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Mounting Ceiling Panels & Cutting Maxx Fan Opening
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May 3, 2025
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View Video Transcript
0:00
[Music]
1:28
he
1:37
[Music]
1:47
hey everyone welcome back to the live stream today we are working on the ceiling we're getting it mounted we've
1:53
already uh yesterday on the live stream we worked on the first section now we're moving back to the second section and
1:59
and with that second section we are running into the max fan opening so what
2:06
we want to do is I want to show you how to translate the opening to the second
2:14
panel or a middle panel of your van and then uh before I get started
2:19
putting in the Cedar part of the ceiling um I'm going to show you how that is
2:25
going to go into the middle section here so I'm going to get on the drawing
2:31
pad and uh I'm going to show you kind of what the plan is if you are there we go
2:38
camera's out of focus uh show you what the plan is if you are putting in your own uh ceiling in a
2:45
van so let's get over here and open up the drawing
2:58
pad Focus
3:17
okay so we're going to do an overhead shot of the van so this
3:23
is the van and we've got our front seats right
3:32
here I don't know why I draw them like toilet seats there we go I'm just going to draw
3:38
a little box okay that's the front seats and then we'll make ourselves uh
3:46
go back to the rear of the van and then what we have here is you're going to have that front
3:53
panel this is what you'll typically have then you'll have a middle panel and then you have a rear panel
4:01
now depending on what you want to do sometimes people put a fan here a fan
4:07
here this is the most common area for a fan to be cut out um that's due to the
4:14
uh Ford Transit ribs right here so that's a common placement um
4:20
sometimes people want a mid mounted fan in their van maybe have some vented door
4:26
windows um there's really a number of places to put it 99% of the time you're
4:32
going to place it right here so let's uh let's map out where we
4:39
have the support members for the roof of the van so up here you're going to have
4:47
a support member that's the first one behind the driver and passenger
4:52
seat the second one is going to be right here just right about where the door is
5:01
uh middle part of the for Transit door then you're going to have a second or
5:07
third one right here Midway now this is on a 148
5:13
Transit um actually let me back that up that's not true you're going to have it
5:18
right here let's see so we got one two
5:25
three four five so that's three
5:30
this one would be four and then you're going to have one
5:36
back here so this is a 148 in
5:43
Ford
5:50
Transit okay and then where we have see one two three four five we got one
5:58
2 3 three four and
6:03
five so those are your crossmembers so depending on how you want to Mount Your
6:09
panels so the panels we have them designated in Orange so let's just say
6:15
we've got one two and three just to make things simple so those are our wood
6:24
panels and uh
6:31
there's going to be a couple places where we we can mount the wood panels but we don't have
6:38
to you don't have to technically use a furing strip uh what a furring strip refers to is a
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strip of wood that's going to allow you to mount it to the uh the roof of the B so for
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example I'm just going to make some zigzag lines but uh well maybe this red will show up let's see
7:02
here so right here where this red is that would be a place to mount
7:08
it um this one right here would be a place to mount it to the rail you could
7:13
actually drill it into the rail and if you guys don't remember um
7:19
what I did yesterday let me pick up this
7:24
uh little template tool that I made
7:35
so this right here this is something that I made where we can push uh we can put this up in the ceiling and this is
7:41
kind of our um I guess go no go gauge you could say so wherever the uh White
7:48
spaces are that's where we can actually drill into sheet metal of the support member and then wherever the hatch
7:55
hatched out crossed out parts are um this is where we don't want to drill
8:00
because the drill the screw is going to go straight into the air it's not going to actually hold anything so I made one
8:06
of these kind of show you how to do it it's very simple you just put it up there but this uh piece of vinyl uh
8:14
bends to the Contour of the roof and it's just a good way to as you progress with your ceiling
8:22
install it keeps everything uh nice and accurate for visual purposes also it lets you know behind the scenes what's
8:28
there because as you start to build your van ceiling and you put the wood up there it's it's hiding everything you
8:34
can't really uh see it so get back over here what we have is
8:44
um yeah so right here that is a location where you can drill into the sheet
8:52
metal in the red so there's a couple places where you
8:58
won't be able to do it and typically it's uh well I to say
9:03
obviously it's where wherever these uh Parts overlap this is where you're going to want to have something underneath or
9:11
on top of the wood to drill into to to mend the two pieces together and you want something pretty
9:18
rigid um because you're going to want to be able to keep that structure of the
9:26
panel now I'm going to use this uh purple color here
9:34
and this is H what I had to do on this build last night um I had to add a
9:42
support member in front of a support member and the reason I had to do that
9:47
is because the uh the ABC rig panel kit that I bought
9:55
the front panel uh they really just have it lay on top of
10:01
the headliner it's not really bolted and I don't really like that I like things to be nice and secure and if I was
10:07
upholster in it maybe I would leave it that way but the ceiling panels are
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going to be what the cedar strips for the final ceiling are going to be glued
10:18
and screwed too so I need that to be a little bit more structural than uh what they had which was just
10:25
kind of laying in there so what I did is I put a support member there and then I
10:31
added one right here
10:38
and that's all I've done so far the next step um what I'm going to
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show you how to do today is we'll use this red again for our
10:50
openings so we have two openings in this uh Ford Transit um let's just let's use a
10:57
different color so we have a rear AC and this rear AC is mounted in our um 14 by
11:07
14 uh inch opening in the
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back so this 14x 14inch opening uh what's something really
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special about it it's just it happens to be that Ford designed those two pieces
11:25
in the back to be a standard RV size opening um I'm not sure if that's just a
11:32
coincidence uh probably not because it's a cargo van I've seen a lot of either you know medical Vans or anybody that's
11:39
transporting stuff that needs to kind of have the van vented you'll see cargo vans with a rear vent that's a
11:45
commercial use um so not for the whole van life thing or camper van you'll just see that that's where they put it so I'm
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assuming that's where it goes the benefit of that is you have these uh you
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have have these cross members right here that provide structure and hold the weight of that AC unit depending on need
12:05
get a big one or a small one but that is the standard location for that
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hole now we went with the uh the ABC
12:17
rig let me see if I can pull it up here we went with the uh ABC rig
12:25
explores do oh sorry we went with
12:30
unaka so many products unaka uh
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exploris explorers.
