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Unaka Explorist.life Edition Roof Rack Install: Part 1 (Side Rail Assembly)
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May 2, 2025
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View Video Transcript
0:01
[Music]
0:28
he
0:34
[Music]
0:54
everyone welcome back to the live stream today we have the unaka roof rack this is the Explorer . life
1:03
Edition oh man live streams let me get this to fall in my face and we'll we'll try that intro one more
1:09
time here we go are we following there we go
1:18
okay let's try that one more time guys welcome back to the live stream this is the unaka explor St life
1:25
Edition roof rack and uh we're going to start assem it today uh this is part of our roof R
1:33
install where we're doing uh we're pretty much copying the explor St life
1:38
Edition uh setup so if you don't know what the unaka and explor stli uh
1:45
collaboration is go to anaka gear cod.com
1:51
and you want to click on Ford Transit roof rack and check out the explor St
1:56
life Edition uh so Nate from explor stli
2:01
he uh they partnered together and created this roof rck to
2:08
utilize as much of the Ford Transit 148 in uh wheelbase roof as possible so to
2:16
maximize the solar so that every square inch is used and um I think it gets
2:23
about let's see what was the what was the figure 570 watts of solar up top which
2:30
is really cool so it consists of two 200 watt panels two 55 watt panels and then
2:38
two 30 wat panels and these are rich solar
2:44
panels and when I found out kind of diving into this uh Nate from explor St
2:49
life he has a YouTube channel you guys should definitely check it out and the last two were designed specifically for
2:57
this roof rack so they were custom designed the 55 wat and the uh 30 W
3:03
panels to fit around the pneumatic X3 AC unit which is in the back and the max
3:10
fan uh that's in the uh the middle portion right
3:15
there so we decided to go with this setup one because we wanted to our customer for the van behind us we wanted
3:22
to maximize the solar on the roof to keep everything topped off as much as
3:28
possible two the pneumatic cooling uh the AC unit is
3:33
an excellent unit we are going to go with the new 48v version X2 so the one
3:40
in this photo is the X3 we're going to go with the X2 it's a little bit
3:46
smaller but it's an excellent unit um actually has more BTUs than our current
3:52
RTX 2000 has on our current van that uh we just got done installing the um 12vt
4:00
AC so the between 12vt and 48 volt you have massive efficiency gains and we'll
4:07
be talking about that in a future video uh but this is pretty much what we're um
4:12
working with today this is part one of our install series and what we'll be doing is today
4:19
we're probably just for live stream purposes we're just going to assembly these two rails we'll talk about the
4:27
fairing over here and the additional rails right here that are to support the
4:33
solar panels that go on here um but yeah I have not installed one of these before I went and watched the explor St life
4:41
video so got a head start on you know where all the bolts nothing screws go
4:48
but if we come over here back to the computer we have a
4:54
step-by-step uh instruction PDF that you can just go to their website scroll on
4:59
down down and then right here there's a link for the install manual it'll bring
5:05
this window up and then here you can actually go through and uh work on
5:11
it so we're not going to be doing this uh or putting this together on the floor
5:17
because uh currently do not have any room to do this on the floor without pulling the van out and uh so we're
5:24
going to do this on the uh workbench over here
5:30
so what you want to do is if you can have this laid out on your garage floor or outside um be careful that you don't
5:37
scratch it up it is all powder coated and even though that is a strong coating it can still get scratched uh relatively
5:45
easy depending on what it is so we're going to lay it out uh we're
5:50
going to come over here to our first step which is pretty much just joining all the panels
5:56
together and what's nice about this system is it does ship pretty Compact and then you kind of take it all apart
6:04
which I did earlier today but we'll get to putting these uh side rails together
6:10
um we'll come in here and we'll put some brackets on and then that might be as
6:16
far as we get into this first part and then the next step after this so after
6:22
you get to this part where the uh positions go in the van what you have to do is we're going
6:28
to have to take the plastic caps off the top of the roof rack of the Ford Transit to allow us to access the uh threaded
6:36
nut inserts that are made for a variety of roof racks that go into for Transit B
6:41
so we'll have to take that off and then what we'll do is we'll come back to this uh and then we'll just slightly relocate
