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Lt. Dan's 2007 Chevy Express AWD camper


Lt. Dan

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Meet Vanessa, I found her in New Jersey.  Her full name is Vanessa Vanopolis.   She's a 2007 AWD Express.  She came with ladder racks and an Adrian steel divider and shelves (I have them for sale on craigslist if anyone wants them).  I spent today removing them.


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She's a bit mad at me at the moment, I dumped her friend [2004 GMC] Sierra yesterday morning, but that didn't stop her from coming home with me last night.... white girls, go figure? :ugh:

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About us

Anyways, my girlfriend Rebecca (the real one) and I are going to be spending the next 6-8months living in a van and doing a road trip across Canada to mountain bike and rock climb. Normally the two of us live in New Zealand, but I'm from the USA.   I've spent the last 4 years living in Taupo, so I know a few old school guys, ...but I haven't had anything interesting to post up here since I haven't had a garage/project.     Also as a side note, I also have a post on Expedition Portal forums, so if some of the posts seem like cut and pastes... that's why.

We're taking a year or so off from work to do some traveling before settling down and buying a house, we've just spent the last 3months in Niseko, Japan snowboardin.

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 I'll be building this van at my parents house in Baltimore (though because of the tiny attached garage and all of the tools being stored in the basement it is miserable to work out of.)  I've got about 5 weeks to build this van, so this thread should hopefully go along quite quickly.  I'll need you guys to keep me motivated though, I'm a bit stressed out about this build since I'm usually a bit of a perfectionist and work kinda slow normally but will be forced to go a bit fast.  

We'll plan to drive from Baltimore, up the east coast to Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, then across the country, making a stop in Wisconsin to see my sister and maybe a stop in Bozeman Montana to see a friend before ending up in BC.

Plans:
-Sleeping for two
-Fridge (Dometic CFX65 Dual Zone)
-Solar, house battery etc (using a Renogy 200w kit, and lots and lots of Blue-Sea wiring products)
-ARB awning
-insulation and sound deadening, tiles of 80mil Noico and Ezcool Low-E, 1/4in plywood walls covered with HullLiner carpet.
-Bike mounts inside the van (Rebecca's bike is worth almost as much as the van... :Wow1: so we don't want to keep them outside for too long)
-Camp Chef propane oven
-storage of some sort
-water tanks (about 20-30gal)


Things I want if there is time:
hot water
Backing camera
2in lift+bigger tires
Swivel passenger seat (if it makes sense with our layout)

Questions:
1. I'm still trying to figure out the layout. The bikes are a bit of a challenge. I'll be using fork mounts to hold the bikes, Rocky Mounts Hot Rods (quite a well made aluminum part for $34).   

Everyone seems to like having a bed by the back windows, but that makes the bikes a bit of a pain/would limit me to a bed fit in sideways about 70in long by 55in wide.  
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I had them sideways against the front seats but I forgot to take a picture of that.  I would have to take the handle bars off each time, and it would kind of make a swivel seat pointless, but otherwise would work decently.

Here they are along the back, they fit quite nicely like this with the bars turned a bit.  This would mean I would probably buy a RV Queen Short mattress and slide it up against the front seats. It doesn't seem to be a very popular layout in the USA, but every home made van camper in New Zealand seems to do this. Any idea why? Will this make the van less desirable/harder to sell when we finish our trip?
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2. Bed sizes... We're both short, so sleeping sideways across the van on a custom mattress is possible.  If I put the bed long ways I'm thinking a standard queen or RV queen.  I'm not planning to do a fold up bed or anything because I want a quality mattress if I'm going to spend 6months on it.  What works for you taller folks/again resale question?

3. The van came with Toyo Open Country ATs 245/75R16 with about 70% tread.  I was planning to upgrade to a larger tire, but they look decent, and would save me about $500.  Thoughts?

4. The rear park lights don't come on... bulbs are good, the park relay (#29 i think) under the seat  seems ok, just isn't getting 12v between terminals 85 and 30 when the headlights are on.  Is this the body control module not turning on the signal power to this relay? Any idea how to test that/anyone have a wiring diagram?  Anything else I should check first?  Also I'm thankful I didn't get pulled over driving it 3.5hrs from Jersey to Maryland at night.

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Sweet van, sweet base vehicle.

