140 passenger low roof

I don't think this build will be anything revolutionary, but I don't see too many low roof passenger van conversions so I hope that I will be able to at least provide some info to others who convert these vans.
Backstory:
With COVID came WFH, which stuck around. I've been itching for a van for the last 7+ years but have always needed a sort of reliable winter vehicle to get to work (and skiing). With work out of the equation, access to my wife's Subaru, and a miata that works OK as a daily, I posted my gx470 for sale and was surprised to see it go in less than 24 hours. Finding a van was much more difficult than selling the old 4x4. I'm in the Denver area and vans sell almost instantly it seems. So I expanded my search nationwide, and still found that vans sell almost instantly. Fortunately, I stumbled on this gem about 4 hours north of my childhood home and where my folks still live. Upstate New York isn't really a used car Meca, but after some time on the phone with the owner,videos, and all the due diligence I could do a plan was made, check cut, and van delivered to my parents in MA.

The previous owner being a nice guy later shot me a link to someone trying to move a motorcycle to Colorado. So, a motorcycle was delivered to my folks as well and slapped on the back. I had planned to drive the van out to CO, but my parents being masochists decided they would like to have the "fun" of a 24+ hr drive with questionable AC. So the van had a dealership oil change and they hit the road. Much to my surprised, the van had no trouble and my folks had some fun - windows down the whole way

Out with the old


In with the (actually a couple years) newer


These take a long time to wash! But it cleans up well


And I'm happy with how things are looking under the hood
 
First things first, de-passengering the van.

Rooftop AC:
It's not exceptionally difficult to remove. Ducting comes off with torx fasteners and opens up headroom at the front of the van. The AC unit itself is a separate unit on my 06, so I had Pep Boys evacuate the refrigerant for $40 and began disconnecting components.
Most of the electrical just unplugs, some were cut for convenience. Same deal with refrigerant hoses. This leaves the unit ready to be removed.
There are two parts, blowers and fuses and such under the roof and the coils(?) above the roof. I was able to unbolt and lower the interior portion myself without help.
You could theoretically just leave the carcass the roof at this point. I wanted it off, so I removed the cover with a flathead screwdriver to release clips (easy) and unbolted the unit. Under the bolts is some kind of sealant adhesive that is a real PITA. Even on a hot day at 6000 ft additional heat from a heat gun helped release this. I worked slow and used some old trim to protect the roof. Getting a tool under the unit was the hardest part, I used plastic trim removal tools until I could fit metal tools underneath to pry with. Be careful not to scratch the paint and let rest begin.

Interior piece removed. Note the mounting brackets (bad photo)


Out of the van


Outside unit coming off, slowly


What we're left with


And the recycling


There are three holes left in the roof. The two seen here and one on the other side. I will use the one for solar. I removed the grommets and cleaned up these holes. Still looking for a permanent solution to fill these, right now Gorilla tape is keeping the elements out


There are some residual AC components left behind. There are two hoses that run from the compressor in the engine bay back to the unit. I snaked these out of the van and unbolted them from the van's underside. The power cord was also snaked out to the drivers side footwell and cut there as I didn't want to mess with the wiring in the engine bay. It's simple to unbolt this cord from the fuse block in the engine bay. If I was smart I would have left it and wired up an amp.. Oh well.
Hose carcasses - these are easy to remove to prevent rattles
 
With the AC off and seats out. I installed a fan and began sound deadening + insulating the side panels and above the headliner in the cabin. I need to run electrical before putting the rest of the headline back in. But there's plenty of documentation for that. Work stopped for a bit to actually enjoy the van. We've taken it out a couple weekends with just a full size mattress on the floor - not ideal but it sure is easy to just roll into "camp" and fall asleep.
On the way back from Aspen, Independence pass was happily no problem for the van


Acting boujee with a paid spot on the way to Telluride


The empty van did not appreciate dirt roads, but it did fine...


