I thought I would start a thread on my camper/RV that I bought back in January. It is very much a project, but I think is a very good base to start from. I will attempt to start this thread from when I first purchased it in January, and bring things up to date, then update this thread as work progresses.

The van is a 1992 E350 Econoline with the 460/7.5L engine, and it is an "Intervec Falcon 190" conversion. It was exported from the US to Japan when new, and somebody imported it into New Zealand in mid 2013. It has only covered 36K miles from new, and mechanically/structurally it appears to be in really good shape.

Here are a couple of pics of how it appeared in the ad:













The van was in Christchurch when I purchased it, which is about 1200kms and a 3 hour ferry trip away from where I live in Auckland. I bought it sight unseen, but the guy was desperate for a sale and the asking price was very good. One of the reasons it was very cheap is that it had not been complied/registered to be driven on NZ roads, and that was potentially a big problem. Anyway, I liked the look of it and thought I would take a punt, and bought it. I tried to arrange to have it transported to my place on a car transporter, but all of the transport companies I rang said they could not do it as it was too high for a car transporter. It would have cost a bomb to send up on a truck, so I decided to fly down,take a chance and drive it back. Well that turned into an epic trip! About two hours after I left, I was in a rural area, travelling at 100kph.I felt a bit of a vibration which appeared to be coming from the rear of the van. I lifted my right foot, and had just begun slowing down when BOOM, the back right corner of the van dropped down and I was hanging on for dear life, trying to keep the thing straight, and bring it to a stop. I managed to get it stopped on the side of the road, and jumped out to take a look:



Not so obvious from the pic, but the tyre is almost completely off the rim! I knew the tyres were not in good condition when I picked the van up, they had plenty of tread, but there were cracks between the treads. Basically the tyre had overheated and delaminated, and come apart. I checked the spare, and it was flat too! No jack or tools either! So I rang a few country garages, and finally managed to get a mobile tyre guy to come out and get me mobile. I waited two hours for him to arrive (in the sweltering heat!) He replaced the faulty valve in the spare wheel, inflated it and fitted to to the rear, which got me going again. I drove about 30 minutes to the next small town, found a tyre place who fitted a second hand tyre to my spare rim, and I also purchased a jack and wheel brace, should the same happen again. Well, just as well I did, as it did not take long for that repeat itself! About 1.5 hours later, descending a hill into Picton, (where the inter-island ferry departed) I felt the same vibration again. Then BOOOM! Right rear dropped down, and again I wrestled it to the side of the road. The spare tyre we had just repaired had let go, in the same way as the original. Here is a pic of the remains:



So out with the tools, and it was then I discovered the small bottle jack I had bought would not lift the rear axle high enough to get the wheel off. It was fortunate an old man happened to be walking past, and asked if I need help. I explained the situation, and asked if he had a jack I could borrow. He replied that he did, and I followed him on foot across the road to his house to collect his jack. It was a very small 1.5 ton trolley/floor jack, and I was unsure if it was going to lift the van. But anyway, I crawled underneath, slid the jack under the axle, and with both hands pumped hard on the jack handle. I really thought I was going to break it! Anyway, just managed to get the wheel clear of the ground, swapped them over, thanked the kind man, and set off for the ferry terminal. I had missed the earlier crossing that I was booked for, and caught the 7.30pm crossing. I was very tired by this stage, so glad to be finally on the ferry for a bit of a rest. On board the ferry:



As I had only covered about 350kms of my 1200km journey I thought it would be foolish to try to carry on with the dodgy tyres, so while sitting on the cross channel car ferry I took out my ipad and searched for tyre dealers in the city that the ferry docked in. We docked about 10.30 pm, so I set my GPS for a tyre dealer in the city,found my way there, parked outside and crawled into my sleeping bag in the back to wait for opening next morning.

