Van Contortion Project

Starting picture... Well kind of, we forgot to take a pic with all the past business items in the back and no insulation... Remember, this BLOGGING thing is new to us, we might learn as we go along. Time will tell....

Since this project of "van contortionism" (spell check says I made that up) has multiple factors, to make easier navigation, here are some links to help everyone along:

"NOTICE: Work In Progress, Coming Soon: Working Links" Ha, a way to keep you coming back I presume, found that on the ole "How NOT To Do A BLOG" website.... OH CRAP, I forgot.... That was going to be my next BLOG project.....

The plan is to make the van a sort of moving home base, with periodic stops at motels along the way. As we don't want to do a full on "Conversion" of the van, lets call it a "Redneck Contortion", ya that's it, a "contortion", why not... Sure, we are not in our 60's, we are hippies of the 60's right? What are you smoking you ask? Well sorry, that was part of the 60's that was given up decades ago...

So what does a moving home base actually mean? Well somewhere to crash (sleeping version not automobile version) over night that does not involve a motel, AirBnB or other place of total comfort. A moving place of semi comfort that will allow us to save a few of our hard earned pennies and the freedom to stay on the road overnight in national parks, state parks, RV parks, truck stops, rest stops, dumpster sites, homeless camps, police parking lots and such. You get the drill... Back to the 60's.... Bum's, deadbeats, hippies, freaks, on the road in a Chevy van rather than a VW bus..... 21st century style... almost, just the redneck version.....

Now a normal thinking person OF the 60's would just buy one of those fancy dancy Mercedes full on class B conversion van thingies right? Hell ya, CHARGE IT right? Well a person IN their 60's would say "we only got 2.8% raise in our SS payments this next year" and realize the term "charge it" is now spelled "NO FRIGGIN WAY" and so the term "contortion van" is now the term used for "moving home base" rather than "conversion van"... Cheap Ass could also be a term used, but we will leave that up to you to decide...

INSULATION:

So folks, if you have never spent a night (or much time at all) in the back of a non-insulated van, two things come up very fast.... First, it gets a little chilly pretty quick in cold weather, and Second, you get a ton of condensation dripping from the roof and walls of said van in no time at all. So in the interest of keeping said van semi inhabitable, we decided to insulate first thing.

First off we spent a day cleaning and de-greasing the walls and roof of the van. We plan to install a self sticking insulation to the walls and roof so we had to make dang sure we gave this the best chance of success. Second step involved the cleaning of our clothes and taking a shower after all the dripping we received of said cleaners we used to accomplish this task. YeHaw, clean van, clean installation technicians...

So on we go, installation of the insulation itself was pretty straight forward: We used a product from AutoPly (https://autoply.net/) called AutoWeave, an insulation that was pre-cut to the shape of the cavities in the van. We opted for the 1" thick version that gave us a R value of about 4 which should be a good beginning. AutoWeave is a woven fabric with low-VOC acrylic, self-adhesive, and paper backing. The product is odorless, allergy free, contains no fiberglass, is recyclable, and mildew- and bacteria-resistant. That is what the description says anyway, and after a few hours working with it, no itchy's at all. Awesome start!

After that we used 4 cans of Great Stuff to semi fill the voids in the channels/structure framing of the walls. Two reasons, one for insulation, and two to stop the rattling of the metal walls against the structure of the said framing. We say "semi filled" as we didn't want to bow out the walls from the force of expanding foam (didn't want it to look like a 1960's pregnant Winnebago for gods sake, had one of those in the 80's).

Next was a test drive.... Here's where it smacks me up side the head and I realize, believe it or not, a Chevy 1 ton extended van does not need the use of hearing protection when driving. HOLY CRAPOLA (we haven't even got to that part of the contortion yet), I had to check my hearing aids twice to make sure they were turned on! What's going on, am I having a stroke or something and just lost my hearing? What a friggin difference, excuse my french.... Why did we not do this the day after we bought it? 60K miles of wondering what the other person was saying, no music because you couldn't hear it, and all it took was a little insulation and a few hours to fix the problem. AWESOME, and we don't even know if it helps the heat or condensation yet..... Maybe a nice stereo is now on the list, who cares if we are cold and wet if we have good tunes right?

COMING SOON: Interior wall and roof coverings, hopefully if we can just make up our minds on what materials we want to use.