I live between Los Angeles and NYC and don't know anything about Vans or much about cars for that matter. Most of the time I walk or take the subway or my bike anywhere I have to go in either city. Due to COVID, I temporarily relocated my family from Manhattan to El Paso, TX, which is my hometown, and we rented a small apartment for what I thought would be a few weeks to a couple of months of quarantine. That was on March 15th. Since we rented a van to drive from NYC to El Paso; I fell in love with the space and comfort from day 1 and I decided to buy one to use while in TX. Â
I found a 2003 Ford E-150 Conversion Van on Craigslist and I went for it. I've now replaced the ball joints, front brakes and installed a towing hitch. From a cosmetic standpoint, I've removed the "stodgy" looking running boards and all the chrome pieces and replaced them with black ones as well as covered the gold paint by painting the bottom third of the van black. I'm going to add retro racing stripes all around on top of the black color but they're on backorder - I'll update with pics when they're on. (this is all being done in a shop, I barely know how to change a tire!)
This was supposed to be a temporary vehicle but now I'm going up to the mountains camping every weekend with it. I removed the middle seats myself and put a $20 4x6 rug down and my daughter travels in the backseat bench and our dog has the entire rest of the van to herself. Once I found this forum it was such a treasure trove of information and inspiration!
There's no way I'm leaving this van behind, I'm in LOVE.  What do you all think? Â
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I want to paint the hood black and get black rims and then add a black roof wing but that won't happen with the 2020 budget. Next year if things work out!
I'm heading back to NYC and will make some stops hang out in Nashville and Charlotte...maybe squeeze in a couple of days in DC.