6:48
these brackets to get everything nice and flush and square on both sides uh we'll want to make sure that we
6:54
measure from the front of the rack to the front bracket here or the first bracket so that that we can have them
7:00
Square on both sides of the van and then what we'll do in part two is we'll come
7:06
through uh we'll put together our
7:12
fairing uh we'll go ahead and locate the roof rack on top of the van again
7:18
removing those caps and we'll go from there and one thing before we jump in
7:25
into the install double check uh we notar double
7:30
check Ford has a tendency uh the way that the roof shell of the van is
7:36
adhered and the bars the uh cross barss in the van
7:43
are glued in believe it or not the offset of this hole is usually
7:50
an issue so you might have seven out of eight that are perfect and then the eighth one is way over here in the
7:56
corner and what you're going to need to do is be prepared to have a Dremel tool
8:02
uh to drill out a little bit so that you can cut away and uh open the hole up to
8:08
allow access for the bracket to sit flushy um it's the only thing where you're actually having to kind of uh get
8:15
into the van sheet metal um you'll definitely want to make sure that you uh you know put some Rust preventive some
8:21
paint on there to take care of that so that's something that's you know
8:27
get ready to do that cuz you will have to do that um unless you have a unicorn van to wear it's not like that uh but
8:35
I've done this on not this roof rack but other roof racks uh three times and each
8:41
time this will be the fourth time and I would not expect anything different
8:47
um as far as the hole goes um then we'll move into the next part
8:55
we'll be putting it on top of the van lining everything up
9:01
again this uh front part we're going to want to make sure that we get the same
9:07
offset from each side of the van so it's just nice and even so when we put this
9:12
together today we're kind of loosely putting everything together so that when we get it on top of the van the majority
9:19
of the work is done but then when we need to do some micro adjustments we won't have all the lock heght and all
9:25
that stuff taking uh making it hard to finish the end
9:32
stall let's see if there's anything else to kind of go
9:38
over we'll finish the series with doing the lap cyant around the top of the van
9:45
uh I go an extra step and what I'm going to do is before I put the bracket down
9:51
I'll actually put some black RTV uh in a circle around this so that
9:56
when it comes down we got a nice seal on the bottom uh there'll be this rubber gasket on top
10:02
and then the DOR will go around the top of the van and if you don't know what dor is
10:09
it's a self-leveling uh lap cyant uh very common in the marinas U RV
10:17
industry uh when you buy it it's pretty much going to be in a white tube but you can buy it uh in the black tube color so
10:25
that's what I would do just you know make everything look nice and neat um it's extremely runny so a little goes a
10:32
long ways because it's self-leveling it will actually kind of ooze around so don't put too much down um when you're
10:39
actually sealing it uh it gets it gets gets pretty
10:45
messy then we'll final uh we'll finalize this by starting to put our solar panels
10:52
on the adjustable racks or the support racks that it has
11:01
and one thing that we're going to uh the reason we're doing the roof rck first
11:07
for this van conversion this is the first part of this van conversion is we need to find out where our max van is
11:13
going to land uh with our pneumatic cooling X2
11:18
unit in the back so what we have is the X2 unit that we're using versus this one
11:23
is a representation of the X3 which is a bigger unit we may have enough a little bit more room to move the vent fan
11:31
either forward or back I'm not sure if that's going to be possible so that is uh kind of what
11:37
we're looking at cuz we want to get the roof rack first get all the panels down stuff that can't be adjusted installed
11:45
then the next step will go and find out where we need to cut out for the max van
11:51
the X2 is only is going to have a fixed position because it's in the 14x14 slot
11:57
which is at the rear of the van so these two crossbars at the rear of the Ford van have a 14in gap and that's where your max Vans
12:06
typically go also your AC unit uh go so this will be interesting because
12:12
we'll have the two solar panels in the front and then whatever the space becomes is what we'll have to adapt to
12:19
going forward in the build so we want to get all that handled so that we know
12:24
where to actually drill for roof penetrations for the solar wires cable and stuff like that and we're kind of
12:31
doing this top to bottom uh let's see what else is down
12:38
