back yeah at the end of the live stream I'm going to go through uh some products
49:25
from different websites so stay tuned for that we're going
49:31
to I'm going to put this fairing on tighten some bolts and then we'll get into uh a little Q&A
50:12
that's
50:37
I meant to put locktite on these but
50:45
uh it's hard to make the callon locktite because if I need to loosen this and adjust it for any reason I don't
50:59
we'll just keep that loose for a second and then we'll we'll come back to
51:06
it all right let's install this yeah keep keep the questions going
51:12
guys um load them up and then that way when I get finished here we can go
51:19
over uh all the van building questions you got I'm going to zoom
51:24
in to the front
51:33
this uh front fairing is
51:46
going hopefully this is not a twers job it is just me in the shop tonight
53:12
actually I got to go through my bolt pile well actually I'm just going to rob a screw from somewhere
53:22
else I'm two screws shy on this this one somehow
54:26
for
55:03
I will say guys the front fairing on here looks really nice they did a good job designing
55:22
this it looks like they have these support brackets that I need to put
55:29
in right here these guys
55:36
so might just put two in looks like it needs
55:45
that a Beal tape as well for these installs
55:59
I will say I besides the be tape I will have to I'm going to have to uh lap s around
56:07
the whole all the plates um not super confident
56:12
that the way that they uh suggested doing the beetle tape is going to work
56:19
because the roof rack makes the roof Crown just a little bit and what
56:26
that's doing is the outside of the bracket is lifting up about eighth of an inch and the
56:32
inside is smooshed
56:41
so um okay get my
56:49
tools all right two more pieces and then we'll we'll hop on WE hop on for Q&A
56:57
so yeah load up those Q&A while I'm
57:04
finishing that's roof
57:11
rack
57:18
well here we go excellent okay
57:34
for
58:03
yeah I like this little bracket up here I don't know if you can see on the camera but just like a little kickstand foot it's just supporting this uh
58:20
overhang there's two on the front and then there's two on the back
58:27
so I'll put the two on the front um I'll do the I'll do the two in the
58:33
back off camera I'll do it some other time so we get some questions
58:43
[Music]
58:53
[Music]
59:14
this side is much higher than that
59:19
side okay I might lower
1:00:41
it's [Music]
1:01:04
okay that brought it down but not didn't bring it down enough
1:01:15
huh see if we get
1:01:41
four Transit roofs are weird so it's possible that everything's fine and this
1:01:47
is just like off a quarter of an inch they stuff's not perfect all right guys we
1:01:53
are zooming out rof rack is pretty much 95% installed I
1:01:59
just got a couple more bolts but it's pretty much it just pretty straight forward um we're going to hop
1:02:07
into uh oh yeah good point good point let's
1:02:14
see let me see if I can show you that Carefree Highway good
1:02:20
point um so you can do that to conceal solar
1:02:26
so check this
1:02:31
out you can inset the solar panel in here the solar panel does not have to be on top of this rail so for example if I
1:02:39
go over here and I go to my little box of solar
1:02:45
parts and we pull out a box of Renegy
1:02:52
brackets so and this channel is for anybody that's new to Van building DIY this is
1:03:00
like you want to tell everybody about this channel CU this is what I do I help you build your DIY van and then if you
1:03:06
give up you can call me Odyssey custom vans and I'll build your van for you but this is the
1:03:13
bracket and we're going to I me let me show you how this works so it it may be simple but you
1:03:20
know hey if you've never done it before um so let's zoom in
1:03:28
to this part of the van over here see if we can do a little
1:03:40
example yeah you can you can uh the rails actually don't have anything to do
1:03:46
with hiding the solar panels down in there that has to do with the bracket
1:03:52
now for this example imagine this Max fan is not here so just focus on this
1:03:57
rail so most people will Mount the solar panel like that but there's another way just flip
1:04:04
this upside down and then now your solar panel can sit inside the bracket now
1:04:11
with these brackets typically a lot of Manufacturers use this tin Series so I bring this in and I drill a new hole
1:04:18
then this is where my solar panel sits um you can actually go and buy these
1:04:23
that are black painted black black already anodized on Amazon but you can to have it so that
1:04:30
the solar panel sits in set um if that's what you want to
1:04:37
do so you can sit them down in here um you can even bolt them up under so and
1:04:45
by the way the way these rails are in here this is temporary when I get the solar panels in here that I want um I'll
1:04:52
show you how they're going to be essentially different as far as how they're
1:04:59
[Music]
1:05:06
connected um all right got a bunch of questions let's see what we got
1:05:14
uh all right let's check out Sprinter 170 High roof roof rack that is what you were
1:05:22
looking for um
1:05:30
so if we go to so ABC rig is the widest
1:05:38
um roof rack that I know of currently uh I don't think they
1:05:47
have okay so I don't think they have roof
1:05:53
racks so let's go to my next one one let's see unaka only reason I do unaka
1:05:58
