Let's talk 80/20 hardware!

foreign [Music]

thank you hey guys welcome back to the live stream tonight we're talking about 80 20

Hardware so let's go into our little slide here it's going to guide us

through the live stream tonight don't forget any questions van related put those in the comments below happy to

answer them tonight it does not have to be on 80 20 Hardware however we did have a viewer that wanted to uh

ask a question and uh learn some information about 80 20 Hardware so uh naturally Logan he asked so helpful this

had to do with the 80 20 short um I guess it'd be good to show you guys the

short video that it came from it was let's see here

man I was on a roll okay maybe it's this one if not I will

go back um but it had to do with uh tapping the end of a piece of 80 20. and that hole

right there can be tapped with a 5 16-18 tap

uh we'll talk about Taps what they are how they work um now remember 80 20 is aluminum so

it's soft uh it's extruded aluminum and that gives it this really uh

it's very rigid it gives it its structure the Extrusion process however

you know it's really forgiving when you go to tap it because aluminum is softer than steel and you can actually tap that

uh pretty much in one go but if you guys don't know what tapping uh

using a tap to put threads create a whole threaded hole we'll talk about

that at the end put that in the comments if you don't know about that we can put that in another video show you guys

teach you guys how to do that but in this video I'm showing you uh how I did that

and I used it so I could reinforce the Murphy bed because if you can imagine if you have a

bunch of beams in one line and then you have one going

perpendicular it's going to create a torque on that beam and that torque is going to make it

want to loosen up over time if not instantly when you lay on it so I didn't want that to happen so I went back

tapped the ends of these pieces and that allowed it to be super strong and not

have that torsion effect and keep the uh that way when you're laying on the

Murphy bed mattress you have the spring effect but the frame itself is not

um been affected by that hope that makes sense if it doesn't put

that question in the comments I can D dive deeper into that but let's get back into

naturally Logan's response so he said so helpful what screws bolts are you using to secure wood to 80 20. and uh so happy

to ask this question tonight because um it's just it's a really simple question

but it has so much detail behind it because it not doesn't only have to do

with just the uh the screws that I use it has to do with all the hardware that's used to connect the 80 20

together um uh it's kind of like a Lego set you gotta have the whole entire set to put

the Lego together uh the individual bricks don't always just uh work

all right so let's um let's get into this let me make this bigger here

yeah so we're going to talk about this we're gonna answer this question uh and then over here on the right hand

side we're going to be talking about the screws so the first

one up here the button head cap screw stainless steel that is answering the question

the bolts that I use for to secure the wood 80 20 it's a button head cap screw

it's stainless steel is 5 16-18 so 5 16 is the diameter and then

you have the 18 which is threads and then you have the inch and a quarter is

the length of the bolt so that's not including the head that is the like the threaded part

and that's going to be really important to uh let me let me highlight that that's important

because depending on the thickness of the wood

wrong highlighter hold on oh my gosh come on

I'm still doing this wrong man it must be the end of the day good Lord let's see here let's do orange

there we go so the inch and a quarter hold on a

second there we go the inch and a quarter is

very important um and then there's three quarters of an inch

is also important so let's make that orange there we go the reason I'm highlighting those two is

that is going to vary depending on the thickness of the wood you're using so

this is the answer to the question this is the bolt I used to I put a hole in the wood put the bolt in it and I bolt

the panel whether it's wood or upholstered to the 80 20 I use this type

of screw now depending on my wood thickness this orange part that is what changes

the 5 16-18 doesn't change because again here's the whole Lego set so

the 5 16-18 you need a bolt but you also need something to hold the bolt in the

80 20. and so that is where the uh

it's called a roll in t-nut and it's right here this piece

I don't know if you guys have seen me use this before but what this piece does is when you

have your piece of 80 20 it's slight it either slides in

or the function that this does is it's a roll in so you could be in a position to

where you can't uh put it in there and you can push it in and then actually

roll it in and lift up and it snaps into place it has a spring mechanism built

into it right there and that snaps it into place so if you're in a

if you have a piece like this it's either in the corner of a van

and you can't access the in and you need to put this in here so it's not a magic trick it just snaps

in and then just move with your fingers and then see it rolls in

but not only rolls in but now it uh it itself aligns itself inside

like that and then as soon as you put the your bolt in

as soon as you put your bolt in you screw it in then that's going to hold down whatever you're putting on it it

can be anything it'd be batteries it can be inverters it can be wood panels anything uh it's just a big old

you know adult Lego set um but what's nice about it is

the aluminum is not that light now a lot of people say it's lighter than wood

um I would not say that that's true uh I guess I could measure it for you guys

but uh it's pretty heavy um if you had a Wood joint like this and it's a two by two it would not be this