here so that's pretty much it so that's what you can expect in this series um
12:43
not sure how many parts is actually going to be right now because we are live and we're just starting to work on
12:49
this but if you have any questions put those questions in the chat below and
12:56
I'll definitely make sure we get to them looks like we got Daniel in the chat
13:01
hope you're doing well all right guys let's go ahead and start with this uh setup so in the
13:10
explor stli video on their YouTube channel that's the best one that I that's what I would recommend that you
13:16
guys watch um I'm going to go ahead and drop it in the chat so that you guys can
13:21
see the link to that video um let me go find it real
13:27
quick
13:58
okay okay I got that copied here you go so that is the link to the uh explor
14:08
St life video um this is Nate and Steph from the channel so
14:15
their Channel explorers. Life on YouTube they also have a website and you'll need to go to their website to purchase the
14:22
solar panels so you go to aaka for the roof rack components you go to their website
14:29
for the custom solar panels those combin together and you have a kit let me grab
14:35
my phone see if you guys have any questions while I'm streaming
14:42
here all right so the first part is there will be some pieces of
14:47
powdercoated uh 8020 aluminum rails so these are the 15 series and we want the
14:54
there's two sizes you'll see the longer one goes in the
14:59
front and then the shorter one goes in the
15:04
rear uh we have a hardware pack so we get a hardware pack for the rear which is the uh side rail Hardware kit we have
15:12
a side rail Hardware kit for the front of the
15:18
van all right give me one second guys I'm going put you on a little commercial break I got a UPS delivery I'll be right
15:27
back [Music]
16:57
he [Music]
17:48
all right guys we're back we uh just got the ecoflow power kit for this van
17:55
delivered which is really cool so me get back to my
18:27
camera
18:45
all right my camera is let me
18:57
down there we go all right let's get back to uh
19:05
putting this together so the front one is going to be longer the back one is going to be shorter you're going to have two rear
19:12
side panels and then two front ones driver passenger so pretty much just kind of like a like a mirror
19:18
image uh we're going to start by combining the first two pieces so let's
19:25
go ahead and check out the instructions on the first part
19:36
yes right here we're going to take these two metal brackets and we are going to combine the two side rails so we'll
19:43
do the passenger and then we'll do the uh the driver's side so there's these two brackets right
19:51
here and we'll start putting them
19:57
together
20:02
and guys anytime during the live streams you're always welcome to ask any questions it doesn't have to be related
20:07
to what we're actually working on today it could be you know anything that's uh that's going
20:13
on and if you're just now joining us we are putting together the an anaka roof rck uh explore. life Edition for our new
20:21
2021 Ford Transit build behind us it's an all-wheel drive 148 in high roof van
20:27
for a new customer and this is our first part of the first
20:32
part of the
20:43
build so I'm recording this uh I always record my live streams to the computer
20:48
and what we'll do is we'll take out some Snippets in the future and we'll put together a install video for
20:55
this so before the live stream started I went through and did a uh quick unboxing
21:03
of the roof rack and then tonight we're just
21:11
uh I like to work like to record and work at the same time because I can do two things at the same
21:21
time all right so we got this got these
21:27
two this camera is
21:37
not it's not cooperating
21:51
tonight also if you guys are just joining uh check out unaka gearco
21:58
so this isn't a sponsor video but we're doing this roof rack because uh it's a
22:03
pretty cool collaboration between unaka and explor St life uh they've maximized
22:08
the solar on top of a Ford Transit uh 148 in wheelbase so every square inch of
22:13
the roof is taken care of you can still fit an air conditioner unit so they're using the space mapped out for a
22:20
Pneumatic cooling X3 we're going to be using an X2 slightly smaller and there's
22:25
room for a uh Max fan
22:30
together so we decided to use this because um I think it's the best of both
22:36
worlds and I'm really excited to uh to see how it all gets put
22:56
together
23:03
we're just going to be going back and forth uh referencing
23:18
this all right so we got those screws there's supposed to be four more
23:24
washers but I don't see them in the pack
23:56
the main what we're mainly doing today is we're getting this assembled so that when we bring this up to the
24:02
roof uh everything is you know 90% put
24:08
together there will be a couple of a little bit of an adjustment when we get up on the roof so just be aware of that