 

Woke up the next morning about 5 am, and went and found Mac D's for some breakfast. Returned to the tyre shop around 7am just as they were opening. Explained the scenario, and asked what tyres they could get quickly. The van had 265/70x16 M&S tyres fitted, they were really 4x4 tyres, and with a load rating of 106 (950kg) were right on the limit on the rear axle. Coupled with the fact they were old and perished, and it was always going to end badly! Anyway, I had checked out the chassis plate for correct fitment earlier, and the tyres specified were LT245/75x16, which have a load rating of 120 (1400kg) My first choice was the Michelin LTX, but after a few phone calls it turned out these were not available locally. In the end I had a choice of 2x tyres, the Hankook Dynapro or the more expensive Pirelli Scorpions. I have not had good experiences with Pirelli's, but Hankook on the other hand I have found make very good commercial type tyres, so we ordered a set of those, had them delivered,and replaced all 5 tyres. Tyres being fitted at the tyre shop:



With the rears inflated to the Ford specified 80psi and the fronts at 55psi, 4 hours later I was back on the road, the van driving much better now with it's new boots on, and completed the journey back home without further incident.

It was quite obvious to me after completing the trip that the suspension was going to need some work. Although the van had only done 36K miles from new, and the suspension was in good order, the van felt very soft in the suspension, and rolled around quite a lot on the corners. This no doubt was exaggerated by the camper conversion, with the fibreglass roof extension, and roof mounted air con system, giving the van a much higher centre of gravity than say the regular low roof E350 van. So I began putting a plan into place, but more on that later.

 

One of the other things that became obvious after picking the van up, was that the interior was going to require a lot of work. Someone in Japan had decided to give the interior a few "custom" touches, and had really f____d it up! To give an idea, here are a few pics:








Check out the wooden extensions on the gearlever and indicator stalks! (I think the gearlever extension might have been a recycled frying pan handle!) And that centre console/coolbox arrangement meant you could not walk from the drivers seat into the rear unless you climbed over it. The whole van was carpeted with a shiny synthetic black carpet with a really deep pile, and the original woodgrain interior had been covered over with a light green velour, as well as something that looked like shiny black PVC material. It looked like a bad set from a 1980's porno movie! The original "jackknife" couch which converted into a double bed had been removed, and replaced by something far less useful. It was like a couch with a wide base, but no backrest! Way too short to be used as a bed, but too wide to be a couch. Don't know what they were thinking there! Also, lots of polished pieces of wood had been glued/screwed on to interior panels everywhere, most of which were non functional. That roof light console was so heavy it had caused the fibreglass roof to sag about 4 inches, and coupled with the depth of the light unit, meant there was very little space in the overhead double bunk. I spent a day removing all of that rubbish, and weighed it in at the local tip - 120kgs of useless "bling" !......

 

Keep up the good work. Definitely way better than a Vanette, a HiAce or a Bongo.

 

Customized Class B RVs are a big thing in Japan, so I hear from a Canadian friend. Anyway it's looks great for a 1992 and should be fairly easy to remodel...............

 

Ha, you must have been to New Zealand then! There is a lot of that rubbish on the roads here!


That's interesting to hear. Someone in Japan obviously spent a lot of time and money to turn something that was a little dated, but very functional, into something that looked quite bizarre inside and was completely useless! Interestingly, the shower and toilet in the bathroom still have the original stickers in the bowl, and a quick inspection in the wastewater tank would suggest they have never been used! The plan is to keep the layout the same as Intervec originally built it, but to replace the cabinets and wall linings with more modern materials and give it a fresh look.

So on to the fun stuff. Firstly the wheels. I had already replaced all of the tyres, and in an ideal world I would have liked to fit 17" or 18" rims, but as the tyres were brand new I opted to replace the wheel rims only. There were 3 alloy wheels fitted, plus an original steel wheel, plus a steel spare. I bought a set (6 actually!) of American Racing "Baja" wheels, I think the style of these is suited to the period of the vehicle. Had the tyres swapped over, and instantly better





I also removed the bullbar, had my fabricator run over all of the welds again with his TIG (they were quite ugly) and had it polished again. I also fitted a new pair of Cibie Super Oscar longe range spots that I had stashed away, to replace the Super Oscar fog lights that had been previously fitted.