heavy it'd be extremely light the benefit of 80 20 is you can it's oh

I mean unlimitedly customizable I mean you can you know I've built kitchen galleys I've

built Murphy Beds I've built battery boxes I've built uh water storage tank frames I mean it's it's endless what you

can do and it's for me the safety is such a big thing it's it's extremely safe

um because it's so strong and then what I do is I'll actually take my frame that I make so say that I make

a frame for you know the van behind me Thomas's van uh what I do let me grab a bolt

is you can buy Automotive grade Hardware uh and that grade is typically a grade

eight bolt uh so the top of the bolt if you've ever wondered what these lines are on the top

of a bolt it is designating the grade of the bolt or the strength of the bolt

so if you buy this this is a uh grade eight

Bolt okay and it's been uh yellow zinc

plated that's why it looks like that that's just for corrosion

but what I do is say this was the corner of the kitchen Galley and

the refrigerator is behind here and then not only is the refrigerator behind here say the driver seats right here in front

of it so the refrigerator is right here up against it I've the flange on the fridge

um on those stainless steel fridges you can bolt into the 80 20.

uh and they make a nice flush version like this to clean so there's no grooves

and with that flush version you can uh use a sheet metal screw to tap right

into it and you can uh Bolt the flange to it have a nice clean look

but in the event um let's say you know getting a fender bender

the 80 20 is typically bolted to uh hopefully it's bolted to the van in some

way it's not just kind of sitting there but it's typically bolted to the back of

the van uh where the uh the interior you know sheet

metal is and then you're using like a Riv nut like we've talked before to mount it in there

and then some people actually might bolt their Galley into the floor the van floor which uh

for me that's kind of a No-No you need to have the frame of your

kitchen Galley or the frame of your battery system or water system

it's some point typically on the X on the outer pieces it doesn't have to be

where all the shelves and drawers and stuff like that are let me move this mic up lean my head

down there we go

[Music] all right much better

so say this is at the end of the van the driver's seats here the fridge is but up

against this so in the event of an accident the fridge is going to hit this but then what is holding this from

moving so that's where this grade 8 bolt comes in so you can get these

um pretty long this one is three inches and it's actually all we need for a Ford Transit

um and let's see did I use three inches it's I may have used four it it depends

on the location of this and the thickness of your flooring so depending on your flooring thickness underneath

here obviously you know you need a longer bolt um but I think this one was good because

we had an inch and a half of the 80 20 then we had an inch and a half of the flooring which included the

flooring lawn seal and the insulation and I think I had about a quarter inch

of threads and it was enough for a washer to to perfectly bolt this in but what I do is

I I drill this through I drove a hole through here and so this goes through the 80 20.

it goes through the uh the flooring the hardwood I mean the uh

your floor panels I mean your you know your flooring system whatever you're using then it goes through the insulation and

then it goes into the body of the van so the van chassis itself

um and it goes through there and then that way I take uh more gradient hardware and I bolt it underneath the

van so I actually go underneath the van and I bolt it down so theoretically you could turn the van

upside down and the whole structure that I built into van will just stay in place

I'm not relying on that little half inch piece of wood flooring to

safely hold you know a couple hundred pounds from the kitchen Galley which is the the

drawers the gray water tank the hot water heater the sink the faucet the

refrigerator I mean it's a lot of weight when you really think about it and guess what that's dry weight when you put

um when you put four uh two and a half gallons in your hot water heater and then you get like a seven gallon gray

tank um yeah those things start to add up

uh not to mention you might have a 20 gallon or 40 gallon water tank behind that so you know just kind of think your

mind you know what would happen if I got a fender bender you know where would my stuff go is

there is there some type of partition or is there some type is there something that would

protect me um I'm not saying wood is a bad choice I'm not saying that

um the reason uh I'm not against wood at all I think you can do wood safely

but the reason we used this in Thomas's van is because [Music] we needed very very strong structure

in very very tight places so where some places you might want to you may want

wanted to have used a 2x4 or something like that um we just honestly didn't have the room

for it plus uh Thomas really enjoyed the look of the 80 20.

um and it's been very helpful for us to uh just attach things wherever we wanted

so if we wanted to move a shelf we can do that if we wanted to put the Murphy bed in a certain location we can do that

we had to modify the power system uh or I did when we had to rearrange the uh

the profile the batteries so instead of being lengthwise together I had to twist

them and they had to sorry instead of having to be width-wise together I had to adjust them and they had to be

lengthwise so basically I had four pieces of 80 20 I just chopped them down and the whole

thing just tightened up so pretty much long story short it's

it's really modular when you're nitpicking on details uh but wood is very forgiving as well I mean if you are

building your van out of wood or you're doing a shower or whatever you know if you mess up you can you can patch it and

you can do stuff like that um whereas I guess the downside of 80 20 would be the cost and you really

don't want to make a mistake because cost it's expensive if you if you have a 96

inch piece of 80 20 and you cut the middle wrong you've you know that's expensive piece uh an expensive mess up

um so next part here let's talk about uh so we talked about the screw we

talked about the t-nut and how we put it in there um so to attach the 80 20 to 80 20 via a