RE the bed location, i reckon it depends on how you intend to use the space, and how much room gets taken by the mattress. In my preferred van layout (LWB Nissan Caravan) the (queen) bed takes the rear length (*snarf) to the sliding door, with the space in front of the bed/behind the seats for getting changed etc, with  a side awning/tarp as the main outside.

Your van looks a bit shorter and the barn doors suggest to me that the 'lounge/kitchen' space at the rear would be better. Setting up a tarp that accordions out when you opened the doors might make it more usable (stand outside when cooking)?

Are you planning on making the bed convertible to seats? (this wastes a lot of space imo, and compromises the comfort of the bed, and i prefer sitting/cooking outside. With your temps this might not be ideal!

RE storage, i reckon you want to make as much use of the roof as you can, big racks (doubles as a roof deck?) and all the wet/muddy toy storage up there (bike box?)? If you are super worried about it make the bed a bit higher so it can slip underneath (make the bed height to suit your chosen storage box), but the roof looks pretty low so IDK?

8 months in a van means i would want to prioritise making the interior space as comfortable as possible.

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Yeah, these chevy vans are actually quite low/short compared to a Nissan Caravan or Hiace.  This one is  a 135in wheelbase, I really wanted an AWD van and that length is the only one they came in.  4wd vans were never really sold in the USA, the only thing you find is aftermarket swaps and they are usually owned by oil companies or utilities and beat to hell and rusted.

The advantage they do have is they are pretty wide, hence talking about putting a mattress sideways.    I do have some roof racks to mount the bikes, but there needs to be an option to keep them indoors for the long haul driving/parking in sketchy places (our travelers insurance only covers bike theft if they break into the car).

I already got an ARB awning (roll up about 2.5m long) for the side of this to go above the side barn doors.

 

Oh and BTW, the van has a 5.3L V8. 

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Oh and with cooking and stuff, this will be a summer trip, so hopefully most of our cooking and stuff will be done outside.  Rebecca and I are quite used to tramping and cooking outdoors so hopefully that won't bother us too much.  The stove/oven combo she picked out is hilarious (especially since we normally use a MSR PocketRocket burner), it will take up a bit of room but it will mean that I'll get muffins, cookies, lasagna and mince&cheese pies on a regular basis.  https://www.amazon.com/Camp-Chef-Camping-Outdoor-Burner/dp/B0013LLSZG

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Lucky gas Is cheap over there!

With the low roof/big stove I reckon kitchen at the back then so you can stand at the stove, instead of kneel.

You could still have bed at the back (I like being able to jump into the side door and get changed and hang out and stuff in the lounge in car parks, its abit less obvious and requires less room)

just make the kitchen 'slide' out from under the bed, and/or make a section at the end fold up as a splash back/stop crap going in the bedding  - you wont be frying and driving or cooking and sleeping atht same time!

You may be able to rig something to hand the bikes above the bed? Just don't sit up in the middle of the night!

You might need to get the sketchup going.

Also do this:

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You don't know how much I wanted a Sportsmobile poptop like that one....  way out of my price range  (that one is like $100k USD new or $45-60k used)

 

 

I'm leaning more towards having the bikes in the back.  They won't always be there; I'll have roof racks as well for short haul trips, when they are muddy and when we are in the middle of nowhere and its safe to leave them.  Mostly its just for the long drives and when we are around cities. 

My Dometic CFX65DZ fridge showed up today.

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I'm thinking the bed will be forward, and the fridge will sit here under it on a slide out.  Behind the fridge I'm thinking I'll put a 20-30 gallon water tank and maybe my batteries, inverter, solar charger etc depending on space.   

I'm going to go pick up metal for the bed frame tomorrow, I'm thinking 1in box tube.  

 

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Took the van for an inspection on Thursday, was told it needed front rotors and tie rod ends.  So I went and got that plus a set of pads and started working on it yesterday.  

The previous owner/mechanic had stripped out the T55 torx bolts on the caliper slide (some of these are 18mm hex's depending on what Chevy felt that week). Broke the tip off of my T55 socket on one of them :( .  Played with the calipers a bit and decided they weren't moving nicely, slides and pistons were sticky, and that the old pads were cracked/glazed, probably from the caliper not moving and overheating.  Decided to do full calipers as well, so I had my buddy Ben who works at Napa drop by with calipers and gave me a hand bleeding them; its good to have friends. Took about 4hrs but the front is done.  