Another problem that needed sorting, was that someone had fitted a large and rather heavy interior light unit, lots more polished wood, and small lights. I think the weight of this had caused the fibreglass roof to sag in the middle by up to 3 or 4 inches. This sagging coupled with the depth of the light unit, meant that there was very little space in the top bunk. We remedied this by removing and binning the light, and sat a bottle jack on the top bed, and jacked the roof back up to its original height. With the jack still in place, we then bent 3/4" steel bars to the internal shape of the roof, and laminated these in with some super grunty epoxy. We also laminated over the hole where a skylight had been fitted, and gave it a heavy coat of white gelcoat on the exterior. Now there is ample room above the top bunk, and you can now walk on the roof without any movement.



much better!



Next up was the "frying pan handle" gearlever. WTF?!!!



The wires to the OD button had been cut and taped on to the gearlever, rendering it inoperative. I ordered a new gearlever, and OD button from a dealer, and set about replacing the whole assembly. That was a bloody mission I can tell you, must have taken 3 hours or so, I had to take apart so much of the dash! Anyway, all fitted, and works perfectly now, just as Henry Ford intended I managed to remove the slightly smaller version of the frying pan handle which had been fitted to the wiper stalk without destroying the original switch. It had been glued on fairly well, but I just whittled away at it with a sharp knife until I broke through to plastic, then carefully prised it off.





The drivers door was missing the whole key barrel, and as it was not fitted with remote central locking it was a real pain to get in and out of. You had to unlock the passenger door, hit the door unlock button to unlock the doors, then walk around to get in the drivers side. I bought a complete new lock set including ignition barrel ( as I hate non matching keys!) and replaced all of the locks. Then, with the help of some members on this forum, installed a remote central locking system, which I have to say has been brilliant! The whole lot is tucked inside the drivers door panel underneath the window and door lock switches. It was also about this point I had to replace the cable ends in the side and rear doors, which seem to have been made from chewing gum, with a nice set of those aluminium jobbies that I bought off Ebay.

It is funny that even as I type this retrospectively, how much I had almost forgotten about how many little things were wrong with it!



Some work was required to get the vehicle up to a roadworthy standard, so that I could register it in NZ. The two tail pipes had rusted off, so instead of running the pipes out the back I had my fabricator make up a couple of nice 3" exhausts from stainless, and exit behind the RR wheel. We also removed the cat and replaced it with a straight pipe, and I disconnected and removed the air pump and all associated pipework, which blew air into the cat. It has a nice exhaust note now, not too loud, but at least you can tell it is a V8 now

 

Nice work conrod, any plans for Solar Panels on the roof? Now's the time for the wiring and mounting points............

 

I don't think there is much point fitting solar panels to this camper. A hell of a lot of expense and additional weight in the panels and storage batteries, extra aero drag from the panels on the roof. And all for what? I will fit interior LED lights, which the single house battery will run for days. The roof mounted air con unit will have to run from shore (mains) power or the genset (but you could not run that off storage batteries anyway as the current draw is too high) Cooker is gas, as is hot water heater and fridge. TV can run off mains, or genset, or house battery. Not much else in there really?

Yep will have to make a plan for electrical and plumbing soon, going to visit cabinet maker this week to make a plan for having all new interior built

Conrad

 

I've never been actually. But I hear it's nice and would love to go. I have been to Peru which has those smaller (you can't seriously call them) vans. I don't know how many times I climbed aboard one of those for public transit down there. Worse of, in Peru the vehicle code is not enforced an safety inspectors can be bribed. I hate those Jap little turds.

 

Hahaa, so do I! I passed a Daihatsu truck/camper on an uphill stretch of the motorway yesterday. Old boy driving, foot hard up it in what must have been seond or third gear, diesel engine belching out black smoke, doing about 60 kph as I effortlessly breezed past at 90kph just above idle

 

Here's a good example of the horrendous customising that went on. Pic of the cab as I bought it:




The engine cover had bits of plastic and wood glued/screwed on to it, pretty much just for 2x cup holders and a small tray that would hold a mobile phone, and not much more. The piece between the seats was a coolbox, with another 2x cupholders (how many do you need ??) End result was that you could not walk through from the cab into the rear. Also made the engine cover impossible to remove. Another cool piece was a panel that had been screwed on to the underside of the dash, drivers side. You can just see the diamond pattern of the material in that shot. It extended about 4-6 inches below the bottom of the dash. Meaning the E brake was REALLY hard to find with your foot, as it covered it completely, and even the brake and accelerator pedals were mostly obscured. So nearly a whole day to rip it all out, lots of acetone to remove the glue, and ends of fingers rubbed right off, and managed to clean it up fairly well. Just looking for an original centre console that attaches to the engine cover now, as well as a pair of door trims if anyone knows where I can get these?