24:14
we'll have to uh adjust these um brackets that go on top of the roof
24:21
to get everything lined
24:26
up
24:45
[Applause]
24:52
[Applause]
25:10
[Applause]
25:28
all right I got a question
25:39
here so that's a good question let me pull up I'm G pull up
25:45
this uh so my rough estimate I forgot there
25:52
was a website that I looked at so the Ford Transit can hold I think it's 75 pounds per mounting point on the roof so
26:00
that'd be uh 75 let's see here that's
26:06
75 *
26:13
8 so about 600 lb so don't quote me on that but I'll
26:20
look up this website in a second let's see
26:26
Ford
26:56
for okay that was for okay so this right
27:02
here uh this is really hard to read There we
27:07
go so don't again don't quote me on this this information is is hard to find because it is for some
27:15
reason uh when I go to search for this a lot uh this says it's 22 Transit Transit
27:22
owners manual let me see if this is it
27:29
so we like at the low medium high okay this actually might be accurate so if you notice so really
27:36
quick low roof is 419 lbs medium roof is 331 and high roof is
27:44
220 now these numbers are the uh I believe the dynamic
27:51
load for the roof of the van so what that means is this is the max weight of
27:57
your roof rack and components while you're driving down the road the static
28:02
load should be different than this um again I don't have the accurate most
28:08
accurate information for you but in my experience these numbers I go with to make sure that I don't have components
28:16
like solar panels AC Max fan roof rack all that good
28:21
stuff uh going over that weight so that's a safe Dynamic weight um so to
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answer your question the best that I can the roof wreck this this is not
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going to be an issue this uh as long as the uh you're Distributing
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the weight along the load of the crossbars you'll be able to have two people on the roof um now you're going
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to now the wood is the uh concern because that weight of the wood wood
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decking material stuff like that that is where you're kind of G to get in a little bit of a pickle
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because even though wood seems light it's not that light uh I'm going to show
29:09
you a company ABC rig so they have
29:15
aluminum panels that uh go on top of a a
29:23
van see if I can find their they just came out with this Pro here you go
29:28
they're called cargo deck panels and so they what they do is they span the roof
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rack and they're uh let's see what size there
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are so let's go to give me one second this is a really
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good question that's one taking a second to answer
29:56
it
30:03
so if you go to my let's see here if you go to Van Builder hq.com
30:13
let's let this ad get away from
30:26
here
30:33
okay go to V hq.com go to the 2023 Adventure van Expo Evergreen
30:38
Colorado and so we uh talk with ABC rig and we have them take us around their
30:45
Vans to do a van tour and the new component that they
30:50
came up with is right here so this is their uh Aluminum deck panels so they're
30:59
very light very strong they're designed for 8020 so they span the uh they span
31:07
the different parts of the roof rack and no problem you can have two
31:12
people up here on these panels the aluminum is light designed for the 8020 uh so they're using their roof
31:19
rack um but as long as you're using 8020 bars you can use it uh I would assume
31:26
Flatline van Co with the 8020 bars you could use them ABC rigs roof rack
31:34
uh and uh if you wanted to put these on in unaka as
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well what you want to be careful of is going above that Dynamic load to where
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when the van is driving down the highway and you have to go and maneuver around traffic or avoid an accident that's when
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going too heavy on the top of your van is going to be dangerous uh gets uh even
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more um I don't want to say dangerous but it's just the way it is more weight
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on top of your roof and if you actually lift your van up so the you know raising
32:12
that center of gravity uh it all it all affects that and you'll feel that once you get your
32:17
roof rack loaded and if you lift your van and then you get on the highway you'll feel a much different type of u a
