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How to install a campervan rear door panel (Part 2)
May 2, 2025
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View Video Transcript
0:01
[Music]
0:52
all right guys I'm going to call this part two so I know you guys like to see
0:58
a live install and I kind kind of just blew past that cuz I was ready to go ahead and get this other panel done all
1:05
right if you're just tuning in to this live stream and you missed the one we just did a couple minutes ago uh what we're doing is we're installing this
1:11
rear panel from AVC rig into the back of the van and I'm going to show you how to do
1:18
it so a second ago I was on the live stream talking about you know different
1:23
options of what you can put on the back of this door uh where to install it best
1:29
point uh install points in my opinion um however if you guys don't see the live
1:35
install um you won't see some of the techniques that I use to to get this to look right uh so one thing that is
1:42
challenging that I just realized when I came back here is I told you how to do
1:48
this to lay out the marks but you know if you put this panel on the door you
1:56
cover up all those marks you made so how in the heck do you know how how to
2:01
install this so that's what this live stream is for it is to answer that question so let me show you
2:09
what I did so we're just going to get right into it and knock this out so what I have is some masking tape
2:16
and what I do is on the outside of this I put the masking tape even with this
2:22
hole so if you can imagine if there was a hole drilled here the center of that tape is where I want to land my hole I
2:30
mean my sheet metal screw and then what we're going to do is
2:35
we're just going to come through here and put the
2:42
tape just like that so this tape is going to
2:48
identify the height of where a screw goes now from left to right you're going to have to gauge on your own where you
2:55
want that to be I did 3/4 in from the piece of wood and I'm going to do the
3:01
same thing and that usually lands me on the center of each of these little protrusions from
3:07
Ford but I have this tape here and that is my visual indicator of
3:15
where these screws need to go in the
3:28
panel
3:34
and we're live right now so if you guys want to answer or ask any questions it can be
3:40
anything uh doesn't have to be related to installing this rear panel it can be any questions on anything van
3:48
related but for this um so what we're going to do over
3:53
here I'm going to put tape on here just for your visual uh reference but but we're
4:00
not going to use these holes right here what we're going to do is we're going to shut the door and then
4:09
uh we're going to find out where we want these holes on this other
4:16
side um yeah so let's
4:22
uh let's see here what do we want to do with the
4:28
holes
4:35
all right I may be changing might be changing my mind because what we want to do is let
4:43
me shut this door so if you guys are already ahead of me you maybe already know what I'm
4:50
thinking so the whole point of me locate so these are kind of where they have to be but these were the visual holes but
4:58
if we shut the door you guys can see that uh we're going to
5:04
want these inside holes here to match the inside holes over here so again this
5:12
is where building a van and design are
5:17
kind of come together you could put a screw hole wherever you want to in a van
5:23
um however for our case when we want the doors to shut I
5:29
want these uh screw holes to to align so now what I'm going to have to
5:36
do is let's see where how we can get this
5:43
started all right I'm going to do the same method that I got started
5:48
with this panel and then let's see if I can show you how to join the
5:58
two
6:05
[Music]
6:10
all right so the first thing I need is my pencil where did it
6:25
go yeah we want those screws to line up if we do it blindly then they're obviously not going to line up and it's
6:31
not going to it's not going to look at look the way that I want it to
6:38
look if you guys watch the stream long enough you know if I can do something
6:44
perfect I'm going to figure out how to do it perfect all right so the first step is
6:51
we need a place to Anchor this and something you'll probably like about this channel if you've never watched
6:57
this channel is I build all this stuff solo if there's bigger stuff you know
7:02
I'll call in help to uh to get that done or I'll use a lift or stuff like that
7:10
but for this um yeah this is pretty
7:15