Until it didn't. I knew this was going to be an issue, but wasn't happy to have it separate completely 300 miles from home. Oh well. If that's the worst of the rust, and it looks to be, I'll take it


27.4mpg to Telluride and back to the front range - exhaust fully attached most of the time. I'll take that
 

Nubes

Member
Nice van! I too have a 2006 passenger and have removed the A/C along with with way too many mods! Enjoy the journey ?. Mike
 
Most of my inspiration for starting this thread was a lack of information on the factory floor. It's riveted in and I didn't want to go through the trouble of drilling them out if there was factory insulation. There wasn't, at least not really.

The factory 1/4"ish plywood comes out in two pieces once the rivets are drilled out


Leaving us this material. Sound deadening? Rattle prevention? It's not super heavy




All clean. Aside from the rivet nubs. These didn't want to hammer out so I thought it best to leave them in to secure the insulation.


Speaking of insulation, I thought maybe I would use 3m to fill the space in between ribs. not quite 1.5" deep....


So the scraps go in instead. Will it make a difference? Probably not. Wood was glued down to support areas with less ribbing. Almost certainly unnecessary as well


1/2" xps being cut to size


I put the factory black matt back in, followed by the 1/2" foam, followed by quikprep vinyl underlayment, followed by lifeproof. The floor and underlayment were leftover from our home. Not sure the underlayment really does anything, but it's advertised as having some kind of R value, so in it went


Aaaaand we're in. Some seat mounts are retained for a few reasons. A rear-seat can be added in if needed, they'll act as cheap tie-down points, and they secure down the floor sans glue. With how heavy the vinyl planks are I don't think the floor needs to be pinned down, but it's nice to know everything is secured


I haven't driven the van yet, but I expect the vinyl planks to help with sound deadening in a pretty significant way. I'll report back on how squeaky un-glued xps might be, though
 

Kim_Marcus

Kim Possible 2004 2500 SR
I too have a low roof. Thanks for posting your photo story on the build. I have a thread going on my build, Esther, which has been delayed a few months due to health reasons. I'll follow you.
 
I've been pretty predictably bad about updating this thread, but progress fortunately continues.

Spent a couple more nights in the van in the most convenient way possible, a driveway! I was psyched to avoid searching for a camping spot in Steamboat and the opportunity to catch up with a buddy.


Must have slept well enough as I managed to pull off a podium after a couple days of racing. Really hard to argue with this sort of weekend


Back to work and electrical is set up. I'll grab some photos of the solar setup but the interior board is just 1/4" ply with a backer panel that components are screwed into. If I were to do it again I might skip trying to keep the panel skinny and just run 1/2"+ plywood. This seems to work, though


In other news. 4" speakers will fit in the headlines as such. I used the rear speaker wires, which gives me the ability to adjust balance. It's still not great, but a huge improvement. I thought this position might be a bit too in-your-ear, but it seems fine and I was short on other options. I'm perhaps a sub away from an acceptable system


@Kim_Marcus thanks for the note - I've been following along your build as well. Next up, shelving
 
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Patrick walsh

Guest
This is gonna be nice functional van. The longer I own my new van the more I like these older vans. Keeps us posted..
 

Enak

New member
I just purchased a low roof model 140" T1N cargo van without windows for my conversion. Still working on the design. Hurry up so I can steal your best ideas. Interested to see where this goes! looks great so far.
 
I'll have to do a proper write up with photos of mounting points, but I don't think what I've done is anything new. I will say, ordering 80/20 from TNutz worked out well for me. Materials arrived fast, were well packaged, and cuts accurate



 

Kim_Marcus

Kim Possible 2004 2500 SR
I'll have to do a proper write up with photos of mounting points, but I don't think what I've done is anything new. I will say, ordering 80/20 from TNutz worked out well for me. Materials arrived fast, were well packaged, and cuts accurate





this looks so good.
 
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Welp, I've been predictably slow on updating this thread. I've continued to work on the van, but had a few distractions - a wedding, a honeymoon, some home projects, replacing the daily driver with a more "practical" option. I haven't been great about taking photos but hopefully these will be useful to others doing a similar build.