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van but I guess that's a long way to explain that if you can go with these aluminum
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panels that's great txx decking so the the plastic TR
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decking um just think of using a small area of the van to to work with as
32:44
opposed to doing the whole entire van with a piece of wood just to keep the weight down as much as possible um I
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also talked to Ross monster Vans and let's see I went on top of
32:57
their roof so this is something called a safari style roof rack um they're
33:06
they're very expensive but they have this mesh grid so you can definitely you know walk on it put a walkable solar
33:12
panel that type of thing there's different options
33:18
but again long story short low roof 419 lbs medium roof 331
33:27
High roof 220 so this is what you want to have
33:33
when there's nobody on the roof and this driving [Music]
33:39
um if you have a big party on top of your van I can't promise that it's going to hold
33:45
the weight but as far as I know building Vans uh the equipment on top of the van
33:50
I don't like going over uh those numbers that I just uh told you so hope that was a
33:58
good answer to that question um you just have to be careful if you look inside
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the van uh you know it's meant to hold ladders and stuff like that um I mean
34:12
there's a lot of people that do overload the top of the van and there nothing really
34:17
happens but yeah just want to give you heads up that driving characteristics of the van
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drastically change the more weight you add which is pretty obvious and the
34:30
safety is a is a concern
34:45
[Music]
34:54
so the bolts on here we're using a 3/16 allen wrench and we're using a/2
35:02
inch uh little stubby wrench to put this
35:18
together awesome I'm glad that was a good answer yeah my whole philosophy is
35:23
I just want you guys to be safe when you're building your Vans I don't it's exciting to put a lot of stuff you know
35:28
have a party deck up there so as long as when you're driving you're not
35:34
overloading the van when you're driving that's my main concern when you're parked engine's off
35:43
you're kind of hanging out uh you know it's up to you what you
35:48
want to do on top of your roof a lot of vans that I've seen you know two people up there maybe even four
35:55
people uh as long as the weights distributed around the roof pretty
36:00
equally I've been to a lot of Van shows and there's you know there's usually about four people or two people up there just kind
36:08
of hanging out so that seems to be
36:16
okay yeah the driveing load is the one that I just like to harp
36:25
on
36:35
you may have wonder why did I get the unaka roof rack after all the stuff I'm talking about with the solar panels and
36:41
everything uh if you've watched me or listen to uh my ideas in or opinions in
36:49
past live streams ABC rig and unaka have the
36:55
widest roof racks for the Ford Transit currently and what's really good about
37:00
that is it has to do with the solar panel Market uh solar panel sizes and what
37:08
I've found is you know 60in wide panels seem to be
37:14
pretty uh available and they tend to maximize the solar that's on a
37:19
roof and I like to go with them however uh like the current van that I'm working
37:25
on I love Flatline vanco products but the roof is
37:31
it's like 57 or 58 in wide and it's just not wide enough to accommodate that panel so you
37:39
have to compromise on how big of a solar panel you're putting on the
37:46
roof and so for this build I've recommended to my customer
37:53
that we go with the unaka because we can can uh do a lot of things with one roof
37:59
rack we can maximize solar we can have this arrange so that
38:05
we can fit the new X2 air conditioner unit on the roof and you know obviously have a Max
38:13
fan everybody everybody needs a Max
38:25
fan
38:32
now what Nate recommends in his video so Nate
38:38
is the explor St Life channel is that
38:44
we're not going to overtighten anything because we want need to make sure that we have a little bit of flexibility when
38:50
we put this up on the roof uh as far as front to back with these brackets
38:57
so we're just going to take our time with uh putting all this stuff together and when we come up there um it's a
39:04
little bit of double work but we're going to we'll locktite everything when we get
39:10
up there okay so we got this uh panel this
39:16
is for our driver's
39:25
side
39:35
actually know we're uh this is going to be our passenger side the way that I did this
39:41
one let's go ahead and take our other pieces now we're going to put in the te-
39:48
nuts so you guys know me working with 820 these are the te- nuts that we're going to be using to put into