Put anti-seize on the lug studs and hub body to keep it from rusting together like these like to do.  Hopefully the next owner appreciates that.

Pad with a crack in it...
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Done:
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Decided to look at the rears.  The drivers side had a stuck slide, so the rear is getting a full brake job as well. Will do that tomorrow when parts come in.

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Did the rear brakes and worked in a battery tray to mount the two group 24 house batteries to the driver side frame rail. Made of .125in plate and 2in angle.  Still need to add one more tab to the middle and cut some strap to hold them down and then drill and rivnut the frame. 

 

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Been busy the last few days.

Finished up the battery box. Painted it in hammerrite black but didn't take a picture, I'm sure you get the idea.

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Wired up the charging relay and the disconnect switch for the house batteries.

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I really like these blue sea products but I was a bit upset these switches don't come with a cover for the terminals so i made one out of lexan. They sit maybe 3-4mm shallow of the mounting surface... Not confidence inspiring when mounting to the body.

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Ran the battery cables behind the grill over to the left frame rail.  Lots of cushion clips and rivnuts.

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Also swapped the fixed windows for pop out ones and painted the frames (the previous owner had blacked out the windows or something and got black crap everywhere).  Would have been an hour job if I didn't have to paint.  Used color matched spray paint. Also realized how crappy factory GM paint is, very thin and poorly adhered.

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More rivnuts

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Done

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I also fixed some rust on the driver's side rocker panel and a paint chip on the fender

 

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Batteries on the frame... Took me way longer to drill, rivnut and bolt up then i want to tell... Lots of little complications. For some reason this whole battery thing took me a lot longer than i feel like it should have. 

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Rebecca fortunately made progress on the sound deadening while i rolled around on the ground acting like a like a complete muppet. Did both sides, still have the roof and doors to do. 

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I used rivnuts in my bike frame to hold extra water and fuel bottles. So around 1kg constantly bouncing over cobble stones for 30000km including sea spray from ferries and water from river crossing ossings. Temp range from -30 to +50. So no sign of loosening and they then survived sandblasting and powdercoating.

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12 hours ago, igor said:

I remain unconvinced that under the deck is the best place for the batteries. Won't they very quickly get covered in filth off the road as well as being an absolute prick to swap out?

Yeah was a bit of a prick to jack up and align the holes, but these are sealed AGM batteries, so hopefully don't need much for awhile and can take a bit of crap.  This location is actually the factory spot on Ford diesel vans. Space is a bit of a premium when building a camper so I'll deal with it.

The pull out strength for a single 3/8-16 rivnut is 500lbs, which is like 2kN.  I have five of them holding that tray. I'll keep an eye on them for the first few hundred miles though. 

 

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Mounted the solar panels on the roof and more sound deadening today.  I'm really glad the van came with this TracRac Van rack, it's really well made, all aluminum extrusion and stainless. I've worked in ski shops and bike shops a lot when i was younger and have mounted quite a few racks so was really impressed with this even compared to Thule, yakima etc.  They are ungodly expensive ($550 for three bars and feet) for a van ladder rack so i don't think i would have bought it if it didn't come with the van.

Just some 1.5in aluminum angle for the panels. 

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Made some brackets for the ARB awning.  ARB wanted $25 each for these.  Took maybe an hour to make.

I really wanted to just mount the awning directly to the rack towers but they are all ever so slightly at different angles and out if line because of the curve in the roof.

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Sits maybe an inch or so further out then i would like because I made them while the van was at my friend's shop.

Had him do the transmission fluid and filter. Normally I'd do this myself but it requires dropping the exhaust to get the transmission pan off to do the filter, which is a pain without a lift (an hour job that takes all day on the ground).   Fluid looked old but good so I'm happy with this transmission. 

 

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Yea im with you on the location of the awning sticking out unfortunately.  And going to tell you I would consider moving it now while you can,  instead of regretting it when you are out camping,  dealing with the rain curtain coming down between the awning and the van door.... This is personal experience talking haha.

In other news your roof rack mounts are a good design,  in that they look like they should allow water to run past them in the drip rails. 

 

Cool van. Keep it up. Very jealous. 

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