is because it's the next company that has
1:06:05
um uh let's see products roof
1:06:11
racks Mercedes Sprinter uh we're going to do Sprinter
1:06:20
170 High roof Rod was yours an extended
1:06:34
so there's the unaka one I think unaka is really nice unaka
1:06:39
is very
1:06:48
nice um so here's an example I'll just copy this now Rod if you had the
1:06:53
extended High roof it's I mean you just go on their website you can find a different
1:07:00
one
1:07:13
um yeah Carefree Highway uh this is one that I haven't drove obviously so the
1:07:23
1.0 and 2.0 of Flatline van code those are quiet the onaka is I think the most
1:07:29
quiet that I've installed um just the way the fairing designed this one I'm
1:07:35
anticipating is going to be fine uh it's my personal van so I'm not too
1:07:41
um yeah whest is the best uh yeah yeah yeah
1:07:50
um I'm curious why other companies don't make them any wider I know people I know
1:07:56
you want to put uh an awning on the side so we'll probably I've got a fyama that
1:08:01
we're going to put on here so we'll check that out later
1:08:07
um yeah
1:08:12
so that is pretty good um what else was I going to tell you
1:08:22
guys yeah these are great questions
1:08:29
do we have any more questions let me reset the camera
1:08:58
so I'm actually going to measure these Renegy 100 watt
1:09:06
panels these are 21
1:09:18
in yeah that's perfect can see these Renegy panels are 21 in
1:09:24
um I'm going to pop one up here just to give you an example this is a great
1:09:37
example um let's see I'll move the ladder to the other
1:09:42
side this is why it's important um
1:09:56
make sure you got a wide enough roof
1:10:09
rack all right so we're going to pop a 100 watt Renegy
1:10:20
panel so you got two of these
1:10:42
this will give you an idea of what I'm talking about with the max
1:10:49
fan try not to scratch my van up here
1:10:56
which you'll immediately see so for
1:11:02
example you'll see how close this solar panel is
1:11:10
to the max fan so you see there's enough room but you see how if the roof rack
1:11:18
was adjusted left or right too much even by a quarter of an inch um you know that could
1:11:26
affect the way that
1:11:33
works so yeah this will this gives you a good example of how close that is now I've got plenty of room I've actually
1:11:42
got yeah I've got about a solid half inch of room for with that
1:12:03
see if I took this
1:12:08
panel actually curious how this would actually fit up here might be pretty
1:12:22
good but what I'm showing you right now you don't have to do this um what I would do is
1:12:31
actually I've got another solar panel over
1:12:38
there let's see okay so here is this
1:12:51
one I'm going Slide the ladder over yeah
1:12:58
58.5 so 58.5
1:13:12
long so this would this would this one
1:13:18
would so Rod if we go actually hold on let me fast forward
1:13:25
oh I see yeah Rod the Mercedes is 55 and a quarter on that
1:13:32
roof rack so those solar panels would be the one that you have is too wide if you
1:13:38
wanted to go wide now as far as being narrow
1:13:45
um you might have to do a different orientation I guess is what I'm saying for your roof rack so instead of
1:13:52
going uh left to right you can go front to back is probably what you're going to
1:13:58
have to do but 28 to me is also I I just think
1:14:06
um I don't think those numbers seem too
1:14:12
big at the current moment Rod if you're going to use this now what you can do is
1:14:18
you can mount it on top of the roof rack that you can you can definitely do
1:14:23
that so you it might be hanging over an inch and
1:14:28
a half on each side but that's not the that's not the end of the world that's not that's not a terrible
1:14:40
[Music]
1:14:49
thing okay let me see how wide these others these 175
1:14:58
let's go to Renegy
1:15:39
what is up with Ren's
1:15:50
website okay so I've got a 175
1:16:05
what if they even sell it do they still sell
1:16:13
it that's another thing too these solar panels they they start to not carry a certain size anymore so if you lay your
1:16:20
roof out um oh that's right right rod I think you
1:16:25
got the DIY van brackets is that
1:16:35
right all right let me measure this solar panel
1:16:55
it's 26.5
1:17:22
26.5 53 so 53 and then these
1:17:33
are
1:17:49
52 yeah the D820 okay yeah by planning on that roof rack
1:17:55
um yeah you'll you'll be way more flexible as far as uh what you can put
1:18:01
on your roof so that's good [Music]
1:18:35
yes so I'm just messing around with the layout on the roof here um because I'm trying to figure out where I'm going to
1:18:41
put my air conditioner
1:19:32
all right guys I'm GNA put you on pause for a minute
1:19:40
[Music]
1:20:24
he [Music]
1:21:03
all right guys I need to uh end the live stream these questions are awesome
1:21:09
thanks rod and Carefree Highway for tuning in tonight um yeah keep the question keep these uh
1:21:16
keep the chat going on uh on the comments after this and uh we'll be back
1:21:23
tomorrow I'll go over layout and kind of think what I'm talk about what I'm thinking about
1:21:31
um and we will talk about that mini split thing so yeah tune in tomorrow
1:21:36
we'll probably do 8:00 pm Eastern Standard Time for the live stream but uh yeah thanks you guys thanks guys so much
1:21:42
for watching and um yeah keep the chat going in the comments and I'll see you
1:21:48
guys in the next video
1:21:54
[Music]
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