39:55
our so we've got four for one side one two
40:00
three four for the other side and I think maybe there's one in the middle I'm not sure I think there
40:10
is we're just going to slide these in here and then we're going to go and reference our instructions really
40:23
quick all right so let's see where where we're at all right so we got that taken
40:30
care of on the
40:42
inside so one two three
40:48
four these are the flanged ones
40:55
okay
41:25
for
41:31
so one thing I would actually little Improvement that they could do is for
41:36
the DIY instead of having to so I'm going to have to get a tape measure and measure out where these
41:44
go which is not a big deal but uh and get like a
41:55
marker
42:04
so one4 40
42:25
58
42:39
all right so the first one's here one inch so we're just going to put a little
42:45
dot so 1 24 40 58 1
42:54
24 40
43:03
58 that's not that bad so it's an inch here then you skip the first three it's
43:09
the middle of the fourth one five middle of the sixth one end of the
43:25
seventh
43:55
that
44:54
for so my next question for these guys is
45:01
going to be where where are we putting
45:09
the the L track so it looks like it's buted up
45:15
right to the front [Music] of the
45:21
rail okay
45:30
so this front one here we're just going to go ahead and lightly hold it
45:43
down all right guys while we have some people in the live stream I wanted to uh
45:48
quickly tell you guys about the uh DIY van build cheat sheet so if you haven't
45:54
heard of the DIY van build cheat sheet this this is a free curated list of my last 3 years of Amazon purchases for the
46:01
shop so if I bought it on Amazon I've organized it and put it in this Excel sheet you guys can search it and all you
46:09
have to do to get this sheet just put your email address it'll be sent straight to your inbox it's completely
46:14
free it's got everything from you know electrical some cargo storage options
46:20
Fasteners Hardware solar tools tools is the best part about this these are the
46:26
weird kind of tools that I've gotten off Amazon so like the rivet tool um
46:31
crimping tools the PEX tools one thing we'll do in a future video you can actually hit contrl F you
46:39
can type in let's type in uh pump and you can see it turns up uh the seaflow
46:45
water pump with the Amazon link and this is the pump that I use in all my Vans it's a nice pump um I don't have to have
46:53
an accumulator it ramps up nice and easy but the point is you can go through and
47:00
you can type in like solar and then you can go through and look at you know
47:05
connection solar panels stuff like that so it's a really nice sheet that
47:12
has over 250 curated items I'm always updating it uh we'll have a new format
47:17
in the future so really excited to uh put that out there but we're still working on that the good news is you
47:24
sign up you'll also get that one when we update it as well but yeah check it out it's a DIY van build Che sheet you can
47:31
go to Van Builder hq.com or you can click on the link in the description below to download
47:37
it if you go to uh van Builder hq.com you'll be able to uh look at our blog
47:44
post as well so we have all kinds of different articles
47:49
um pull this up real quick so we got a lot of uh blog post
47:55
post articles that go into a little bit more depth on stuff that we're working on so for
48:02
example this over here we talk about how to design and install a camper van uh
48:07
solar panel system so this is the top of marine one which is our van build that
48:13
we did for Thomas and go through and talk about the components we used uh this is actually
48:20
the one for my personal van 200 watts of Renegy solar and and then this is fully maxed
48:28
out roof of uh Thomas's van two Max Vans self- supporting
48:34
awning we got 550 watts of solar up there so really cool but yeah check it
48:39
out van hq.com the blog is just it's great a lot of
48:45
good information and we have some more articles that are getting ready to uh launch pretty soon so yeah just
48:53
wanted to mention that while while you guys are hopping into the live stream but we're going to keep going
49:00
here get this uh all put
49:23
together so for these uh I'm going to get this second one in and then I will
49:29
go back and do some Loctite cuz I know that I know I I will put Loctite in there so let's look at the instructions
49:36
to find out how many t- slots we're going to need for the back of this
49:41
versus the front so the back one's going to have one two three four okay so the back has
49:47
five so that that makes sense now all right so we've got 14 19 1940
50:04
57 yeah I would say for a a little Improvement would be especially if this
50:11
is you know a DIY install product if they can
50:17
manufacture some hash marks into the panel I think that'd be helpful for for
50:24