12:47
life so we went with uh Ford Transit roof R explor explor do life Edition man
12:53
I can't talk okay we went with this roof rck and so this roof rack is it's pretty
13:01
incredible um Blown Away with the quality this isn't a sponsored video but I'm just
13:07
saying the quality of the roof rack I've installed very very good and the fact
13:13
that Nate and unaka so Nate from explor St life and unaka got together to uh
13:21
create a solution to maximize the square footage that you could Mount solar panels on top of the roof of a Ford
13:27
Transit is awesome I think it's is so cool now the way that they had to do
13:33
that was they've the front mounted solar I mean the front mount of Max fan is not
13:38
possible the mid is not possible so what they've done is they've pushed it back here to the back so that they could allow two 200 watt panels and maximize
13:46
that area so this Max fan um on this photo is coupled with a
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nomatic X3 rooftop AC unit um the X3 is a it's a
13:59
monster it it will refrigerate your van so we went with an X2 which is uh uh
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the next one down from that um but what's super cool about the X2 is they just came out with a 48 volt system in
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end of December we got one of the first ones and it is going into this uh van
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not only do we get the first ones but my goal is to uh see how seamlessly that
14:29
integrates with the ecoflow power kit that we're using which is a 48volt um
14:35
off-grade power system so they have a cable that you can buy with a kit and
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essentially directly connects the AC unit um there's not many videos and stuff about online about that so
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hopefully I can make a couple to teach everybody and show everybody how it is to connect it but back to what we're
14:54
talking about you can see there's pretty much there's only one place that the fan hand can go and so what we've done is
15:01
that is what we did here so you can kind of go back and forth you can see we've
15:06
got this photo um and then we've got the roof of our van so as you can see
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here that is just about I'm just going to draw it on
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here um it's right it's pretty much right
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behind this reil
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and so this is also a 14 by 14 inch
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opening and so this is our this is our
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Max
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fan and this is our nomatic
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uh X2 48 volt
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AC okay so we got those two we got these two items right here highlight
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that if you guys have any questions that I'm not answering that are on top of your head put those in the chat I'll be
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happy to answer them so we've got two we've got two
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openings 14x 14 and so now that's really got our our
16:36
footprint of our roof standardized and now we can translate that to the inside of the van and that's what we're doing
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in this live stream today is I'm just going to show you kind of kick it off with what I'm
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doing um and what I'm going to do is I'm going to take this
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panel the middle panel that's just temporary temporarily held in there we're going to take a square with a
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pencil on it this is going to be like our fancy scribe tool so what I've done
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is this height is higher than the opening and then what I'm going to do is
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I'm going to bump this up against the sheet metal and then we've got a pencil down here and we're going to just pull
17:20
it across the edge and then when we jigsaw it out we'll make sure to cut on the outside of the pencil Mark just a
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little bit so we can make sure that that's accurate but we'll slide it down we'll slide it down the sheet metal like
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that turn it and then we'll move it this way so this is like a little you
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know little thing to make make things nice and accurate so once we do that
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we'll have half of this panel cut out and that's probably as far as I'm
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going to get in the live stream I'll finish it tonight and then tomorrow we'll catch up on what I did um I didn't
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want to go too far last night I was about to just do everything but um this is really important stuff that if you
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guys as a DIY Miss uh it's kind of the It's My Philosophy where there's a bunch
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of there's a bunch of time lapse on YouTube but the time lapse don't explain
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what happens in between the time lapse it's just kind of okay we did it and this is a fast forward version you miss
18:22
the nuances which is the supporting member that goes in the middle how do
18:28
you cut out this to match so that when you put your trim piece on the inside it
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actually is works and it's neat you know how does this how does this work with
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the insulation how do you put it in how do you at what point do you start to cut
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the light holes out for pulling your wire and I will admit nine times out of
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10 you're going to preut out your Puck Light holes in the ceiling before you
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put it on or before you put your insulation on um I'm doing a lot of things uh I guess I'm doing it my way
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it's not really backwards it's just uh if you want to maximize ceiling
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height then you really need to mount this quarter-inch panel to this uh upper
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cross member of the the four Transit van um you need to do that