90 degree angle bracket um so let's talk about that so here's our our little demo piece so

imagine this is uh maybe it's this is on the inside of your van so this is your your van wall this is your van floor

um and you need to connect this right here uh

the the hard way but it's arguably maybe a better way but it's uh

it takes a lot of time and there's not a lot of forgiveness and

that has to do with this anchor install so I bought a kitchen Galley kit from

R Caravan k-a-r-a van um so he's a self van Builder

uh DIY and he'll build he built an awesome Sprinter I've talked about another live stream but he sells these

kits for kitchen galleys and so I bought one for the spec van

and they pre-cut everything pre-measure and they cut these uh

they have a drill press and it's it's probably a CNC that does all this stuff because it's all a kit

um this is pretty difficult to do I'm not saying it's impossible but

you can imagine if you if you design this piece and I think I was talking to go and do

about this I think she was talking to me about my design process if I 3D model

things um so when I went to college my degree is in 3D modeling and rapid prototyping

that's what I went to school for we did uh you know 3D models of stuff you know we extruded it I wrote the CNC code and

then we go downstairs in the CNC machine we'd run the code to see if you know we learned what we were doing

um and that's awesome if you have very very very standardized process so you

know that I'm going to make a hundred of these kitchen galleries are going to be exactly this length the hole goes exactly here and goes

exactly here and when you're designing a custom van that's one off and everyone is one off

um time wise and then financially it doesn't really make sense to

for me at this current moment to make this use this method because you pretty

much have to pre-design the whole entire van um and then your

extracting each individual part and you're taking that individual part and you're putting it into a jig

and you're using a drill press you know you're squaring everything off

um it's a lot of stuff just to have the possibility of you install it and uh the customer says you

know what maybe maybe let's move this over here because you know I actually need to turn my seat around and move

this way so you kind of see that uh

it doesn't give you a lot of forgiveness so

these anchors they're pretty nice they're really made for if

you can't access a location like this so if there was a blind area where I had to

take my long allen wrench and I had to go in here and

had to sneak in this little hole and I had to like right here and then I had to tighten this up

that's kind of what this is for all right I definitely over explain that

so let me get down to the simple part this type of uh

bracket right here you can change things up you can modify

stuff quickly you can change it stuff doesn't have to be written in stone you

don't have to waste a lot of time designing and then you have the ability to change your mind so

I use this bracket the way that I attach that bracket is

let's just undo this and I'll show you

I will give you an example about Loctite so somebody asked me in the past do I Loctite every single one

of these and I only will Loctite certain ones so maybe ones that are connected to

like the grade 8 Hardware but I'm going to show you this has a lock a stainless

steel lock washer on it and this is aluminum this is aluminum but the screw and the watt the lock

washer are stainless and

if you saw how hard that was to undo that is why I don't Loctite every single

bolt um I was at a van show and somebody had mentioned that over time they'll get

loose and I completely do not believe that because uh some of these that I've had to I've

had to go in and take something apart uh change it re-engineer it whatever you

want to call it and then reinstall it um when I have undone these I have actually

uh stripped out the top of the

uh button head cap screw because it the the lock the lock washer actually cuts

into you'll see this here in a second um it's actually like a double lock washer

and this lock washer right here you guys will see this

so this comes off there's your Roland t-nut

but if you look really close the reason it's so hard

let's see can you see that the reason it's such a hard

that's hard it's hard to see the reason it's such a good

thing is look how the stainless steel lock washer cuts cuts into

the aluminum so there's like a little piece of aluminum that's been cut by the

stainless steel washer and it's almost as if it's almost like a permanent connection

so it's once that lock washer gets tightened down is extremely hard to undo

it to the point to where you almost strip out the top of this Bolt

so I would say don't be afraid if you are not

loctiding every single one of these

um I'm going back and checked on this van it's been about a couple months and everything is just

extremely tight um

but yeah but so the good news for that is you're able to build something and

change your mind I think that is the my biggest thing about custom van building is it's custom and at the end of the day

um if it's you as a builder or if it's you as a customer if you want to change something it shouldn't be so set in

stone that it's like nope you know we installed it that's the way it is and you know it's kind of

that's just the way it is you can't change it because we've changed his van a ton of times and it's always been for

the better it's been for better ergonomics it's been for uh you know better component installation

um so that's why I like 80 20.