you guys guys I'm sure some of you guys will be
50:30
doing this in your driveway you know it's snowing or raining or I don't know
50:36
something like that I know I have the benefit of this
50:41
nice shop so all right so it is
50:51
149 so where's our marker
51:01
one so one
51:06
4
51:14
19
51:20
40 make sure you guys verify the instructions because I'm 19 is technically 19 and a half but
51:27
I'm putting on the center here then we got 40 and then
51:32
57 is it the is the one at the end
51:38
57 okay all
51:54
right
52:41
you might have to change the directions of the t- slot because things are pretty close
52:54
together
53:04
and the five on this short one actually one goes to this first so that's kind of
53:11
the so you need to slide it across to the next
53:18
one all right nice flip this around
53:37
how you guys doing in the chat if you guys have any questions feel free to
53:43
ask does not have to be related to what we're working on
53:54
today
55:11
all right I think I'm let's see
55:20
here nope I didn't I'm good I'm good
55:29
yeah make sure everything is really kind of buted up next to each other um because that is what's going to
55:36
give this roof rack its strength and Nate talks about in the
55:42
video we have this overlapping joint here and overlapping joint here that are offset and this one you probably want to
55:49
go ahead and get pretty snug
55:56
all right let's check out the the end
56:02
piece there's an endcap
56:13
somewhere okay the end cap goes on the end because we got the front fairing
56:23
um I don't see it on here but I'm going to assume where it goes so we got this
56:29
plastic cap which is designed to go on 8020 and there's this
56:37
screw goes in it and we're going to put it at the back of
56:44
this
56:53
rack okay we're going to set this aside for the
57:00
moment because we need to make any I need to get an all Wren for
57:05
that all right one second guys can check
57:11
out Nova hanging out on the ground while I find an allen wrench for
57:18
there we go all right so I'm going to assume that
57:25
this is going to go in the end and it's going to selft tap itself into the
57:35
[Music] aluminum which is pretty normal to
57:40
do there we go don't go too hard but we have put this in the end
57:47
here all right we've left our front open all right Next Step we are going to
57:54
go and let's see
58:19
here see if we can scroll down the instructions
58:25
for our next part so we have these mounts are going
58:31
to be on the inside let's see if they tell us there we go so this is what we're following
58:37
next is we need to find out we need to get our
58:42
brackets we need to line them up the front is the zero Mark and then we'll work our way back for the
58:49
measurements so I'm going to zoom in pretty big so I can see this but we're going to start here go back and then
58:57
Mark off the front of each
59:02
bracket so let's go ahead and do
59:08
that all right so we need to take this and we need to flip it
59:18
over our next set of Hardware uh so we have so the one we just used is the side
59:25
rail Hardware kit we're going to jump on over to our
59:30
bracket Hardware kit and we're going to need four
59:37
brackets and they're kind of stuck together in shipping so you just have to kind
59:43
of peel them peel them apart so we have one there one
59:52
here one here one
1:00:14
here all right let's get our marker out and our tape
1:00:22
measure I'm going to start from the front and go all the way to the back
1:00:40
here so 11 and 1/2 Ines is our first one 11 and
1:00:47
1/2 I'm going to move this cuz a tape measured
1:00:53
closer
1:01:02
so 11 and a
1:01:08
half that's the front and then we've got 40 and
1:01:17
716s 716 man that's like that's very
1:01:23
accurate
1:01:32
79 and 133 seconds all right that's a
1:01:38
little it's a little too
1:01:44
accurate 79 and 133
1:01:53
seconds
1:02:07
okay we're just going to put a notch at 79 and a half and we will adjust it when we get on the
1:02:13
roof we got 99 and 78 one two three four five six seven
1:02:23
e
1:02:28
79 and 13 30 seconds
1:02:34
that's
1:02:40
funny all right let's go ahead and put our te- nuts
1:02:49
[Music] in we're going to need two teen nuts per
1:03:23
bracket
1:03:32
I knew I shouldn't have put that cap on don't put the cap on until you're done with the te- nuts cuz now I
1:03:39
have to slide them all in from one side I can't come from down here
1:03:53
anymore
1:04:17
okay bracket one bracket
1:04:23
two yeah and definitely with these again all
1:04:28
this is just we don't want this too tight
1:04:38
um remember our little hat little line that is the front of the bracket so
1:04:45
measuring from the front to back the the Mark is at this top part of the the bracket is where
1:04:52
we're measuring so if you guys are wondering let me just show you one more
1:04:58
time so the front part of the bracket right here the front not the very very front but this first notch