much solo right here so I'm marking a spot where it's
7:21
going to be uh my first drill hole something that I translated from
7:29
the other piece on the other side is that this lip here needs to match the
7:36
black plastic of the Ford that allows us to get underneath the uh door latch and then bend the top
7:44
end evenly so that is something we actually can't do anything
7:51
about um so in that case we're going
7:57
to okay that is where we want this to
8:13
be so we're going to take this off we're going to put a temporary screw in where this hole
8:22
is and if you guys want to know we're using modified truss screws and these are number
8:28
eight now I'm using an inch and a quarter don't use an inch and a quarter because
8:33
one inch is going to be safer for you um I was kind of playing around with how
8:41
I wanted to put this on the door and I just that's just the screws I grabbed to uh
8:47
to figure out where I wanted stuff to be laid out all right so this first piece this
8:56
is going to be tricky but once we get this
9:01
locked in down
9:08
here okay so the only thing we got to make sure is this lower
9:14
part all right and then we're going to come back all
9:23
right all right it looks pretty good and then we going
9:30
to all right so let's
9:58
get
10:08
[Music]
10:27
by the way everyone that's on the live stream if you have any questions on how I'm doing or how to build a van uh it
10:33
doesn't have to be related to what we're doing just to ask it in the chat and I'll answer it for
10:42
you now I'm pre-drilling this hole so that it's just easier I don't have to hold this whole panel
10:54
up okay then I'm just taking this panel uh I need to have
11:00
my clamp ready cuz the clamp is going to hold
11:07
this up on the top okay so see that allows me to Anchor
11:16
this in this section so I made sure that where this is
11:22
anchored I didn't drill it in all the way so I can still move it but this location is my distance here and my
11:30
distance here on this bottom section so now I'm going to take the
11:37
panel take a clamp make sure they have rubber ends on the
11:43
clamp and now what I want to do is just uh get my distance over here to where
11:49
this flap is going to be pushed down so this right here so I'm coming in
11:57
and then where it stops that's where I want to that's where I
12:02
want to hold it
12:09
down all right now don't go crazy hard with this because you are on the metal and the
12:17
paint okay so once I anchored it here and I got that right there I'm feeling
12:24
pretty good about this as far as it holding itself and I'm not having to
12:31
uh move anything the next thing that we want to check is we are checking
12:38
for our clearance at the top make sure that we're underneath this
12:45
relief that looks good so this right here see how this is
12:51
a this latch is really close to the wood on the door over here it's like almost
12:57
a/ an inch lower so it's however the company cut it and
13:03
their interpretation of how it should go in the door uh when you do one side don't necessarily take that to heart in
13:11
how you're going to do the other side what's making this challenging for me and while I'm filming it for you is I
13:18
can just put a bunch of screws in here I can be done I can move on but visually when I get this done that both doors are
13:25
shut I want all the screws to be in the same align
13:30
uh so it looks nice and professional all right so we've got our
13:36
this bottom one we're just going to go ahead and uh actually keep this one don't put this one in all the
13:42
way so I'm going to treat this like you guys have no idea what I'm talking about which is usually the best way
13:49
to teach um so we're going to come up here to the next one and by not having
13:56
this in all the way I can see behind this corner and I can find
14:02
where uh I want my screw to go in
14:09
so I'm going to do this one and then I think what I'm going to do is shut the
14:17
door and then do the the opposite side because there's a little bit of give and
14:23
take with trying to be perfect if this is off maybe quarter Edge or something
14:31
uh these are going to be more visually noticeable when the doors are shut because you're going to see both these
14:37
screws again uh like for example the customer I'm building this for the bed
14:42
is going to be right here so every day you're going to see these screws now
14:48
it's possible nobody cares but for me uh I going to put them in a place where
14:56
it they look nice which is part of the inst so this one again I'm copying the way I
15:04