all right so let me finish my thought on this so if you need to make a 90 degree

connection it's just uh what I do is I will

go ahead and now this one I left loose wouldn't break my arm here

but what I do is I'll take this and I'll I'll make a bunch of these and I'll this will be like a little mini

mini a little mini kit and I'll put these in you guys saw this picture

on my computer it's this box right there on the left side of your screen and it's just a box

uh just to keep myself organized and what I'll do is I'll make a bunch of

these when I'm making an assembly and that way I can just grab this out of the box and I can go ahead do all my

measurements um oh yeah let's uh let's talk about

[Applause] d

Diablo blades um

trying to find this blade so I use a high tooth count Diablo blade

I think that'll be helpful for you guys if you don't know what that is

um so it's a carbide here we go

so you see this blade uh it's diablo and it is a it's got carbide tips

and it's designed for wood and aluminum was designed for aluminum I still use it

for wood I mean it doesn't hurt it uh but what's nice is you want something with a lot of teeth

and so this is a hundred uh teeth on it so the more teeth the smoother the

finish of your 80 20 so that has to do with this so if you

look at the end yeah this one's almost perfect

but you can imagine if you used a lower tooth count blade this might be a little

rough and you need it to be smooth because you want it to bolt up nice and flush

anyway so I used this as the assembly and then what I what I'll do is when I'm

just playing you know playing around and putting this stuff together called playing around because I do enjoy

it it's uh it's fun building things and what's cool about this is so you can

take this and they're like oh man I need to I need to go to the saw and cut off you know an

eighth of an inch or something like that and then you can come back in the van you know just slide it in and assemble it so you see how I can just take it out

and I can put it in and so I can do that and then when I know it's like okay boom this is perfect

I'll go and get my Square and so this is a square if you guys

don't know what this is it squares things up uh it just allows things to be

at 90 degree um you can actually

measure stuff on it as well but this thing is extremely helpful in a van

Builder tip don't use this to reference off of the van chassis

you need to make your own reference and humble Road on his channel he explains

this he actually has a big uh like a Florida ceiling jig that he uses that he built out of 80 20 and allows him to

that is his you know datum point that is that is the point to where he is measuring everything up and down out of

the van and you kind of say it that's your home position so what you do you can take one of these

and then you can come over here and I'm not in the van this is going to

be hard let's see I'll do it here um this is a bad example but I'm just

going to show you so essentially what you would do is this is not how you use the square but

I'm trying to do it on a live stream here so pretend this is like the floor of

your van so you would put this on the floor of your van uh not the floor of your band you put

this on your piece of 80 20. like that

and then we make sure that this piece is square

um this bracket is going to do the squaring for you because 80 20 is extremely precise so you could literally just tighten this bracket down and this

is going to true this up so the reason I'm giving you this Pro tip is

once you put this here this piece is typically a piece going straight up in your van so this piece might be four

feet long five feet long and if it's not perfect which it won't

be in the van it might be off by a millimeter but when you get to the top of your van

it could be off five millimeters or six uh so you want to make sure you get it

nice and true because if this one let's go ahead and just bolt these together

the point I'm making here is if this is off think like you're building a big

like picture frame and if one side of the picture frame

is wider than the other side it's going to be a lopsided it's gonna be a weird uh picture frame that makes sense

you're going to have gaps so the bottom the bottom is going to be good and then the top is going to have gaps

so one thing you do you can take this Square it back here

so I'm I'm tightening this up if you guys have any questions go ahead and put those in the comments

oh perfect that's perfect so here we go I purposely messed this up

so if you can look do you see how there's a gap right here

you can use Loctite you can not saying that you can't there's two different types of Loctite

so if you want to Loctite every single thing on the van uh I would not use this one this is the

red lock type this is the 271 so my recommendation would be where did

I put that right here so right here uh lock type blue 242.

uh so the 242

foreign so if you are going to use one use this

because the there is the potential of you having to take it apart and as hard

as it's taken apart without it if you do use a blue it's going to be

pretty hard to undo um now that's a good thing because you don't want it to be loose

but blue Loctite is what you would want to use you know

on an everyday basis the red is the uh as we used to call it like the hydraulic

one it's what we used on like hydraulic fittings and stuff like that

you have a covered Ada design good if you want to use it on every single thing

you can definitely do that

ah let's see here where was I let me go back here

all right so right here if you're looking at this if you notice I did this on purpose so you see how this joint

down here it's not uh it's not perfectly Square

now you really need to make care make you be very careful when you cut this on your miter saw or your chop saw however

