Time for a van update. One thing after another has gotten in the way of any real progress, so I buckled down this holiday weekend and worked on the van every chance I had, which basically means "every time my 2.5 year old was napping."

Previously completed items:
-Awning-style window on driver's side DONE
-Maxxair fan in roof DONE
-Installed a thermostatic Espar diesel heater under the passenger's seat DONE
-Plasti-dipped wheels (critical part of any van build) DONE
-Sliding seat rails installed with custom under-floor supports DONE

With the 8' seat rails installed I needed to bring the floor level up to 1.07" to match the height of the seat rails. I needed a combination of materials to match that height that provided insulation and sound-deadening without being too heavy. I began by filling the low points of the corrugated floor with 3/8" closed cell foam. That leveled the floor surface.


(Ignore the full-width closed cell foam, that goes in later.)

Over that I used a mix of 1/2" baltic birch battons and 1/2" polyisocanurate. Had I used all plywood I would have ended up with 1/2" plus the 5/16" factory floor, adding a lot of weight. So the battons provide strength and the polyiso provides insulation and helps bring the floor up to the level I need.

The blue conduit will route wiring under the floor.

Over that is 1/4" closed cell foam. Instead of throwing away the really nice 9mm 6-ply Delignit factory floor, I incorporated it into the floor sandwich and it sits on the 1/4" closed cell foam. On top of that is a vinyl floor that is floating--there will be enough cabinetry sitting on top that gluing is not necessary.



Finally, I trimmed-out the edges with 2" x 2" aluminum.

I would have liked to use stair nosing here but it seems all stair nosings are 1-1/8" high, which wasn't enough to cover the ugly bits that needed to be covered. In the end I really like the look of the aluminum and it matches the aluminum seat rail covers nicely. Now I've decided to go with aluminum as a theme of the build, so there will be quite a bit of raw aluminum incorporated in the interior. I am building my cabinets with extruded aluminum, but more on that later.

With the floor done it's time to start working on electrical. First thing I learned is modern electrical systems are finicky. My experience with our 2012 Acura and 2013 Leaf is that many modern vehicles no longer use discrete relays to control high amp loads, they now incorporate solid state relays into the main ECU. All circuits are designed for very specific loads and not only is it nearly impossible to tap into these systems for adding things like lighting, when you do it's common to burn up circuit boards because you are pushing circuit board traces beyond the loads they were meant to carry. I've read about plenty of 5th gen 4Runners with burned-up body ECUs just from adding lighting and plenty of random CEL or error lights on the dashboards when your LED lightbar is tied to a chassis ground and your body ECU sees loads it doesn't expect. Anyone working on a modern vehicle needs to learn to wire in a completely new way, which means NO CHASSIS GROUNDS--all loads must have a second return wire to a common ground. In other words, you must wire it like a boat.

The advantage is you can test your electrical mods before it ever touches the vehicle. Much to my daughter's dismay, her wagon becomes the test rig for the LiFePO4 battery and associated charging infrastructure.


It may look like a bomb, but it's not. At least I hope it's not. What you see is a 300 watt single LG solar panel, a solar charge controller, circuit breaker, a contactor that opens if the solar charge controller faults and is headed towards overcharging the battery, and a mess of video cable for the monitor that tells me all the stats I need to know. Here's the thing with LiFePO4--it's not the technology in exploding hoverboards and 777s, this is a very robust lithium chemistry. You can put it in a dead short and worst case it will vent the battery. I wouldn't want to be around if that happened. This battery weighs 54 pounds and has 160 useable amp hours (200aH nominal), as you can use 80% of the capacity of a lithium battery. With lead acid and AGM you shouldn't go below 50% state of charge, and if you do you shortening it's life. It would take 197 pounds of battery taking up 3.5X the floor space to equal the power of this battery. It is also sealed and won't offgas like AGM under charging, which is safe to have inside the van.