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because uh that's how you really maximize that if you can imagine if you do a fing strip that's another half inch
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you're losing on your interior and then when we put in our quarter inch panel
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for out another quarter inch and then we're going to put our final Cedar ceiling in which is a/ quarter inch
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that's a full inch of material that is below this crossmember and so basically you have
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this Gap up here to stuff with insulation that would be you know four inches and if we do it uh the way I'm
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doing it and this is actually the way I did it in my personal van um my personal van I actually I
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actually put the cedar strips directly to the metal but I don't do that anymore because it's not as a robust install so
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for this what I do is um we'll do this underlayment material quarter of an inch
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and then we're going to glue the strips to it and then kind of move on from there all right so let's uh I'm going
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toop Up on the Roof you guys won't be able to see it but I'll I'll explain here in the drawing what I'm
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doing so what I'm doing is hopefully let's see if we can get any more
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colors so pretty much the panel that we're working on looks something like
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this so This panel right
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here this is the one we're working on today
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and so what we're going to do is this part is
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uh that part is what we're going to see let me get
21:27
some there we go that part is what we're going to cut out so we're going to cut that out and
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do that all right let's get back let's get
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back to work here um all right I'm going to go up on the
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roof you'll see me we'll take the panel down we'll explain some stuff we'll jigsaw it out and then we'll kind of go
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from there again anytime you guys have questions put those in the chat
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um yeah I'd be very happy to answer those for
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you if you're wondering why we paused on the floor we're waiting on some uh
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cables to come in and so we're just moving on to something else so we
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don't uh we make the most use of our time
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all right so I've got this up here
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and I'm going to get it nice and square to my sheet metal cutout and I'm going
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to go really easy I'm just going to drag this
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backwards and then when I get the next piece up here I'll do the same
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thing
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try to make this as perfect as you can and if you were wondering if you
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messed up you know you can cut on the inside of this line
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um but right now as I'm measuring this it looks like I need to come an eighth of an inch
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outside of the line for my jigsaw and that'll give me enough room
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to actually uh put the trim piece for the max fan up
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in
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there okay so that was it that's how fast you trace it okay so as we come up in
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here got a bunch of insulation so put some safety glasses on uh let's take out our
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clamps so all I've done I did these clamps because I just want to have this tight in the space that's about 99%
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going to
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be
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and then all we have we have one screw right here that is just holding everything nice and
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tight to the front of the van and then we got these flaps here and the reason that these aren't here is because we
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haven't secured them to the furing strip so I'm about to unveil uh the stuff I
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worked on off camera you guys missed yesterday
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and you can see this using these uh Riv nuts makes it's just very convenient to pop it in and
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out we can't use them because we're not going to be able to have it flush
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enough so that it's hidden underneath the [Applause] uh Cedar strip so that's why we're only
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using it for this purpose but we're going to pull this
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down and you can kind of hopefully you can see where that
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uh I can't I can't move this in the van hopefully you can see where that
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um The Mark is so we're going to cut that
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out all right while we're cutting that out
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um I'm going to explain or before I cut it out I'm going to explain what we did yesterday so I'm
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going to zoom in with the
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camera okay it's going to be a little bit fuzzy but it'll be all
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right okay so what we did yesterday back here
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is on this right and left side it was binding um so ABC just kind of wants to
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put in this pocket a pulser and it just kind of hanging here you'll mount it here but I just I didn't like that um so