you're cutting this because if you don't have that exactly at 90 degrees

and you go to push this down this angle right here is not going to be completely

flat it's going to be off and your piece of 80 20 going straight

is going to be slightly at an angle um

because I bought my saw one time and I didn't know I bumped

it for some reason it locks into place so it's just it's really unique to be aware of what you're doing

but for some reason it was just off just just a maybe half a degree or something like that and I cut like three of these

pieces and I'd put them together thankfully I was putting together in a square so it was very apparent once I

put everything together that something was off so typically what I'll do is

um I'll always go in and just do a clean line and then I can take

so not this Square I have a different different one and I'll just check to make sure that that is set before I

actually start cutting the pieces

but right here

so we'll tighten this down and this one's going to be flush because

we lined it up here but you got to be careful about this second one when you tighten it because

if you're if you if this is not flat you will have a gap and you do not want

to have you do you want no Gap here you want this to be as flush as flush as possible

um so anyway this is how I attach all the joints in the 80 20 and then what I'll

do is I will through bolt that frame into

the fit through the van floor and that secures the whole entire thing

um I actually go A step above that and I will use a Riv nut and

tie in the cross members of the the van roof

so I'll do that um just pretty much anywhere I can and then I'll build off of that so I'll make

sure that everything is just nice and squared up and I'll build off of that

all right so next we have let's see here we talked about our

butt head cap screw we talked about the t-nut attaching 80 20 to 80 20 with a 90

degree bracket uh we talked about the button head cap screw okay the three quarter inch button head cap screw

so here is our panel example so this is just a

panel that we took out um this is like a test panel but this is just a piece of uh

um a quarter inch and it is

uh upholstered and then right here you can see this is where we've attached it to

the 80 20. and so what we've done here is

so in the notes the reason I say

um and this is not against the comment of always using Loctite but uh when needed

so the reason I put when needed is because there's a couple access panels that I

design in the Vans and one access panel is to the power system One X panel access panel is the lid over the the

water tank to access the port to fill the um

uh the RV antifreeze so the pink stuff into the tank and so those are not loctid because

they're going to be accessed in the future um so yeah those do not get lock tided

The Battery area doesn't get lock tided the back of the water tank to any access

panel that needs to be taken off um uh I don't lock type because

stainless steel is actually uh

in some instances it's kind of soft as far as these threads go and I don't want to Gall this out trying

to get it on trying to break loose the Loctite in order to access it

so just these access panels those are the only things that would need to be checked on maybe just once a year

so this right here is a piece of 80 20. so I'm just going to loosen this up

I needed it I was going to set up the other camera but you know how that one is it's been kind of finicky lately and

cutting out on me but this one is a three-quarter inch

screw so you saw how I just undid that it's very shallow depth

it's not long very very short and uh one second here

and take care of the German Shepherd all right so we got our board and then we got our short screw

so the reason you're gonna have um it may be obvious but if you don't know I'll tell you the reason you have

different size screws is because it's the thickness of the panel plus the

upholstery so if you pull through one side and you don't roll it over you know just think about what you're doing

thickness wise and that'll gauge your um because you might have thicker upholstery than I do and your wood might

be thinner or thicker so you can do that and then it also has to do with where is

that screw gonna bottom out on the back of the 80 20. so if you screw it in and it bottoms out

it's going to be like this screw where it's in the 80 20 it's tightened down

all the way but it's sticking out like a you know an inch so you don't want that to happen you want to you want to

measure so for example these two both of these are the same depth in the wood and you

can see I'm doing this on purpose it's obvious that this is bottoming out

so you're going to have to have multiple screw lengths depending on what type of

panels you have in your van whether they're a quarter inch half inch or three quarter inch uh and then you're going to make sure

that they don't bottom out because if they bottom out two things can happen if

you haven't haven't done this a lot the bottom and out you may think that you've tightened

the screw but what you've done is you've bottomed the screw out and the panel might actually vibrate or

Rattle and you don't want that to happen and then the next thing would be uh you

know how do you want to orientate the 80 20 to where the panel is being installed

um so you know when you're first doing this just uh you know put together like a little

little test piece and and think simple on this you know don't don't get too crazy I mean there's

some stuff that I built that is uh it's a

formica let's say it's a matte black for Micah and it's on

uh like oak or something like that like a nice heavy wood

and when you make your panels um these thin panels are okay and then

upholstering like a half inch panel is good but you want to make sure you have

the the panel doesn't need to be floppy if you have uh panel say like this you know make

sure you have bolt here bolt here uh bolt here and then over here or even

maybe down here at the bottom in these two places because you need to reinforce the wood because in a van you have you

have moisture so it's it's you breathing it's a door opening and the outside humidity coming in or you're in the

winter time and it's dry or it's humid and all your panels are going to experience