 

Thank you very much. You are doing a great job of sharing this remodel/build with us. I have enjoyed it very much so far. I hope that you will continue to document and share your progress as you go forward with your project. I am reading on as many forums as I can find and gathering information and ideas in anticipation of a build of my own. Best of luck to you as you go forward.

 

thanks Fred, I am really glad if someone else finds it useful Strangely enough, my reasons are selfish as much as anything else. I find it great for my own motivation to add posts as work progresses, and I can look back at the beginning and see how far things have come. A lot of satisfaction in that.

Anyway, last week was a major milestone in the scheme of things. After 6 months of ownership, I finally managed to get it complied and registered, so it is 100% legal now to drive on NZ roads I was really worried that I might have to convert it to RHD, and I did not want to do this, as the conversions I have seen are quite bad, and not helped by the fact that the entire drivetrain is offset to the right on the E series, meaning very little room for pedals on the RH side! Anyway, turns out I didn't have to, so crisis averted.

There was some work to do to achieve this, mostly minor stuff. RH headlight was dim (easy fix) one seatbelt needed replacing, and it had been flagged for rust when it entered the country, so this needed sorting. Now this was not as bad as it sounds. It was just little bits of surface rust on the underside, they are really pedantic about stuff like that. It is actually in remarkably good condition, especially considering its age. There were no rust holes as such, and no welding required. I found a friendly certifier who I knew, and he said to wire brush the rusty parts, treat with rust converter, then prime and top coat. I did as he asked, and he gave me the certicate required.

So back for the recheck last week, and I passed! I then bolted on my own personalised number plates, and went down and regsitered it. My ownership papers turned up in the mail today.





I ordered a set of Bilstein shocks for it, as well as a front and rear anti roll bar (sway bar to you guys) The rear pair of shocks turned up last week, so I thought that would be an easy little job for Saturday afternoon. WRONG! After lots of penetrating spray, I slowly undid the top bolt on the shock. I could only loosen it about 1/12 of a turn at a time, flipping the spanner over each time. After about an hour of laying on my back with crap dropping in my eyes, I had loosened it maybe 5 or 6 turns. It became very tight, and the stud snapped off! Oh well, wasn't too worried as they were getting binned anyway. Fitting the Bilstein proved to be very easy, took all of 5 minutes. The other side was a similar story, except that the top stud was quite a bit rustier, and snapped after only maybe 1 turn? So rear Billies fitted now, just waiting for the front shocks and bars to arrive. I drove the van on Monday, and it fells a little bit tighter in the rear now, but definitely still needs those bars.

 

Not sure what frame your RV sits on but the typical E-Series up to E350 rear shocks can be a PITA for certain; been there, done that.

I stumbled across a secret of sorts----remove the spare tire if its carried underbody and use a reciprocating saw to cut the bolt/stud tops. This goes so insanely easy you're almost stunned. Of course if you've tried this any other way you know what I mean.

Bilstien's are great because they have those large wrench flats on the lower side of the upper stud. That feature along with the mono tube design makes them very easy to remove. I applied a bit of anti-seize to the threads which makes removing them even easier when/if that becomes necessary.

 

Yes I remember reading your comment earlier about using a recip saw to remove the rears, and wish I had! Would have been so much easier! Mine has a wastewater tank where the spare wheel carrier is, so that might have made it difficult to access them. And yes, Bilsteins are great with the 22mm hex on top of the body, makes life easier!

Front Bilsteins turned up last week, so I fitted those today. Was a much easier job than the rears, although still peeled the thread off the top of the old shocks as I was removing the nut. Haven't test driven it yet, I think my Hellwig ARB's will be here next week too, so will wait for them to arrive, and test drive after I install them.




Bought a pair of Doug Thorleys finest, so I will make a plan to fit them soon. I will do a baseline dyno run before I start, fit the headers, and then do a second dyno run and tune as necessary. Looking forward to that, really hoping they will wake it up a bit! I will post the results once I have done that.