Has the body of my 1999 Ford E150 XLT been lifted?

I bought the van last month and have been working on getting it back on the road. But it's tall, I've not seen an E150 this tall before.



I got a look at the body bushing behind the passenger front tire yesterday and here's what I found.


I love the look so I'm not changing it, but I am curious.

The van has a drop floor and wheelchair lift installed. The drop appears to be four inches.

I still have to repair the sliding door, replace the sliding door motor, and repair the lift before I can use it. I hope to have the van on the road by spring.

It's going to replace my 1985 Ford E150 van, which I'll put up for sale once the new van is usable.

 

Looks like it might have airbags / air suspension ?? Does the rear have leaf springs with extended shackles? or does it look like the front?

 

I don't thinkit has airbags. Not that we've been able to find anyway.

The front coil springs look to have been replaced, but I can't tell on the back.

To be fair, I can't exactly climb out of my chair and look around under there.

 

Yes that is lifted, your second pic shows the big lift puck between the frame mount and body that shouldn't be there. Curious that they would do a body lift on a wheelchair truck as it's already pretty tall, but maybe it's to make room for the lift mechanism without having to cut into the frame.

 

It's for headroom. On Ford Econoline's there isn't quite enough headroom so they drop the floor from in front of the rear axle to up to the firewall (depending on need) four to six inches. I've had four third gen Ford vans with four inch drops and now this 4th gen van with a four inch drop. The 3rd gen vans were dropped without raising the body.

I think the raised body looks fantastic, just imagine the tire opportunities.

Thanks for helping me out with that info.

 

They must have cut into the frame then. If that is the case the body lift is the easier and safer option but if headroom is what is needed then why don't they simply install a conversion van high roof instead. Just thinking out loud.

 

They raised the body so they wouldn't have to cut in to the frame. On the 3rd gen vans there was already four inches of space betwwn much of the floor bottom and the frame. They would would only raise the body if they needed six inches of floor drop.

Custom roofs weren't unheard of but they can get expensive, and they leak, and they wear out and can look terrible. I've had four 3rd gen Ford E150 wheelchair vans and all had four inch floor drops which did not require cutting in to the frame, but did require wiring, and fuel tank changes. Stock, I don't know how far off the frame the floor of the 4th gen vans are.

 

Often when the body on one of these 4th gen wheelchair vans is raised, they don't raise the bumpers. I was happy to see that the bumpers on this van were raised as well, but I don't know if they'd be allowed to do that these days. Then again, there are no more Ford Econoline vans being built, just cut aways.

 

Just a heads up if you go bigger on the tires: make sure you chair lift will deploy to the ground as they typically have a limited amount of travel.

 

Also, in case you're not aware, those sliding door motors are usually off the shelf power window motors. The disability dealer will charge triple, or more, than what they can be had.

 

Lets try this again. My computer just crashed while installing new video card drivers, for the third time in a row.

Boy do I know that, have known for going on thirty years now.. I found two or three places on line to buy the "Ricon" motor, they wanted between $250 and $300 for them. I did a lot of research and cross referencing and found the motor for $33. It's for a bunch of Chevy cars.

I got the motor a few days ago and will hopefully be installing the motor and the new sliding door parts a bit after Christmas. Then on to making the Crowriver wheelchair lift functional again.

 

I'm surprised your van door has this problem given the fact that it's motor operated, as opposed to getting slammed all the time.

I think Crow River was bought by Braun? As long as your lift doesn't have a circuit board it should be easy to trouble shoot any problems. I have the long discontinued Braun Swing Away in all my vans and they rarely give me any trouble. They are very simple, reliable, easy to repair and find off the shelf parts for.

 

From what I have been able to find, Ricon bought up Crowriver the year after my lift was installed. The conversion was done when the van was new, I'm the sixth owner.

There's a circuit board, but it seems to work. I think though that a limit switch or two is flaky. We can make the lift work some times but not always. After the door is repaired we'll dive in to the lift.

If worse comes to worse we can remove the Ricon from my brown van. I love that lift, it has the wireless controller for the doors and the lift, nice feature. If nothing else I have another Ricon lift in the carport that works great which we could install. It would be great to get the Crowriver lift working though since it's a single post lift that folds around itself and leaves much of the door opening available for passengers to pass through it.

I don't know what's up with the door. It's pretty beat up. The top roller appears broken in some way and will fall out of the track if you're not careful with it, and the door is sagging pretty badly. My replacement parts should fix that.

The previous owner removed and tossed out the motor chain, and the front and rear chain mounts from the door, then put in the front and rear door latches so the door would work. We removed the front and rear latches and found a manual which helped us to work out the chain routing. My 3rd gen Fords had the rear end of the chain running outside the rear opening of the door, this van (and others) has a hole in the body that the rear section of chain exits through, must have been a clearance issue. But the door motor has a stripped gear and can't move the door, not that the door is easy to move in it's current condition.

 

Wow, that many owners and the van looks great.
Those RC controls are any easy DIY, as long as you have a wiring diagram for the lift. I built a few from those cheap RC control units off ebay. They actually have better distance than the factory controls.
Definitely interested in what you discover with you door, since I have two E Series vans and want to be knowledgeable on the workings. I'd have to imagine the door needs to be removed to do the job, but that's guessing.
Fortunately, I have enough function that I can operate the slider manually on one of my vans. But some lifts probably won't allow access to manage that. It's easy access with the Swing Away. It's nice to have one less technical device that has potential to let you down at the worst possible time.

 

I get that. I need a power door though. I've owned a number of Ford vans since 1979 and all but one had a sliding door on it, and in that time I'd only had two door motor failures.

I don't know about Crowriver, but I can say that I've never had a Ricon lift fail on me, they're amazingly reliable.

The van really does look great, the bottom area of the back doors are a bit beat up, but easily repairable, they look like someone deliberately pounded on them with something.

I'm very eager to have the van on the road by spring and I think it can be done.