that so if you can have some type of frame and it's really

tight to that frame the frame is going to help it not warp as bad

um however the reason I was talking about that is where I do my formica like the matte

black formica for the kitchen galleys and stuff like that I'll actually take

uh two pieces of half inch and I'll take the the wood grain and

I'll have one wood grain going this way and then I'll have the other wood grain going this way and I'll glue it together

and uh in my experience that has allowed it to not warp it's not

the bend um because the way that I do these 80 20 galleys is I like to have like a super

clean flush door opening and the hinges don't really allow to

have you know a lot of uh structure on the back so the door itself needs to be its own structure

um could be getting into the Weeds on that but if hey if you guys are enjoying that just uh let me know in the comments

um I get pretty in-depth on a bunch of this stuff

uh yeah so that's how I do that that's how I do this let's see where now let's talk

about the hardware itself

and if you are doing a DIY van build or something like that you know make sure you get some bins

um you know put some labels on them so that you can you can organize all your parts uh you know make sure you order enough

parts one thing that 80 20 has been having uh some struggle with I mean every every

company within the last year or so it's just Logistics and uh

so simply make all their stuff in house I think they actually um powder coat other stuff in-house as

well there's a couple brackets and stuff that it just took weeks for me to get

foreign

so you just want to make sure that if you order something you know order enough and then just a little bit more I

know it's expensive and you don't want to order 80 20 stuff that you're never going to use

but um nope I completely get it yeah so this next part of the video I

think you guys will really enjoy because this is the actual specific part list that I've used and I know that's really

helpful for some because um some of this stuff is hard to explain

uh for example um this these standard anchor fasteners

standard anchor Fastener it's I mean if you looked at this would you call this standard anchor

Fastener it's hard to search for um

so I'm getting ahead of myself here let me go back so I rarely use those and actually use that type of Fastener

um it just it takes a lot of time uh but if I if I did something modular

like say I built something to sell in the future I would probably use that because for a DIY if I'm selling a kit

to somebody that's a really easy way to assemble it for someone who

um didn't design it because it's it's really simple they know you you know exactly where

um the piece goes like it's it's not a question of where it's at you know exactly where it goes

all right uh so the first thing let's look at this one we have our 15 series

uh inside corner bracket so it has a huge long name

15 series ready tube two-hole inside corner bracket you want to get this one from 80 20

specifically do not go on to Amazon

you can buy 80 20 off of Amazon I do not recommend it at all

um the reason is if you go in here it is from the 80 20

store you are buying from 80 20. uh but I have found in my experience the way that they

process orders is different um orders processed on their website

or typically faster than on Amazon

um so if I were you Amazon presents stuff nice to where you can actually look

through stuff quickly it actually is a better UI than uh

the a21 so you can find out what the name of something is so like for example

uh do you see this how it says 4302

so the 4302 the 33 440 like these

numbers are what you want to uh keep in your mind so 4302 let's just keep that

in our head so we're gonna go here let's act like we never went to the website before they do have an excellent search

function so if we click here and uh what was that number again

4302 okay if we type in 4302 all right see the search function

is really good um but you have to know this number to

start with so once you know the number you can go through here and find out

what you want and I know a lot of people like the black anodized look but if you're going

to be covering up your van with panels um you know it's almost two dollars and uh 28 cents

more so I would not do that because you're going to need to buy 50

100 brackets probably at a time but when you do find the 4302 you're

going to click on it and then uh just be aware everything is individual for brackets they don't come

in sets if you go over here I'm gonna skip ahead really quick if you go to the extruded

aluminum it's per inch okay so it's per inch

and then the other thing you want to keep in mind is there is a maximum link that FedEx and

UPS can ship so max length

that's just a UPS so the max link that UPS can ship is 108

inches long uh so like 108 inches let's just uh

because I ordered 96 and you'll see why so we've got 108 divided by 12 what's

that so that's nine feet um but to be on the safe side I would I do

96 inches uh I don't want to be I want something somebody to like put something in a box

and then the Box itself makes it you know 108 or something and they say it's too

long I don't think 80 20 would do that but um you you don't want to put in

the wrong number and get your order started because I have had the issue to where I'll order a

bunch of stuff and then if I needed to make a change on something um it's a little bit of a process to go

through and then edit it because uh I mean these guys are balls to the ball

I mean they are they are so busy right now uh they're incredibly busy with orders

they're doing really good to get shipped out pretty well but I mean they're very busy so if you call them you know trying

to change something basically just give me advice ahead of time you know make this a Max of 96

inches for UPS shipping purposes so nothing's a problem

keep that in mind that 96 inches may be the longest length that you can have for your to

design something in the van so you may need to have to break that up into you know multiple sections if you

have something that's longer than a 96 inch run uh let's see here

and then yep you're right all right so we talked

about the corner piece all right we're going to move down to the uh

this is uh this 50 so 15 series is what I'm using in the vans

I think humble Road uses a 10 series and I may be open to changing to the 10 series uh in the future

so the 10 series is just 10 uh just type in 10 and then we got 10

10. um they get they get different there's a slotted one

right here it's got these little lines cut in and then there's the smooth finish so if