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what I did is I was wondering where it was binding and it was binding where these two little stamped pieces that did the
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uh the support member come out so it's flat from here to here but these stamp
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pieces bring it out another quarter of an inch and it's just too much stress on the outside edges so I just notched it here it
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relieved it now it's not in a bind and it relieved it over here and now instead
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of having this weird dip that I had yesterday that you guys didn't see
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um that Leaf corrected it plus I needed something to uh screw
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into so right here these four uh five screws are temporarily holding this uh
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piece of Baltic Birch half inch that is above the crossmember so that's allowing
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this front piece of underlayment to be flush with the ceiling allowing
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this the uh Ford Transit to uh headliner to snap back in Place comfortably so
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this is not under any pressure um so this is good now what
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we're going to do with the cedar pieces we're actually going to peel this back a little bit and then we're just going to
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that's going to be mounted under that and we need it to be mounted under
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because once we start going to the outside edges um this is going to come up about
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that much more but when we get these outside edges we're going to start to kind of reveal this uh the van's going to curve and by
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putting it underneath here we conceal it uh as much as we can
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so it looks nice so we went did that uh we came back
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we insulated this um this is screwed into the the cross member so the cedar
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is going to go on top of that we're not going to pull wire from the right hand side
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uh because this is blocked off by that Ford Transit cable but we are going to
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do the same thing I did in Thomas's van we're going to come up here through the max fan so we can still have access to
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this cable for in the future um and it's going to come down here and
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then now we have tons of clearance underneath this panel to uh run our our
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uh Puck lights through here here but we can't drill the puck lights until we
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have our Cedar started and coming in because we need to find out where that Cedar's going to
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land this where I say don't over plan this because if if you can imagine say I
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went ahead and drilled the hole out and said that's where it's going to be I drew it out on paper that's where it is but after you
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in the real world move your Cedar all the way out and say you're off a quarter of an inch now you've messed up where
29:57
that go go so just wait until you get to that piece if you're doing like a slided type of ceiling just wait till the piece
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is over here then drill through and then you can just take a clo hanger or something and you can just put your wire
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up and then push push it through to get where you need to go it may sound impossible but trust me
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I'm going to do it I'll show you on camera we came back and then this right here there's this is the support for the
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ceiling so in the middle here there's no support and we need to transition from this curve to flatten it out and have it
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nice and flat this way and then on the sides um we want this to come together
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so we've got a piece of half inch Baltic Birch going the spanning the width drilled into our two supports and then
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we have this Baltic Birch it's 4 in wide that's just random I just randomly sized
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it as that you know just two inches on each side I drew a center line so then when I bolted it in in I can make sure
30:58
it was Center and even and that is what you saw me pull the screw out of the
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panel we just took off um a quick hack to hold up the
31:09
insulation is just use masking tape um and just have it hold it up and
31:15
it can just stay there it's not hurting anything so that's going to hold our insulation up and now you can see we've
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maximized our ceiling height because we've got room for insulation this this is where our crossmember is so
31:29
everything is as tight to the ceiling as possible
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and so that's where that's where that is okay so I'm going to take this over
31:41
here on the table I'm going Square it up cut it with a jigsaw and then we'll be back and we'll start to uh we'll put
31:49
some insulation in we'll bolt this in we might cut some furing
31:55
strips and and keep on going with this
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[Applause]
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install so my goal is to get the ceiling done before the ecoflow
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cable shows up in my mailbox that's the that's the
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goal all right guys I'm going to be off camera for a second but I can still see if you guys are if you guys have any
32:26
question questions
32:34
um so I'll just zoom out here there you
32:43
go yeah so I have my phone over here on the
32:49
workbench so as I'm cutting this if anything pops in your head
32:54
just put it in the chat and I'll try to answer it for
33:05
you so in the meantime if you guys want to uh head on over to Van Builder hq.com
33:11
you can check out all the blog posts and articles that we have on there we've got a ton on DIY van conversions um just a