did it on the other side I've got my tape I'm finding the center of the tape center of the tape um I'm actually
15:11
coming out 3/4 of an inch from the inside of the wood so right there
15:19
3/4 so this is going to tell me and I'm going to get very
15:27
close and we're going to do 3/4 right
15:33
there now if you're having trouble drilling into the wood and starting your hole or making a spot uh a punch down
15:40
tool is a really good tool to use uh what you do is you locate where you want the hole in metal or wood and you
15:48
push and then there's going to be a pop so it's spring loed and that's going to give you a place for your drill bit to
15:54
catch it's typically used on you know metal or aluminum but you can still use use it for
15:59
wood so now what we're going to do is we're going to take our self-tapping
16:07
screw make sure nothing shifted while we were talking moving the door around so
16:13
that looks good we got a good clearance up here okay then we're just going to take
16:18
it with our hand and we're going to hold this when you do any type of screw into wood it's going to C the threads are
16:24
going to catch especially self-tapping and it's going to push the wood back it can crack the wood or it can mess up
16:31
your panel so what you want to do is just all you need is just like the pressure of a
16:39
thumb now that's going to happen I don't know throughout your whole entire van build
16:45
process so just start
16:50
slow be careful what your finger is because if this shifts and go stabs
16:56
right into your thumb I've done that a million times so see how the panel comes out
17:01
watch so if I don't push it in it's just not drilling in it's just
17:08
pulling the panel back so just go
17:13
backwards push it in and then once you drill out enough
17:20
wood um it's going to stop doing
17:25
[Music] that
17:31
okay uh you can see how my screws keep falling out that doesn't normally happen
17:38
but uh I'm that's a good example because the reason it's falling out is the metal
17:45
the sheet metal on this van it's it's like a different type of Steel and it's really hard to get into and a perfect
17:52
world you want to get a drill bit you want to drill it and then put the screw in but um
17:59
I don't care if I lose a couple screws because eventually it's just
18:06
going to go in nice and clean like that and then now we
18:13
can and I've got the clutch set on one so just make sure that I'm not
18:20
stripping this when I put it into the sheet metal all right so now that this is
18:28
pretty much holding the panel in I should be able to come over here and pop this off and see it's just going
18:36
to it's going to be all
18:41
right um I'm actually going to just put a little bit of tape up
18:50
here just this thing isn't flopping all over the place
18:56
um okay I think you guys I don't I think I might not have to move the camera I'm not
19:09
sure oh so a pro tip on for Transit this is for the life of the van never shut
19:15
the right door first and accidentally shut the left door the latch down here
19:20
will Dent your right door your passenger door uh really
19:26
bad okay so as we slam the door we're just going to hold the
19:34
panel okay all right so I will meet you in the
19:40
van in just a
19:51
second all right let me change up the camera here just hold on a
19:57
second
20:12
well it's pretty good okay so let's
20:18
take so now that we're inside the van we got a better look of uh kind of what
20:24
we're what we're working with so now what we're going to do is we're going to be able to come down
20:41
here and I'm going to put this level up here draw a line then I'm going come in
20:47
3/4 of an inch that's where I'm going to drill my
20:52
hole come down here draw a line
20:59
measure 3/4 of an inch that's my other
21:04
hole um and then we got two more so one right
21:16
here and then our final one up
21:25
here okay so now the these screws will be
21:31
mirrored and that makes me happy um moving up from the bottom right up
21:39
we're going
21:48
to we're going to draw a line from here to the other
21:57
side
22:09
now we don't have to necessarily go by this because I can already see the tape is in a little bit of a different
22:15
position than the passenger
22:22
door okay so so let's put these
22:30
in and then we'll continue and let's move the camera back a little
22:37
bit
22:56
more there we
23:04
go so the one in screws are what we want to use self-tapping
23:16
got some more people coming on the live stream uh if you guys have any questions
23:22