I go in here and type in 10 10 uh just be careful because

the smooth finish is typically what you want um you can see the price difference we

got 37 cents per inch versus

62 inch 62 per inch

my recommendation is if you're working in a tight space and you have a high load I would use the 15 series but if

you have maybe smaller like galley uh

like you're trying to build a kitchen Galley you've got a lot of drawers and stuff like that you have stuff that can reinforce the structure

um you could probably you could possibly go with the the

10 series um just might need a little bit more reinforcement whereas the 15 doesn't

and then uh something that's really nice slam latch so

uh when I when I used to be an engineer for Bosch all the assembly lines had these uh like acrylic doors and these 80

to 20 frames where uh these latches and everything would be and they were always such a nice like

positive closure and so uh

I decided to try it out on it as a Murphy bed lock and it it worked out

really really well so and Thomas's van this is the system we use to

lock his Murphy bed in so this is the main locking mechanism

so you can technically use a key to lock it uh we don't do that because it just it locks itself you know you don't have

to worry about this handle being bumped it's a very positive satisfying latch

uh but what we did do by the way uh this stuff is expensive you know 66

bucks for this latch um and it's just called slam latch

uh it is very precise so wherever you have the two pieces of 80 20

. um you're gonna have to make sure that it's precise to align the latch to for

everything to close properly and I have a quarter inch Gap so I'm using 15 series which is an inch and a half

80 20 piece on each side with a quarter inch in the middle and this latch fits

it so what uh what accompanies that is the

um is this uh well not that where is it is this aluminum door stop

so this aluminum doorstep goes on the opposite side

and then on the opposite side on top of that aluminum door stop we have our

deadbolt latch and so this deadbolt latch

um this is the Sip safety backup so if the slam latch

fails this will make sure that the Murphy bed doesn't come out it's a secondary locking mechanism

the latches on the right and the other one is on the left now what I also did is I pre-tensioned the Murphy bed so

that when this secondary latch goes in it doesn't make the bed vibrate because that's really annoying so if you're

driving down the road and you have something rattling in the back of the van it's the worst so what I do is I take some felt and I

make it to where when you shut the main latch and then you come over to this latch right here you have to push in the

bed just a little bit snap the latch in and it's locked in it's locked in pretty pretty solid

again this one's 35 so I mean you know it's a hundred dollars worth of hardware for latches but hey they work with 80 20

perfectly they're easy to adjust and they look they look very professional

and I was gonna do some b-roll to show you guys but uh just stay tuned in the Thomas's uh van when we go through uh

when we go through his van and we just go deep you know step by step in detail I'll show it to you

um let's see here we got

all right next piece slam latch we got our aluminum door stop

and then yep last but not least was this piece so we already talked about this piece right here

and uh yeah that's pretty much it for this 80 20. um I'll talk a little bit more about the

website so if you guys have any questions put those in the chat right now ask me those questions anything 80

20 related can also be anything van related

um but as far as the 80 20 goes order it from 80 20.

you know use Amazon to kind of find visually what part

you're thinking about because you know with Amazon you can click on you can click on one part and

then it's going to start you know feeding you some recommended stuff

um uh my recommendation don't buy anything other than 80 20. I'm not sponsored by

any 80 20 I'm not affiliated with them but I have tried to buy

stuff that's not 80 20. um the brackets for example because I there's some places where I didn't

really need a strong bracket I just needed uh like a stop or something like that

and what I did order from Amazon was very bad that's very bad

one it didn't fit two um oh it didn't fit

but yeah go on Amazon find these numbers like you know 1503-ls just hit copy go back to the 80

20 site go to the search box paste it in there and then boom it'll come up

they've got a brief description uh they actually have like a little video here

showing you uh the different profiles of 80 20.