33:19
bunch of awesome stuff to read the photos are our photos where we take we go to the uh shows and with either
33:26
interview other vendors uh we take pictures of stuff that we like to talk about in the article so you can actually
33:32
see some some nice photos so those are in the article as well and then uh there's a link in the description below
33:39
as well as on the website to the DIY van build cheat sheet so if you don't know what that is it is a Excel document that
33:46
I put together of all my purchases on Amazon over the past three years for the
33:51
shop so it's about 250 it's over 250 curated items curated because they're
33:57
all organized by where I put them in the van but if you want to have something to Kickstart your van build place to go to
34:04
see you know what I buy for some of my van conversions or what I have bought um it's on that list it's
34:11
completely free all you got to do is put your name an email address um click Send and it's going to bring it right to your
34:17
inbox and you can have it uh it's also going to be updated throughout the years
34:22
so the more stuff I buy the more stuff goes on the list but uh yeah checking out the Dy van build cheat sheet and
34:29
then also check out vilder hq.com for the blog
34:35
post yeah so check that out while I am cutting this out that would be a
34:42
good good thing to
34:55
do okay so so I'm going to cut this out like I said I'm
35:02
doing I'm doing e/ inch over this line and then you
35:07
[Music] can start on the line and then if that's not
35:12
enough you can always take more out but that E8 inch is pretty much the offset
35:19
of the uh Carpenters pencil that I was using
35:32
okay so now with this I'm going to cut it on on the
35:39
line I'm not sure how loud this jigsa is I'm pretty sure my sound stuff is taking
35:44
out the the peaks of this audio but might
35:50
want to turn it down for a
35:55
second
36:21
now one thing I am going to do is I'm going to need to cut out two more pieces of B IC Birch
36:28
essentially 4 in so that I can
36:34
um have something to mount with
36:39
this yeah because we don't have any supports in
36:50
there okay yeah I'm going to bring the camera over here because I'm going to be over at the workbench just for a minute
37:10
all right here we
37:25
go
38:17
[Music]
38:25
w [Music]
38:41
all right let's see how big we need
38:48
the those pieces is Baltic Birch to
38:55
be
39:25
for
39:55
for
41:02
okay 22 and a
41:11
half so what we're going to do is we're going to put this back in the van because we're going to need to
41:18
measure the so inside of a van when once we put this panel
41:24
in we have that piece of stainless lip and what we need to do is we need to
41:30
make a piece of wood that is long enough to where we
41:35
have as most support into the stainless as possible but at the same time has
41:41
enough room to get into the top of the van um because that's what that's the issue I had with the other piece was it
41:47
was too long and you couldn't you couldn't stuff it in there
41:55
so
42:39
okay back in the van I thought it was going to be out here a little bit longer than I
42:55
was
43:01
okay now let's do the same thing in
43:13
Reverse uh and we're going to measure we're going to measure how far so 9 and
43:19
1 half in is how far from the opening
43:26
[Music]
43:35
so 9 and 12 in from the opening that is
43:42
our where our piece of wood
43:48
ends and over here we've
43:54
got piece of wood in we've
44:00
got so what they were doing this to map out where we're going to put where we need to tape up or temporarily tape up
44:07
our insul insulation um so that's going to be 22
44:16
in I think I think a bat the width of a bat might be
44:25
okay [Music]
44:52
okay so again by using our masking tape meth method is how we're going to make this
45:07
happen um this one actually this one this one I think we can just
45:14
actually put back up here and put it
45:22
in it's not really a perfect way to do this so don't feel bad if you don't know if you're doing it
45:39
right all right let's get this right
45:48
there yeah we do want where this screw was we want this to be accurate because
45:54
this uh this screw right here is making sure that we are locked
46:00
into the same place that we started
46:19
from now we can come back make sure we're lined up here on
46:24
the sides
46:40
actually what I'm going to do so we we really just want to support
46:46
this piece of wood uh yeah let let's do
46:51
this we just don't want to crack our wood with the screw in the front
46:57
that's what we want to do we don't want to crack this but we want that to be
47:04
tight okay so next me cent center this camera up a
47:10
little bit
47:17
better there you
47:23
go so next we can use this to
47:28
gently put our insulation in remember we don't want it to be stuffed sometimes
47:34
you can just shake it you know get it flipped up just a little
47:54
bit I'm lazy not putting my mask on
48:00
so even though it's all natural you still want to have a little bit of
48:11
protection and so I'm stuffing to the back and then I'm kind of pulling that
48:16
Ripple out and don't worry about this middle piece we'll take care of that in a
48:24
minute
48:33
also make sure you're not pushing it too far back and especially on these outer
48:41
edges that we have
48:47
it clear of the sheet
48:54
metal that way when we push it up we don't want too far back so it binds on the support member here we just want to make
49:00
sure it goes back just enough and
49:06
then we can move this one looks
49:15
good so this is adjusted more right and then we'll fill in whatever we need
49:22
to on the left hand side so this
49:31
much we're going to cut that
49:54
much
50:11
then we're going to cut two small strips to go into our
50:18
stainless Channel area on each
50:24
side there a little insolid value
50:38
there be careful when I should have gloves on
50:54
but
51:55
okay
52:02
okay next let's just go ahead and cut out our insulation right
52:24
here
53:28
and then our piece of Baltic BS needs to be no more than 56
53:36
in let's see here actually we're going to cut it we got to cut in half
53:44
anyway so let's
53:50
do we'll do 21 no
53:58
can we do 22 we're going to do 22 we're going to try to see if we can do 22 because we
54:04
want as much meat over here on this side as possible yeah let's do
54:10
22 so let me get two pieces of 22 cut out and then
54:17
we'll we'll get back to get back to work here so I think this
54:23
piece how big is this
54:54
piece
55:54
got
56:06
okay now let's let's actually measure it
56:23
now yeah 22 is still
56:53
good okay I'm going to use a table saw for a second so I'm going to turn the volume
57:23
down
58:09
[Music]
58:19
[Music]
58:43
all right we're back got our pieces we just need to quickly Mark our Center on
58:50
these and then we can get back to what we
59:02
doing and I'm it's just a I'm just going doing a very rough Center I'll show you when I get back in the band one
59:23
second
59:30
okay so this is what I made got these two pieces and then I just drew a marker down the center the