van build related you can put that in the chat while I'm working doesn't have to be about van panels it can be
23:28
about pretty much
23:56
anything and I talked about this in the last stream uh you want to make sure
24:02
that you're not creating these uh warping uh I call it like kind of like bubbling
24:09
out so either start top to bottom like I did this panel or from the middle and go
24:16
out uh you just don't want to have these humps in
24:22
here now we're going to take these panels back out to paint and pster but I'm just kind of talking you through
24:29
what I'm thinking [Music]
24:56
about
25:14
also where I located these on the door has not affected the uh opening and closing
25:21
mechanism so that might be something you want to
25:26
just triple check as you're doing this that if you do it a different way than I'm showing you that you don't
25:33
accidentally drill through like the cables and bars and stuff that are making the latch mechanism
25:39
work uh just something to think
25:45
about and again I'll keep reiterating use one inch you can use probably three quarters uh
25:51
actually just to be on the safe side
26:14
[Applause]
26:37
also take your time some of these screws are not perfect you might throw one away
26:43
and then just go to a different
26:50
one there you
26:56
go okay looking
27:07
good so that's pretty good so this
27:13
one this middle see how this middle is flapping around this middle is not is
27:18
not like that this one's solid so the way that this curved over here is
27:23
different than this side because of this opening so just have to kind of adapt as you're
27:31
doing this um so right
27:39
there okay I'm going to
27:46
put see where is the best
27:56
place okay so down here in this this corner might be the best place to
28:04
well you want to find where the most where it pinches the panel better so if I put it here see how this still
28:13
moves right there but if I put a screw here and here then this is not going to move
28:23
so I think that's one I'm going to do
30:06
okay when I tightened this bottom one in it pulled this panel in so let's get a
30:14
screw let's measure this one just cuz uh I want them to look even so let's
30:22
do one here 3/4 and then let's do
30:29
one I don't think that looks
30:36
good right
30:43
there I'm going tilt the camera down for this one so you can see
30:50
it well I guess it's on
30:56
camera I'm G wake up there we
31:17
go so I'm going to do the middle one
31:26
first
31:36
and this one I got to be careful because I don't know what behind the
31:41
door on this
31:56
one make sure you're using your clutch on your drill at the lowest setting so you don't strip
32:05
this okay so that's
32:12
safe let's do one more over
32:26
here
32:34
okay okay so I'm happy with that I like the way that that's holding the panel in so the
32:41
bottom up we we're doing really good now we're going to go to the top it's a little bit more challenging if you've never done this before so this top
32:49
space um need to
32:56
measure let's do three4
33:20
out so need you'll need to open the door for this one what we want to do is we want to
33:26
make sure that where our tape is that we can peel this panel back and make sure that our
33:33
screw is going to land on that little pad that Ford has pushed out for
33:40
us because if we don't and you tighten the uh sheet metal
33:45
screw down it's going to it's going to bend the panel it won't
33:50
look like a flat panel it'll be like a bubbled out
33:55
panel
34:01
so I'll shut the door here in a second but I'm pretty I think you guys can well
34:08
here maybe
34:17
not there we
34:25
go
34:41
okay so when I come up here I'm going pull the panel back a little bit and
34:46
just make sure so I'm still okay if I follow this line I'll be all
34:52
right so this one's okay let's check out this one
35:03
um this one would be better if I went about a quarter of an inch higher
35:08
than where I did my
35:20
mark okay right
35:25
there so an inch and a quar is how far this one was
35:33
off on the other side so an inch and a quarter and we're going to come
35:40
up right
35:55
there
36:03
now what you can do is you can do a test
36:16
hole and then just like hit the panel okay that's actually that's
36:22
perfect location you can tap tap the panel the sheet metal it's going to make a little Mark and then you can see if
36:28
that's where you want it to land on that little pad on this sheet metal um this one's okay down here
36:37
so next we've got this one up
36:45
here okay this is the hard part so let's get let's get let's get zoomed in on
36:52
this one
37:03
