Vannin' Home Forums General Discussion Readers Rides Tuner4life's 1985 Chevy G20 4 Speed Build Thread

I am not sure if the leak was coming from that blend door housing or not, but it was cracked so it was definitely suspect. I decided to just remove it completely. Side note, it will not come out without removing the heater box. I was not doing that again, so since the blend door housing was already cracked, I just finished it off and removed it in pieces. The cavity behind that blend door was filled with wet leaves and junk so I am glad that I was able to clean it out. I then plugged the vacuum line that went to the actuator and made an aluminum block off plate. I made a seal with adhesive-backed closed cell foam and installed it. If it was leaking before, it shouldn't be now!

The only time that this blend door moved to pull air from inside the van was when the controls were set to "MAX AC". The rest of the settings pull fresh air in.. So now it is permanently going to pull fresh air.. No big deal for me. I rarely had to use MAX AC last summer when the van was bare inside. Now with the insulation it should be even better. A fair trade-off if it fixes the leak. That being said it actually didn't rain last night so I didn't get a change to leak test. We'll see how tonight goes.





Also, my wife finished up the first cushion late last night! This is the backrest for the rear bench/bed. We are super excited about how it turned out!

Seats look epic!!!!

Absolutely!

Simply stunning

That is some serious, professional caliber work right there. Nicely done Mrs. t4l.

Thanks guys!

I spent most of the weekend planning the routing paths for all the wiring and working on the headliner. I don't want to go into too much detail about it until it's done in case it doesn't work out, but I'm super excited about how it's going so far. Stay tuned!

Last night we got a pretty decent rain, so I polled the van out into the driveway and set inside with an army of flashlights for over 30 minutes and I am pleased to report that there are no rain leaks anywhere! Both front footwell areas were bone dry, the rear door seals pop-out window seals, everything! I may still replace the rear door seal because I don't like the way it sits when the door is closes (gets rolled/pinched a little between the doors at the top), but for now it looks all good!

I was going to wait to post about this until I had the project done, but I have over 35 hours in it at this point and I'm getting to excited to keep it to myself!

Starting with a cargo van, there was no headliner. I had a bunch of ideas for what I wanted to do with it, but it eventually came down to this. I am replicating the fiber optic "Starlight Headliner" option that is a $12k option on some Rolls Royce models. Obviously I am not spending this much, but after the amount of time this is taking so far I can see why it is so expensive.

Anyways, I used plastic vapor barrier sheet and strong magnets to stick it to the ceiling ribs, then I trimmed around the perimeter to give me a pattern for the headliner. I wanted to make this 1 piece and as seamless as possible, no ribs or exposed fasteners, so I was lucky enough to have someone in the "know" who was able to get me an oversized piece of FRP plastic sheet to work with. This will allow me to make the entire 12' headliner as 1 piece. It is a little floppier than I would have liked, but it will work fine for the application.

I searched for a couple weeks for a way to attach this to the ceiling that would be strong yet still removable if needed as well as be invisible from the bottom side. What I eventually came up with is a mounting track system for drop ceiling tiles of all things. I found this at Menards. It is designed for low profile, surface mount applications of drop ceiling tiles. part of the rail mounts to the ceiling, and the other part snaps into it to hold the tiles in place. After inspecting this stuff in person, I determined that it will work great. It holds very well, but is still able to be separated if you pry the pieces apart with a screwdriver. It will also drop the headliner panel down about an inch from the ribs allowing space the for fiber optics as well as other wiring

I ended up using some rivets and 3m double sided tape to hold the tracks to the headliner panel, The rivets are shallow enough that they are invisible under the suede headliner material, You can feel them if you know where they are, but completely invisible otherwise. The other half of the tracks are attached to the roof ribs using the shortest tek screws I could find. There are over 40 up there though so they aren't doing anywhere. Plus 3M double sided take on the mounting surfaces.

Here is what the track looks like.




And here are the (4) 8 ft long pieces of track mounted to the headliner panel and to the van:





The perimeter of the headliner panel will be mounted with a combination of industrial strength velcro and some plastic fasteners. It is definitely tedious to install (take 4+ people). But it works, And I'm running wiring for everything I could ever think of installing above the headliner before it gets installed. Ideally I'll never have to remove it.


The next step is to flip it over and install the 1/8" foam backed suede material. I ground the heads of the rivets slightly just to smooth them down a little, and then scuffed the surface of the board with a scotch brite. I used 3M industrial headliner adhesive and stuck the material down:





Suede finished and trimmed. It was nice to see this part finished. I was tired!





The next step was to flip the headliner back over (put a few layers of cardboard and plastic underneath to protect the material and the tables below). Then I used a yellow paint marker and marked 800 dots in a random pattern over the visible portions of the headliner. There is no way I would have been able to keep the pattern evenly scattered freehand, so I drew a grid over the area where the fiber optic strands will go. Each square is about 11" square, and there is 13.3 dots in each square. I started with 10 dots in each in random patterns, then filled in the extra 3 in each square where they were looking sparce. I then added the remaining few dots as needed until I had 800 total painted.






After that,, I spent another few hours drilling every one of those dots with a 0.75mm drill bit. Yes, it sucked.

Once that was done, I started running the fiber optic strands and poking them into the holes and finishing with a dab of hot glue on each. I pre-trim each strand so that it's closer to the correct length, and then leave a few inches hanging out the bottom just in case they get tugged a little. The strands get trimmed flush with the headliner once installed in the vehicle. I could go on for hours about the techniques and routing, etc.. but I'll space you all that mess. Just know that I am now over 30 hours just into poking the strands through, gluing them in place, and then wrapping/taping them down to keep them somewhat tame for when we install, and I have over 200 still to do. Hoping to have it finished this weekend.

Here are some more pictures:






And here is a teaser of the lights. This will do white or just about any color, and they twinkle. It's pretty sweet!! This is the top obviously, but once installed you will only see the dots from the inside of the van.






Stay tuned.. More to come as this slowly progresses.

Nice!!! i ordered all my fiber optic engines last month, also go shooting star engines for mine if i ever get there lol i cant wait to see how this turns out!