First, the new time suck. This wasn't supposed to be a project, but it's a used car, so here we are.


Next on the van was to get the headline back. To do so I needed to permanently fill the two holes left by the A/C unit. I went down to Ace for some stainless hardware and rubber washers for the top and underside of the roof. I added some silicone on top to be a little over the top. No issues yet. The headliner was remarkably frustrating to get back on. Do yourself a favor and just order some extra clips ahead of time


With the van largely back together I turned my attention to the kitchen. This was made with 80/20 ordered from tnutz with the bed structure. The whole extruded aluminum order came out to ~$1,000 with brackets and hardware. I'm sure there are efficiencies to be had but this was my first time working with 80/20 and I do appreciate having a separate bed and kitchen structure. It's a pretty simple process to remove one or the other with just a handful of bolts through the floor and rivnuts into the interior side panels of the van. The butcher block countertop was something of a splurge and I wouldn't mind something thinner, but plywood is also very expensive so this seemed logical. Side panels are 1/4" ply with the edges routered to fit inside the 80/20. Using a tap & counterbore on the aluminum structure would have made this cleaner, but the corner brackets I used allowed me to modify the design post-cuts from tnutz. I did end up lowering the kitchen slightly so the flexibility ended up being worth it.


A sink and faucet were sourced from Ikea as they were affordable and relatively small. I found an electric pump second-hand and an accumulator tank on amazon. I wasn't sure how necessary this would be but it's nice to not need to run the pump for just a quick bit of water. I did have to mount it at an angle to allow access to the schrader valve and that's giving me some OCD. Fortunately, it's all covered by the door that keeps shut with some magnets from tnutz. 7 gallon fresh and grey water tanks nest in the surround made from the leftover countertop. This all lifts out with the kitchen if the van needs to be used as a van to move things. A 5 gallon propane tank will eventually live here also


Drawers were made from 1/2 maple and wow was that harder than I wanted it to be. Really wish I had a table saw for that one. Came out OK for a dolt with a skill saw. Strong enough at least. Generic locking slides keep everything in place and aren't as annoying to live with as I had feared. No rattles either. The slides are mounted to the 80/20 structure using brackets rather than running 80/20 the length of every drawer as I have seen in some other designs. No photos of this but I can take some if anyone is curious.


 
You may notice some window covers in the photos above. This particular element has been a struggle as I'm pretty lousy with a sewing machine. That said, what I have created seems pretty practical and cost-effective. I'm using the same thinsulate insulation as in the rest of the van, covered by ripstop fabric, finished with 1" webbing in which I have slid magnets. The magnets are strong enough for unfinished windows. The windows with plastic covering seem to need an additional magnet in between the webbing and window. This is probably less cost-effective than ordering stronger magnets, and uglier too. Live and learn. These double as an effective dog bed I guess




I still have a couple of windows to finish and one to re-do. I'm getting better. On a similar theme, A planar 2d went in under the passenger seat. There's a lot of documentation for these installs so I won't get into it unless folks have questions. Unsure if cargo vans come with sound deadening in this location, but some compressed air turned upside down helped to freeze the sound deadening so I could chip it off with a hammer in short time. You can see the adhesive residue. Sloppy wiring but I didn't see an advantage to shortening the fuel pump harness as nothing will be stored here since there's no real access.


Lots left to do but I'm pleased to say the van is pretty comfortable as is. We took it out to California to see family for the holidays where I picked up some new wheels for a steal.


Still need to decide what I'm doing here. It would be nice to have some dedicated snows but they're hard to find in an "e" load rating. Not sure it's necessary given how light the van is, not sure the two of us need 3 vehicles with snow tires. The chains are not my favorite, however.
 
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bcman

Active member
We came to the same realization using magnets to hold up the window covers on our T1N passenger van. I drilled out the plastic trim and JB-welded Neodymium magnets to the sheet metal. They actually work better this way than on the bare metal of the doors, as the window sill magnets help keep the covers in place; the covers are less likely to slide down under their weight.


 

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