so you see how much you have to bend the panel so if you've never done this
37:08
before I can see how this might be
37:18
hard okay so I'm going to show you what I do for
37:25
this so this one's fine so this one let's make a
37:32
mark and we're going to just follow our tape line so that's kind of the the
37:37
direction that the tape line was going we'll do the same thing this one's kind of coming this
37:44
way and then you're just going to look on the inside and it looks
37:52
like so something like right here I think that might be be a good spot so
37:58
just kind of use your instincts on where you think it might go at the
38:03
end of the day this is just wood you can fix it you can change where your hole is going to go
38:09
so don't be too hard on yourself so we're going to drill
38:15
this okay we're going to the same method we just going to tap
38:22
it and
38:31
okay so for this one I can't even see
38:55
it
39:01
okay so that one's way too far I got about I need to move this about a quarter of an
39:07
inch left so that's why we do that because
39:13
even I didn't make that one perfect
39:25
so there we go
39:30
okay so that's good now for these other two these two
39:38
are not a big deal we use a 1-in self-tapping screw be will be safe up there so let's go ahead and get these in
39:45
and then we'll move on to the the
39:50
final uh let's just do this I don't know what's playing
40:00
[Applause]
40:08
next yeah I can't emphasize using making sure you use the clutch on your drill
40:14
because the whole point of us doing this is to visually have these screws where we want them so if we strip a hole out
40:20
it kind of defeats the whole purpose so yeah use your clutch on your drill
40:28
just set it to the lowest setting we're just test fitting this we we have to take this off and upholster it
40:55
anyway okay so this is going in nice and clean
41:02
and we're just checking we don't have any bubbles nothing's bowing out so we know we're we're doing a good job so
41:12
far right I didn't realize that my arm is in the way of the
41:20
[Music] video
42:00
if you come in and shut the door it's going to make it much easier to drill these last
42:09
two um so this one we've got our line here that's
42:15
fine if you guys are going with the perfectionist method what I did was I measured here and I've got about
42:23
uh let's see we got 20 22 in so actually
42:29
we're probably going to put this here so let's just say
42:35
22 so that's that's right at 11 so it's going to look it's going to look good
42:44
um probably keep the same height over here let's do what do we do on this
42:50
side uh we got an inch and eighth inch and an eighth so let's do
42:56
the same let's just come
43:04
down and this is definitely definitely Overkill you don't have to
43:10
be this
43:23
precise okay now we're going to do this one first and then this one just so we don't accidentally uh
43:30
bow this middle piece in cuz it actually is concave a little bit and
43:37
arched so that's why I do it this
43:47
way so what I'm doing is I put the drill in reverse and so this is
43:52
reverse and I'm just kind of wallowing out the wood and then I'm going go back in and that makes it so it doesn't grab
44:00
the wood and push it out it
44:09
helps okay one more and we'll be able to check our
44:25
work
44:32
okay go easy on this one
44:38
because it's hard to tell what you have behind the door okay guys that is that's how you do
44:46
it that is how we install that so that was kind of my
44:52
part two of the of what we did earlier
44:57
so now we've got everything looking good we can zoom
45:24
out all right looks good you can see how that Curves in on the door and our
45:32
bottom is good to go okay so I'm go ahead and I'm going to
45:38
take both of these panels out I'm going get them painted and then what we'll do is later this afternoon we will get
45:45
together we'll do a live Upholstery and then we'll get our Havelock wool we'll fill up the cavity
45:52
behind here and uh we'll check off our rear doors um we actually will also go
45:57
and take these panels off the bottom stuff that with havlock and these two
46:03
rear doors for a van they'll be checked off we can move on to other parts of the
46:08
van all right guys hope you enjoyed that live stream if you're not subscribed
46:14
make sure you guys get subscribed like this video uh put it in the com if you
46:19
have any questions put those in the comments below happy to get them get to them in a future live stream and uh yeah
46:26
we'll see you the next live stream which is later this
46:35
[Music]
46:48
afternoon
#Campers & RVs