59:37
rough Center and then we're going to put these in let me get that
59:45
camera camera angle up a little bit
59:53
higher
1:00:02
so this you can actually use the
1:00:10
clamp the clamp might not fit so we got that dot where this is
1:00:16
supposed to line up
1:00:23
roughly
1:00:48
and I'm coming back a half inch on this just in case I need
1:00:56
a little bit more room when I do my final install of the
1:01:08
fan okay so let's get get a screw in
1:01:14
there I'm using 3/4
1:01:23
screws
1:01:42
you could clamp this if you wanted to to help you hold
1:01:53
it
1:01:58
and we're not going to see this so the the point of this is for structure of
1:02:04
the panel and then this area on the right
1:02:11
don't get too close to this CU you'll you'll crack your wood don't want that
1:02:16
so I think I've been staying about 2 in off from the sheet
1:02:23
metal okay
1:02:32
perfect and then we'll have one go into the sheet
1:02:53
metal
1:03:09
all right so that has a really good structure now again don't worry about
1:03:15
this being Flappy right here once we drill this in and this it's going to
1:03:23
make all this super strong this back part is going to be a little complex so I'm not sure how I'm
1:03:30
going to live stream that because we're actually going to have to build a little insulated chamber here around this AC
1:03:40
so I might finish all this up get the wood started I'm definitely going to get the cedar started in this middle section
1:03:46
so from the front to its first cut right here and get these pieces in um hopefully I can do a temporary one
1:03:53
before I have to to hop off the live stream um I'm trying to go till
1:04:00
about 7:00 7:30 anyway okay now we get this
1:04:07
one so we're going to do the same thing over
1:04:23
here and again I'm going to leave this offset
1:04:30
about a half an inch just to give me some some
1:04:38
room all right where is
1:04:51
screws tell you what I didn't know how much I was going to use this uh temporary kitchen Galley it's uh I
1:04:58
haven't had one at this stage the build in a van it's hilarious it's holding all
1:05:04
my screws and it's like a little workbench all right there we
1:05:22
go I'm definely an advocate for Baltic Birch now it is an amazing piece of material
1:05:29
it is extremely rigid I've never I've never worked with it because it's been so hard to get and it's been uh
1:05:37
expensive as well
1:05:50
Nova don't
1:06:01
so I'm using these are non self-tapping but when I go into the uh
1:06:07
stainless over here um it is self-tapping
1:06:13
so just heads up on
1:06:23
that
1:06:36
okay that one did
1:06:43
not there we go don't let it push up on the wood if
1:06:48
you do that you need to unscrew it and then screw it back in because we want it
1:06:55
you know clamp to the uh the
1:07:00
stainless all right so now we got our two supports in F strips whatever you
1:07:07
want to call it um so this is looking really good right
1:07:18
here now let's add some more insulation I'll do it to this back
1:07:52
area
1:08:30
so you can see we've added of the other sound ding strips we've added uh I didn't add any here
1:08:37
because this is the Ford factory one so uh from here coming back we'll add some
1:08:44
here around here and then this little back
1:08:50
area you don't have to but um if you got the thin stuff I I'd put it up there if
1:08:57
you have
1:09:02
it so here we need 14inch piece of
1:09:18
insulation 14 by7
1:09:39
and just take it and kind of just do a little shake and it kind of fluffs it up a little
1:09:45
bit and that way you can see we got a nice perfect
1:09:52
fit notice how this is Loft see how it's
1:09:59
Loft in here we're not smushing it all right so even though even when we get
1:10:04
this bolted down that's as far as it's going to go this keeps that nice good
1:10:10
air gap we're not remember we're not smushing anything it's that's one way to make insulation
1:10:18
not work
1:10:29
guess I could change what I said make it more effective it'll still insulation is better than
1:10:37
no insulation now I am folding up like this
1:10:43
in these parts right here because it's it's kind of the arc is open more so as
1:10:49
long as I can lightly put it in here like that and and then we're
1:10:56
okay and it's pretty nice so if you're wondering how much insulation that is uh
1:11:02
we're at right at about an inch and 3/4 and again this is hav loock wool
1:11:08
that we're using for this build okay so that looks really good
1:11:15
um so now that we have this side in we have this side
1:11:22
in
1:11:27
uh I'm actually going to take this sander and this is not going up in there
1:11:33
smoothly so this side is but we don't want these edges to bind
1:11:40
so I'm just going to hit them with the sander really quick and then we're going to screw it
1:11:46
all
1:11:52
down
1:12:58
Jamie say he loves the kettle bell that kettle bell is good kabell and brake rotors are really good for holding uh
1:13:05
material down okay what I'm doing here is I'm pushing this up and where it starts to
1:13:11
bind which is right here I want to sand that
1:13:20
corner we're going to sand that corner and that way way when we screw it in it's not going to bind because trust
1:13:27
me this Fan's going to be super hot and super cold throughout his [Applause]
1:13:40
life I'm going turn the volume down I bet that's super loud there we
1:13:49
[Music] go
1:13:56
[Music] [Applause]
1:14:01
[Music]
1:14:13
[Music]
1:14:21
[Applause] [Music]
1:14:54
[Music]
1:15:03
[Music]
1:15:18
okay all right so now that we're not binding just put a bunch of screws in
1:15:24
here too um if you're doing the exact method that I'm doing
1:15:29
also also look out for where the drill
1:15:40
go how do you lose a big
1:15:51
drill so I look for the drill um look out for where you bolted it into the
1:15:57
sheet metal cuz that's probably going to give you those spots where you're
1:16:22
binding
1:17:06
of course it's under it's underneath a big piece of insulation that's
1:17:11
hilarious all right let's keep going
1:17:22
here all right so I'm just going to support this I'm we're to go nice and
1:17:27
easy about a/ inch from the
1:17:36
wood and these are nonself-tapping screws the technical term for these
1:17:41
screws and they're all they're all different this is called sharp Point lath
1:17:47
screws and this is 3/4 of an inch because we've got4 inch underlayment
1:17:54
and then we've got um half inch Baltic
1:18:08
birch as soon as you feel that bite into the baled Birch and stop don't go any
1:18:14
further cuz we're
1:18:20
uh actually
1:18:31
all right I got to remind myself for these two ends I actually I actually wanted to take
1:18:36
out the sheet metal screw that I did to hold this frame in because um other parts of the van van
1:18:44
it's not binding however this particular case it is
1:18:51
so
1:19:00
see if I can sneak it sneak in and get it out without tearing my wood up
1:19:21
here
1:19:27
um I'm going to leave that one because my fridge Stack's going here and the eighth of an inch is not going to uh
1:19:35
