MOAB Adventure Wagon Bed Install and short review

hilld

Well-known member
I have an air riveter already. Not doing the full AdVan kit, just their bed installation kit. The rest of the tracks, I will be making my own kit, the AdVan kit is just a bit pricey and they won't just sell me the tracks and brackets. I don't want to use their panels.
 

DarkStars

New member
Yeah, they won’t sell them unless you buy the $3K Moab bed. Has anyone attempted to recreate the AdVan V2 rear supports? What gauge metal do they use?
 

RoboX2020

New member
V2 kit on passenger van would be very difficult as you cannot line up the braces very easily; can't see the alignment holes at all. I do passenger vans all the time. You only have a small brace over the window, the bigger issue is ventilation if you have a VS30 with AC in rear...I figured out a modification to allow ventilated window (AMA) and use their braces by notching them...provide this service for $300; not painted. You have to do this as the fan can only be put in front of the van not the back. You can see the brace is no big deal visually. I am not an authorized dealer anymore, but I do have more experience with this stuff than anyone in So Cal...this year alone 25 beds...60+ mule bags in stock OEM interiors.


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Salmit - This looks great. We are using a factory headliner on a 170ext. I am about to order a moab bed. Do you have any tips on mounting the L-track against the headliner? Did you use spacers for example? Thank you in advance.
 

Pickleball

2022 2500 144 High roof 4 cyl diesel
Are the individual bed panels restricted to only being placed at one specific location each on horizontal bed rail? Or can they be moved fore or aft along the side rail track? For example if I had an upper and lower bed rail and wanted to use the lower as a bench seat for one panel could I position one panel forward or backwards somewhere along the bed rail? Same question then for being able to move an upper panel on the top rail. The bed rail notch cutouts look to be evenly spaced so it seems this could be allowed. Though Adventure Wagon told me only fixed locations were possible.
 

hilld

Well-known member
The bed panels in theory can be placed anywhere on the side rails, however, they are only long enough for the bed panels and are notched to hold the panels securely. If you were to put them other places, the panels would not lock in and could come flying if installed while driving and emergency braking. That being said, the side rails are a bit adjustable as they have 2 mounting locations (holes).
 

Pickleball

2022 2500 144 High roof 4 cyl diesel
If you were to put them other places, the panels would not lock in and could come flying if installed while driving and emergency braking.
I don’t understand why the bed panel would not lock into the horizontal side rail if the side rail were mounted elsewhere (such as my desire to install it lower).

I am not asking to not use the bed panels without attaching to the side rails.

If I install a second side rail lower directly under an upper standard location, can I place one of the panels on that lower level rail and place it anywhere fore and aft along that rail?

If I have 3 panels on a standard located side rail, can I remove the first and last panel and then take the middle panel and reposition it on that same rail but move it forward or backwards ?
 

hilld

Well-known member
Ok, rather then keep describing it, here is a marked up picture showing the bed rail. Keep in mind that up and down you can do in 1" increments as long as you have L-Track there. As far as fore/aft movement, that is somewhat limited, there are 2 holes in the rear of each rail, but only 1 on the front, I guess that is there to accommodate 144 or 170" WB's. In any case, here is the pic in question. The notches is where the panels lock in and prevent movement.

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hilld

Well-known member
Sorry for this slightly out of focus image, but this is the other side rail, showing all the notches.

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Pickleball

2022 2500 144 High roof 4 cyl diesel
Your images show just a single notch position for each panel. I was basing my question on an “extra set bed rail” image that has adventurewagon.com shown when I searched for ‘MOAB bed rail’. However that image does not now appear on their website that I can find. Nor can I find any images or instructions that show the bed side rail for that matter on their current site. So it’s unclear to me if this is an old version or what. So I am not sure if the “extra set” has more notches or not.

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goldihop

Well-known member
Sorry for this slightly out of focus image, but this is the other side rail, showing all the notches.

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The fore holes on the rear mount is for the v1 system as opposed to the v2 that you have. I have the bed rails that you have pictured, so I can’t comment on placing the panels in different positions. I don’t think they make the bed rails with multiple mounting points like in the picture above.
 

Pickleball

2022 2500 144 High roof 4 cyl diesel
I don’t think they make the bed rails with multiple mounting points like in the picture above.
Is the MOAB side mounting rail a custom rail or can it be obtained elsewhere, notched or not notched? So that custom notch positions could be done?
 

slamit

www.cacampervan.com
It’s a custom job as far as I can tell.
We do custom notches or take it to a welder and have it done. Its actually a lot more work than one would think to get it correct and not botch it up. Technically not super difficult but pretty time consuming and you need to already have your AMA window in to measure everything. We have jig and CNC the parts, but the first time it took all day to just mock it up right and then built a jig so it doesn't cost $1000 to do.

See example here:

Build with Notch
 

blutow

Well-known member
A note for anyone considering a MOAB bed and/or full kit from Adventurewagon -

I've had the Moab bed in my van for about a year and a half and it's been great. I bought it for ease of removal and mostly for the adjustability. It's an excellent design in my opinion.

What I didn't fully appreciate at the time is how much the bed and v2 install kit would become a foundation for my build. I liked the way the Adventurewagon full van kit used L-track to frame out the walls and contain the wall panels, but I didn't want to buy the entire kit because of the cost and I had other design ideas that would have resulting in me heavily modifying the kit. I think it's a great kit if you want a basic finished van quickly, not so much if you are doing a unique custom build.

Anyway, the part I didn't really grasp until after I bought the bed is that the bed install kit for the 170 really covers the difficult spots for l-track. Those 2 vertical framing pieces in the bed install kit (which I thought were crazy expensive at the time) would be very difficult to fabricate yourself due to the curves and location. Once those pieces are in, it's pretty easy to buy some l-track and use rivnuts to apply l-track to the rest of the van structure without any significant fabrication. While I'm sure the Adventurewagon full framing in their kit does it better, it's pretty simple to get the l-track mounted without framing once you get beyond the pieces included for the bed. Anyway, I thought I'd share since this aspect wasn't obvious to me until I got into it and it's been a huge help.

Pic below shows the l-track at the rear. The orange metal pieces and vertical l-track came with the kit. The horizontal l-track was added and the orange install kit pieces make it obvious where the track should go (if you had bought the entire kit). It allowed me to bolt a couple Adwagon mule bags right up after putting the horizontal l-track in the proper spot.

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