and then right here is length uh they'll cut it exactly how you want

it but again I would recommend just averaging everything out for your build knowing that you know if you need

multiple long links just trying to design stuff so you're not wasting material

um so if you have like uh I think uh what were we talking about like if you have you know 96 inches worth of

usable stuff let's say okay this eight feet you know and say you had

uh like a kitchen Galley that's six feet wide you need to use you know maybe design it so that when

you cut at six feet that other two feet

you're going to be able to you know use in your design somewhere you're not just cutting things up scrap off

um if you anticipate that and you definitely know you're going to need multiple stuff and 96 inches is going to

be a waste you can go in here and just you know do 72 inches and then have it

shipped to you um I just ordered my stuff in bulk in 96 inches because I'm not sure what uh

what I'm gonna what I'm gonna need at the at the current moment and you know go step by step you know I

was talking to uh going doing a chat when she was talking about design ways to design things or my

process and we've changed a lot of stuff in this van

over time for the better so you know leave yourself some room to to

change to make adjustments uh so I would I would say you know maybe do a

two two part order order your first part for something that you know you're gonna build like the bed or the kitchen

gallery or like uh the battery system enclosure and then when you're happy with that you've gotten comfortable with 80 20

then make another order so it might slow your build time down I

mean it might increase your build time but you're not gonna be wasting 80 20. because again this is expensive

what's nice is any offcut here in the shop I can use for a different build or

I can use as a jig or something like that but you may not be able to do that um if you're just building a van by

yourself all right so wrapping this up here uh

guys let me know if you have any questions we're gonna in the Stream here in just a couple minutes

so let's see how many people we got on the stream I actually might go through and see if we got any

comments on the channel maybe I can answer those I think I've answered just about only go here

okay I don't want to show you all the computer um now we got some people watching so yeah

answer ask some questions in the chat before we sign off here I love your questions by the way those

questions help me when I'm not doing homework on creating content uh for you

guys to teach like today uh you know naturally Logan

he asked this question I was like boom that's exactly what I'm gonna do today uh because to be honest there's a couple

things I was just gonna do on the van and I was going to miss the stream but I love doing this uh for

you guys and you know doing it on a daily basis as much as possible

so uh yeah I'm gonna look on my computer here for any comments on the YouTube channel but let's get uh

one of you guys to uh to ask a van question I know you're watching I can see you

guys in the Stream here

see here the grill

no we pretty much answered all of the the comments over here so

so we did the 80 20 comment uh

Daniel thanks so much for the uh kind words on the the battery box design

yeah I try to keep it really really nice and clean and this one was just because

uh there's no room um

so we talked about the Ford Raptor girl change out I think we're all cut up on the comments

I think so but yeah next week

um just an update for the stuff in the shop we'll have the new uh redarc battery shut in for the van we're going

to have the additional 200 watts of solar we're going to connect it to the renergie uh rubber Elite

so we'll put that in and then we'll um we'll move into upholstering the van

panel so uh that'll either be a time lapse or I want to show you guys that in

real time just one panel uh upholstered in real time and then uh we'll move on to uh yeah

just kind of cleaning the van up putting it back together um we've got some ARB air compressor

components that we're going to be doing we're going to have a quick connect fitting so that Thomas can plug into that

uh he's got a couple products here

so we've got an ARB uh remote mounting location and this just allows it to be

mounted uh in a different position than where we have the air compressor and then we went and got this uh

more more slate right here

so this allows you to uh if you guys watch

um Chad from living the van life he has a system that he can connect all of his uh air Chuck up to all the four

wheels and he can air them down or air him back up and make them all the same PSI so that is what this kit is

um I think he kind of piece milled his together but this is uh these components that I researched this is a pretty

rugged system so we actually might do a Standalone video on this

um yeah so we got these products we got the ARB

yeah we're trekking along and then um yeah so this will be the the last uh

live stream for this week um let's see if we got any questions no

questions guys give me some questions

yeah and before we head off if you guys want to get in touch with me uh personally

for a custom van build head on over to Odyssey custom vans

so it's my company website odysseycustomvans.com click on the contact form you can fill

that out and uh yeah we can discuss a professional build uh current opening is

currently in August so we're going to be doing Thomas's van

and then we have spec build to finish up uh because my goal is to take that to

one of the adventure van Expo shows and then um yes it'll be summertime and boom

right into another build so if you're looking for a professional build head on over to this website this

is how you directly contact me uh put in your subject line you know van build

inquiry and then in the message you know tell me your story where where do you guys want to go where you want to get out to uh what are you looking to do

tell me that in the message below also at the current moment if you're looking for consultative help so you want to

hire me block out some time on a calendar to help consult with you on

questions you may have on Van build design topics questions anything

that is you need more in-depth answers on than what you're doing in this in the live

stream um also use this contact form for that and I'll be happy to uh you know set up

a time with you and we can work on your project it can be a DIY or DIY turn into

professional band build so odysseycustomvans.com check out this

contact form that's how you can directly reach out to me other than that guys uh that is it for

this stream tonight I hope you guys enjoyed it hope you found it helpful if you have any other questions um and topics for future live streams

put those in the comments below and until next time I'll see you guys on the next live stream

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