make a difference let's see over here let's see
1:19:41
if we can get this
1:19:51
one all right all right be very careful if you do what I'm doing
1:20:07
[Music] cuz oh
1:20:21
maybe
1:20:32
okay so we actually can't do that because that is the structural piece that is holding the Baltic
1:20:40
Birch so the eighth of an inch will just when we run our Cedar we'll just make sure
1:20:47
that uh we could put an e/ in uh shim or like a toothpick uh mean a
1:20:53
popsicle stick right here and then that'll make that stay
1:21:17
true so what we're doing just to make sure we don't put too much pressure on
1:21:22
that joint is we probably just want to put one screw right
1:21:31
here so see that that's about as close as we can get there
1:21:36
without um making it too hard for that piece but
1:21:44
yeah all right and then we'll do the same over
1:21:51
here
1:22:10
now to some this may sound this may look like Overkill but what I've noticed in building stuff is if you do a lot of
1:22:17
little nice things in the end it it adds up to being like a really
1:22:23
really nice thing you're not having to uh make up for stuff
1:22:34
later all right here we go you might hear some popping and and
1:22:40
cracking and stuff like that it's just this wood settling out remember this is just this is a
1:22:46
glorified uh furring strip for our ceiling slats that are going in so it's
1:22:51
really only there to be something to drill into glue onto and hold her insulation it's it's not the
1:22:58
finished ceiling even though you could you you could you know this is designed to be wrapped you could paint
1:23:20
it okay
1:23:30
uh one thing you may see me do when we get to this point is when I put the wood
1:23:36
strips in you may see me actually um in this location
1:23:42
specifically this location in the back one you'll see me take these out so that
1:23:47
we can have this nice and smooth because we're going to be replacing it with a really super neat
1:23:53
set of black painted stainless steel screws so we'll have the glue which will
1:24:00
support it between here and here and then from here in the front about every
1:24:05
4 feet will be a screw and a nice line holding that cedar in because you're
1:24:11
still going to need to do that um I don't recommend just gluing it in with no screws that that would
1:24:18
be uh there's just too much expansion and contraction in the van in my
1:24:26
opinion okay now we get to use our cool little tool because now we're
1:24:32
in a place where we can't see what it looks like underneath so I just take
1:24:38
this I set it behind my
1:24:45
um my plus nut nut insert and then I'm just going to take
1:24:50
some masking tape and tape it up up
1:24:56
here a pro tip is tape we tape where you're not going to
1:25:21
drill
1:25:28
okay see now we got this really cool map you guys will have to name this
1:25:33
thing I don't know what to name it put in the comments or the chat what do you think
1:25:40
this this measuring strip should be
1:25:45
called all right more screws here we go now we can can't use
1:25:55
our uh sharp Point screws we do have to go back to our self-tapping screws
1:26:00
because now we're going into a structural this is actually holding this
1:26:06
is holding the roof up so we'll just start here and you can kind of copy what you did up
1:26:19
here so I just want to make sure I'm in L I'm in the most center point of
1:26:37
this okay not following my not
1:26:43
drilling there we go that one got
1:26:51
in
1:27:15
make sure you going in enough to where you're actually doing some work you're pulling in the ceiling to its new to its final
1:27:25
position so see how it pushes
1:27:33
out cuz if you don't do that you're going to have this kind of wonky ceiling it won't be nice
1:27:39
and
1:27:51
straight
1:27:59
and be careful on this Edge CU again you might hear some popping and
1:28:08
[Applause] cracking okay looks good now let's go to the
1:28:21
right
1:29:29
okay success all right so see look at that see how this this is very strong and it doesn't
1:29:38
even have this this next piece coming in
1:29:47
here all right you guys in the live we need to we
1:29:52
need to name we need to name this
1:30:12
piece okay what else can we fit on this live stream
1:30:18
um let's make sure we didn't miss any holes here yeah but our s is
1:30:25
nice feeling good about it what's cool about this van is the
1:30:31
whole entire top of the van is covered in solar panels so you got the solar panel layer got a little nice air gap under there then you got the sheet metal
1:30:38
you got inch and 3/4 insulation you got this panel it's going to be a nice cozy van for
1:30:44
sure um right here I don't think it's
1:30:49
necessary to put screws in we may be actually removing a lot of these screws and uh replacing them with
1:30:56
the ones like replacing this with the ones we have for uh the strips coming
1:31:05
in
1:31:11
so all right so that is all nice and tight uh let me I'm going to temporarily
1:31:17
put in a piece of Cedar and then we'll we uh we'll go from
1:31:24
there that way you guys can see
1:31:39
this your Miss Cedar smells so
1:31:50
good
1:32:06
oh man it smells smells amazing okay so this is what we're using
1:32:12
we're using 1/4 inch by 3 and 1/2 inch tongue and groove Cedar it's
1:32:19
extremely light it's like a just said it smells fantastic um and since the last time I
1:32:26
bought this the quality has really improved the one I got before was a little bit splintery and you know four
1:32:31
of the five pieces would would be suitable uh but it's got It's got a
1:32:37
rough side it's got a smooth side and then what I'm going to do is we're just going to temporarily
1:32:44
put this in so you guys can get excited about the live stream to
1:32:50
come so we'll be stuffing
1:32:56
this under the headliner here like
1:33:03
that so I'm actually I'm going to take that screw out so this is what I was talking about I'm taking the taking
1:33:09
screws out is we're going to replace them with a nice stainless still black painted
1:33:20
screw
1:33:27
and although maybe obvious what we'll have to do
1:33:32
is um we'll have to measure and although it's almost impossible to find the
1:33:38
center of a cargo van we're going to try our best to
1:33:48
uh to find our our center point where we're going to where we're going to mount
1:33:54
this so you can
1:34:02
see there we
1:34:10
go we'll use our set so I got two sets of zip
1:34:16
wall um pieces
1:34:22
and these guys are what this is what's going to allow us to uh put this in and glue it by
1:34:43
ourselves
1:34:49
so so something like that
1:35:06
that now we're going to use this so our window
1:35:18
opening 14
1:35:26
what I oversized that and I still cut it in uh we've got 14 in in the back and
1:35:33
then this front is 13 and uh 7/8 so we might have we'll have
1:35:38
to do a little trimming here but that's why I said do this piece half inch back so
1:35:45
obviously that should been 14 in but you don't really know where it's going to land until you bolt everything in so
1:35:51
this is 99% where it's supposed to be um so we'll just measure from back
