I have been hanging out here for a short while and figured i'd finally start a thread about my van. I have big plans for this van, but currently it is in its infancy. This may be a little lengthy.

I was gifted this van from my mother in law. The van belonged to her father and when he passed away it sat in the parking lot of their business for 3 years. It was his favorite vehicle and he drove it almost daily until he got ill. My mother in law knows that I love working on vehicles and asked if I wanted it before they were forced to send it to the scrap yard. It actually made her very happy that I was willing to take it on and start bringing it back to life.

I jumped all over the opportunity because I have loved vans since my parents bought a 1984 E150 van brand new when I was 3. They drove that van near a decade before they got rid of it. I have lots of memories of driving around on vacations in that thing.

So first off, the van had been sitting in parking lot for 3 years. It had been vandalized in several ways. Windows broken, tail lights destroyed, ignition switch destroyed from an attempted theft and best of all, there was a homeless person living in the back of it.

BTW I didn't just take all the homeless guys stuff, I got a big box and put all the homeless guys possessions in the box and left it for him to recover when he returned, I wanted to at least help the guy out as best I could.

Here is the van as I found it. Its a 93 E250 Cargo van with a 351.





Once I got it towed home, the first thing I had to do was clean out the van. I REALLY wish I had taken a picture of the inside before I cleaned it, it was crazy.

The homeless person had been collecting newspapers, magazines, beer and liquor. The van floor was completely covered in magazines and newspaper it was at least 2" thick through out the entire van. Some places in the van had even more. I assume they were using it to keep warm. Being that its a cargo van and has no interior, the person had all filled all of cracks and crevices of the sidewalls with newspaper and magazines as well. The paper plus the spillage of beer and liquor along with the humidity that occurs in these things created a pretty nice little mash of soggy mushy hard paper that I had to scrape up. The side double door foot well was completely full of soaked paper that had turned into a 6"x6"x3' paper brick.

The person living in the van apparently also enjoyed chewing tobacco along with their beer and liquor. Rather than spit in a container of some sort, they just used the driver rear of the van as the spit container. The walls were covered in the loveliness.

Here is a picture after many hours of cleaning all the trash and scraping up all of the paper mash of crap. At the point in this picture I had not gone through with the actual cleaning products and disinfectants yet. If you look closely you can see the spit walls in the back corner.



Continued below...

 

Once I had completed the interior cleaning of the van, I had to start working on getting it running.

Fortunately, this part of the process was not too difficult...at first. The only thing I had to do was swap out the battery and replace the destroyed ignition switch and key and put some gas in it. Fortunately someone had done me the favor of siphoning the gas out of the tank So no worries about old gas.

It started up and ran rough for a short period before I shut it off. I did an oil change and filled up the radiator. The radiator was bone dry. After filling it up and starting the engine back up, it started leaking like crazy. There were tons of little pin sized rust holes and leaks. So first big replacement was a new radiator. After swapping that out and starting it again, The upper radiator hose blew. I replaced that and everything seemed to be doing well after that for a while.... later on down the line the bypass hose on the water pump decided to blow out. Fortunately I happened to be at an autozone when it happened and had my tools in the car with me .

I took the van for a drive and was pleased that it didn't take all that much to get it running. I noticed it was running rough, which was expected. What I didn't expect was that it was idling really high. The high idle made the van very dangerous to drive. It would literally accelerate without me wanting to. I would be coming up on a stop light and take my foot off the accelerator and the van would keep accelerating. I had to push hard on the brakes to keep the van from running a light or running into the back of someone. I actually tested the acceleration and the van would actually accelerate all the way up to 55-60 mph without me ever touching the gas pedal. I found some problem vacuum lines and replaced them, but that didn't solve the issue. The problem ended up being the TPS sensor.

Once the TPS sensor was replaced the van ran pretty good and I was able to drive it without fear for my life.

Once the engine was sorted out, it was time to look to the tires. The tires on the van were basically new as far as tread life, but several years sitting in a parking lot turned them to crap. They were dry rotted to hell and cracking bad, so they were not safe to continue using.

Because my future plans for this van include making it into a rugged zombie apocalypse style vehicle. I wanted to put some bigger wheels and tires on the van, and I didn't want to throw $1000+ dollars on some tires only to have to replace them again in the next year or two. I don't currently have the cash for a 4x4 conversion so I decided to put a small body lift on the van in order to fit the bigger wheels and tires.

I know that some people are very against body lifts and hate them, but if done right there are no issues with them.

I couldn't find anyone that made a body lift for these vans, so I pieced one together from a Performance Accessories F series lift. Most of the lift parts fit, but the bolts were not the proper length. I purchased the proper length and size grade 8 hardware.

I also had to replace the body bushings as some of them were falling apart and some of body bolts were actually completely rusted through. I looked for some replacement body bushings but ford wants a arm and a leg for them. I looked to one of the performance suspension companies for bushings but none of them had a Kit. However, I found that that Energy Suspensions Universal Body mount bushings (Part 9.4102G) fit great in every position except location 1. In location 1 it required some fabrication work to make them work properly.

I also had to fabricate a steering extension. The one that came with the lift kit did not move the steering wheel enough so I had to make my own shown below.



I also had to fabricate front and rear bumper mounts, radiator relocation brackets and get a longer hose for the gas tank fill tube. Other than that, everything else worked great.

This picture shows the difference in the van height. I had not put the bumper brackets on yet in this picture.



After that I purchased 17x9 XD Addict wheels with -12 offset and 285/70/17 BFG T/A KO2 tires and ended up with this.





As anyone who has tried to put bigger tires on our vans, you know that you run into clearance issues on the rear of the fender and the front bumper.

The 3" lift fixed the clearance issue on the front bumper, but the fender was still an issue. Here is a picture of the clearance on the rear of the front fender.



I did a little fender trimming and ended up with this clearance. Once you are past the fender itself there is plenty of room inside the wheel well for the larger tires.



Other than the fender there are no other clearance issues. Here are a few pics of the inside of the wheel well showing locations where it might rub at full lock, but as you can see there is plenty of clearance with the wider tires.
You can also see the body mount bushings and the lift blocks.

 

reserved.....

 

Looking forward to reading the journey, Jmanb13. I love seeing van rescue stories. I restored my pop's van as a retirement hobby after it sat for many years. I sold it when I finished and it is being used by the new owner.
jim

 

Gross - just gross. Nicely done cleaning it up.

Looks just like the first new body van my dad bought.
I preferred driving the 351 vs the 5.4.

The lift looks better than I expected. Well done!

 

You've got it looking good....great story.

I cant help but wonder what the homeless guy thought when he showed up and his metal 'tent' was gone....

No matter....you have given the van a new lease on life...

 

Great job... Sorry the guy was such a slob... If i had been living in it, you would have found it looking somewhat like a camper van!! At least some carpet, curtains, ect...

 

Thanks guys!

Honestly except for the smell of beer and liquor, the inside of the van was surprisingly decent smelling. I guess the guy had a place where he washed his clothes and took a bath. All of the clothes that I left behind for the guy were surprisingly clean.

The only part that really grossed me out was cleaning the damn tobacco spit on the walls.

On a funny note, when I got the van, my wife said she would never ride in it and it was super gross. However after I cleaned it up and put the wheels and tires on it, she thinks its awesome and said she would ride in it once I completed the interior that i'm planning.

The funniest thing about the van is that I get more comments and thumbs up from strangers about it than I do about my mustang shown below
I've only driven the van a handful of times but someone has made a comment every single time I've driven it.

 

That is a clean looking body, especially for a 93!! It looks like you've got yourself a nice one there!