Hello. My name is James. I'm into a little bit of everything as far as cars are concerned. Just look at my signature at the bottom.
In 2000 my father bought this 1998 Chevrolet 1500 Express conversion van. My wife and I borrowed it for vacations and told dad if he ever wanted to sell it to let me know. So around 2012, I bought it from him and have put about 50,000 miles on it. It's got 176,000 miles on it now.
The "bad" thing about this van is allot of the stuff they used in the conversion is NLA like the wheels for example. Harley Davidson bought the factory because they were going bankrupt. So I had to use universal center caps (lost one of the original plastic caps). Interior parts, I just have to find universal stuff here and there. Some of it doesn't match.
I'm trying to keep this van going as long as possible. I guess until someone hits me and totals it.
I've since updated a few things like a flat screen TV in place of the old CRT that died and a DVD player in place of the VCR and upgraded the stereo.
The ABS body kit was starting to fall apart from road debris and just generally falling apart. I guess ABS doesn't last forever. I personally think it looks better without it. I had to fill in the screw holes with JB Weld and do some touch up. And I covered up some of the holes with some of that door ding edging stuff I painted. I found white Rustoluem paint comes close.
The company that did the conversion removed the lower air dam so I had these ugly bumper mounts showing. I made some brackets by melting down then cutting some #5 plastic cores used in pulp rolls we throw away at work. The spoiler is landscape edging.
So I'm in the market for a full size cargo van as a daily driver in place of my Subaru. Mainly because I'm always having to haul allot of stuff and the seats in my conversion van take up allot of space. I'm wanting to use my Chevy as my travel/family vehicle but I want a personal van I can use to haul stuff in but I still want to customize it. Everybody around here modifies trucks but I want to be different and have a van I customize myself.
I'm going to be changing the wheels and doing some exterior cosmetics to it and do some custom work on the interior so I hope to get some good information here.
I got my eye on this 2012 F-250 cargo van I'm thinking about buying.