1:05:23
back
1:06:23
when you're putting these on push from the bottom
1:06:29
up that would be my
1:06:53
recommendation
1:07:21
all guys I'm going to put you on a quick commercial rck I'll be right
1:07:28
[Music]
1:07:52
back [Music]
1:08:23
he [Music]
1:08:52
he
1:08:59
[Music]
1:09:11
all right guys we're back so we're almost finished with uh
1:09:17
getting all the brackets put together
1:09:22
here
1:09:28
all right so let's check out get my camera to work
1:09:33
[Music] again there we go all right so we just lined up all of
1:09:40
our brackets here and then the next thing we're going to do would be prepping the roof so we're going to prep
1:09:46
the roof in the next part of the videos so that'll be part two uh we'll probably get that to get to that tomorrow
1:09:54
because tonight I'm going to finish up the other rack as soon as other rail as soon as I
1:10:00
finish and uh yeah we'll get to that so we'll do the front fairing tomorrow and the removal of the plastic
1:10:08
caps on top of the van and uh let's see what else
1:10:17
here yeah that'll be good all right let's recap what we did we got the both of the side panels put
1:10:24
together we got that mounted to the 8020 and we haven't put any of our Loctite or
1:10:29
anything like that on there because what we want to do is make sure that we can adjust this when we get up on the roof
1:10:37
rack so we'll do that tomorrow uh we'll go ahead and take those caps off we'll
1:10:43
get our sealant and do all that good stuff
1:10:49
so all right so let's close this out let's go over the DIY y v build cheat
1:10:54
sheet real quick so if you guys haven't checked out our DIY van build cheat sheet this is a
1:11:02
curated list of our 250 items from the Amazon purchases that I've made for the
1:11:07
shop over the last three years it's essentially an Excel document that you guys can
1:11:12
organize you can put in a little search here like for uh like a water pump for example it's going to come right up and
1:11:20
it's just going to help you if you've never bought parts for a van and you want to have some stuff that's kind of vetted actually been purchased by me
1:11:26
it's on this list all you got to do is go to Van Builder hq.com or click on the link in
1:11:33
the description below you can download it completely free I think it's really going to help you out on your personal
1:11:39
van build so check that out also we have Odyssey custom van so
1:11:46
that's my custom van conversion business the van that we're working on behind me is our next build this one right here is
1:11:53
is the one that we currently have for sale so if you want to check take a look at it you can click on our video of our
1:11:59
V van Expo chattanoga Tennessee trip that we did and we did a quick walk through the van uh we got a couple
1:12:06
components we're finishing up on that but we wanted to go ahead and put it out there that this van is for sale if you
1:12:12
want to look at the options on the van check it out here we got a nice list of the vehicle base it's a 20 it's a all
1:12:20
wheel drive Ford Transit 148 in high roof it's got the ecob Boost V6 600 amp hours of lithium iron
1:12:27
phosphate for the power system and a bunch of extras down at the bottom we
1:12:33
have a couple photos to kind of get you started getting excited about this vanan for sale with the components inside so
1:12:39
go ahead and check that out on the website if you guys are interested in buying this van contact me sales at
1:12:46
Odyssey custom vans.com my phone number is right here the best way to contact me is to click on this link and it pulls up
1:12:54
a calendar that you guys can check out go on here pick a day pick a time and we
1:13:00
can hop on a phone call talk about the van and if you guys want to come by and check it out you can definitely do that
1:13:06
just uh schedule a time on the calendar if you're looking for a personal van build or professional van
1:13:14
build on the left hand side have a little overview of a consultation so just some things to have in mind if
1:13:20
you're looking for a professional build with me some little notes before we have a call but same link for that click on a
1:13:27
Time pops the right on my calendar and I can hop on a phone and uh yeah answer
1:13:33
any questions that you guys have all right that is going to do it
1:13:38
for the live stream tonight guys thanks so much for watching if you have any questions put those in the comments below make sure you guys are subscribed
1:13:45
like this video share it if you have anybody that is putting a roof rack on their van and they're looking for a couple of options this is one I
1:13:51
mentioned ABC rig as another one and then Flatline vanco is another good
1:13:56
option as well but until tomorrow we will uh see you guys on the next live
1:14:05
[Music]
1:14:19
stream
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