1:35:57
see this is that's three and a half so let's measure it over here got five
1:36:07
in so looks like five and an eth so right that right there is
1:36:14
about about perfect so what we'll do is this will be
1:36:22
the method we will glue it and screw it that's how we'll get this whole thing
1:36:28
put together and then we'll have a set uh of
1:36:33
about eight of these so we'll so this one for
1:36:45
example we'll have we'll have uh screws here so this will be held up like
1:36:53
that this uh the job of this one right
1:37:00
here this is exactly how I did Thomas's the job of this one is to really
1:37:05
compress on this curve so we'll have one screw here this
1:37:10
will be glued we'll have one screw
1:37:16
here um probably skip this one one screw
1:37:25
here um CU it really just needs to be screwed in structurally
1:37:32
uh if you screw it every other you won't have I only want to have one two three
1:37:40
four five lines of those screws I don't want to have 10
1:37:45
20 um yeah so we're going underneath the headliner here so that it looks
1:37:51
very professional and as we get to these edges it'll kind of this the headliner will open up about eighth of an inch but
1:37:58
that's okay we are working in a van of all places
1:38:04
but we'll start our piece here
1:38:09
and what we'll do is um I'll need to get this uh so I'm working on this whole
1:38:15
rear section this will be a little bit challenging probably will do this off camera and then explain to you guys later how it happened
1:38:21
um but we don't want to cut this here and then move it back we want to run it
1:38:28
all the way through this window and then stop it right here um and then the reason we want to
1:38:35
do that is because we're going to
1:38:40
uh what am I trying to say we'll have this all in and then we'll take a multi-tool and we'll cut
1:38:46
the whole opening out that way our seam right here that we make it's really
1:38:52
important that this seam is super tight because this will be the only seam you see where all the ones are buted up
1:38:57
against each other is on this cross member and then this will go to the
1:39:03
back so right here will be the only seam so which is pretty good because we don't want to do a stag we don't want to
1:39:09
stagger anything we want no seams from here up and then this will be a super clean line and we'll have two screws
1:39:18
like that um
1:39:23
yep so that's the plan all right um let's hop on the
1:39:42
computer all right guys let me know what you thought about that live stream hope you guys enjoyed it don't forget to
1:39:48
check out the uh the DIY van build Che cheat sheet um if you guys don't know what that
1:39:54
is oh come
1:40:00
on oh I have to pull it up here van Builder
1:40:09
HQ there we go the DIY van build cheat sheet jump start your camper van conversion today this
1:40:16
list it's essentially an Excel sheet that I explained earlier in the live stream it's got over 250 curated items
1:40:23
it's really an Excel sheet of all my past orders for the shop over the past three years it's going to help you out
1:40:29
it's completely free sign up for it click download get the free sheet name email address click download now it'll
1:40:35
be sent right to you and yeah I think it'll really help you with your DIY van
1:40:41
build um we want to also here is that photo if you guys want
1:40:46
to do a screenshot or anything like that
1:40:58
and then we'll also take a look at my custom van conversion business Odyssey custom vans so the van behind us uh as
1:41:05
of filming this video this is John uh this van is one that's currently for sale this is our spec bill that we take
1:41:12
to shows the van behind me is a uh personal build for John and Susan this
1:41:18
is their um camper van commercial verion done by Odyssey custom vans um but yeah as of filming this
1:41:26
video this one that's on our website is currently for sale and we took it to Adventure van Expo uh into of last year
1:41:33
um got a video tour here just walking through all the features of it it's really cool we've got some awesome uh
1:41:39
equipment in this uh true adventure van all-wheel drive EcoBoost
1:41:45
turbocharged uh V6 BF Good Wrench tires we've got fi F5
1:41:51
awning we've got dematic RTX 2000 rooftop AC 420 watts of solar a ton of
1:41:57
Flatline vanco uh equipment inside um this is a adventure wagon install so
1:42:04
this van has the adventure wagon interior kit installed in this van um so
1:42:09
this extremely nice interior kit from Adventure wagon and then we used an
1:42:15
adventure wagon compatible products which are the Flatline vanco system um
1:42:20
we've also got a tetran INF floor hidden shower pan isotherm Cruise 130
1:42:26
fridge um again dtic rooftop AC 600 amp hours of lithium iron
1:42:33
phosphate with some victron components in between um headliner
1:42:39
shelf Amber scene light really nice for nighttime again that f45s awning and
1:42:45
then uh two photos we didn't get of we have the Flatline vano rear tire carrier and the Flatline vanco rear rack that
1:42:53
allows you to either store bikes um boxes Hardware boxes stuff like that um
1:42:59
to really maximize your storage for taking trips but if you guys are interested in this van it's currently
1:43:06
for sale as of filming this live stream you can contact me sales at Odyssey customs.com or my phone number the best
1:43:13
way to contact me is this link right here so click on this link and if you're interested in
1:43:19
purchasing this van just find a time and date that is uh best for you click on it
1:43:25
it'll show my calendar and click on a time schedule it and we'll hop on a phone call to discuss uh yeah chat about
1:43:32
the current vans for sale and uh answer any questions you have if you want to do your own custom van conversion with
1:43:39
Odyssey custom vans like John and Susan did over here on the left you have your
1:43:45
uh little intro on what to expect during the phone call consultation we'll talk about some details and get excited about
1:43:51
your future van conversion just do the same thing go to the calendar click a
1:43:57
day time most convenient for you hop on a call and we'll talk about your custom
1:44:02
van conversion all right guys that's going to do it for this live stream tonight
1:44:07
hope you guys enjoyed it make sure you are subscribed to this channel so you don't miss anything click that Bell
1:44:13
notification so that when I go live you guys will be notified on YouTube when this video is up and you won't miss me
1:44:20
building van uh give us a thumbs up if you really enjoyed this video share this video to anybody out there that is doing their
1:44:26
own custom band conversion or DIY conversion and may need some help you can always ask me questions in the chat
1:44:32
during live streams and uh after the live stream just put that question in a comment below and I'll be happy to uh
1:44:39
answer it in a future video all right guys that's it for tonight uh join us
1:44:44
back here tomorrow where we continue on our van build we'll see you then
1:44:51
[Music]