Finally back in action!!

Ok, here we go!!

So I've done a whole lot and I may forget to mention small features, we'll see.

I installed a two way communication remote start and alarm system which has been pretty darn good. I hooked it up myself...wasnt' too hard, you just have to be sure that you use the right wires ;)

The front area of the van is completely different now....behold it!!!(refer to pic. below)

As you can see, the dash went from grey to brown, the cd player was relocated from the centre and the glove box hub is gone. Since this van is supposed to look old school, I opted to go with the custom drink tray and no big bulky glove box hub covering my red velvet. BTW, all of the red velvet was pulled from the interior of the black van is being reused which means I spend no money, yay!!

Those grey things on the drink tray and LED clips: I glued them down. They are very handy when you have directions or a grocery list of a sort and the lights are bright and they swivel around...I got them at the dollar shop.

One of the things that I really missed from the older model vans is the gauge cluster. I really like the look of the single circular gauge clusters instead of one big one. I treid the one from the black van but it didn't quite fit.......so I had to get custom!! Basically I had to take off about an inch from the back of the circular holes as they were too deep to fit properly. I used a belt sander and sanded it away until it fit and I was very happy when it did. This gave me back my old school gauge cluster which I missed terribly.

The ceiling in the front seat is velvet. I put a varanthaned piece of wood as a trim piece which seperates teh material from the front to the back. The back is done with industrial carpet. I did the engine hub with velvet.

The horn button was relocated to the left side of the wheel.

I got some pedal covers from the scrap yard for $4 The 'foot' gas peddle I removed from the black van which I had originally purchased new.

The door panels are now velvet just like the engine hub. I mounted some pioneer speakers in the doors as well. The arm rest was painted brown and varathaned for durability.

You may have noticed a small van mounted in the dash that looks astonishingly like the real van. Well, no word of a lie, it is an exact mini me model.

By using two model kits I re-created all of the accessories of the 'real' van including the side windows, the windshield visor, the spoiler on teh back, the back side corner windows and even the chrome tips of the dual exaust system. Here's the cherry on the sunday: the headlights of the mini me model van flash when you are the alarm system. I did this by using those dollar shop LED lights that I mentioned earlier...I took them apart and removed the lights and then I soldered wires to them and ran them to the led outputs from the alarm system...ie: that red blinking light that tells you the car is armed, I just cut it out and wired the led's to it.

There is a circular purple light underneath the model as well as a green LED 4" tube light that lights the whole area up at night.

The plastic window that protects the van will be changed to galss eventually.

Other new features include new seats and seat covers. Originally I had two different sets of seats and they didn't match...I couldn't have that so a day at the scrap yard gve me two new/used seats. Then I found the seat covers on super duper sale so I got all 4 for $20 brand new.

The whole interior, (other than the front cockpit section) is done with industrial carpet. I used one piece as a whole and just rolled it up and over; this was very difficult..luckily I had cymbal stands to use as jacks ;) The carpet cost me $25

I also put in some custom light fixtures which I purchased at Value Village for 99cents. I used my dremmel tool and cut a larger section out of the under side of the new fixture and glued on some velcro so that if you need to change the bulb, all you have to do is pull it off as it is simply stuck to the carpet on teh ceiling. I also painted the bases black.

Today I did the back doors...they too were covered in red velvet. I will have to take more pics as these were taken two weeks ago.

Here's a shot of the van from the outside. You can see the back windows that I installed; they were given to me free and spent a couple bucks on the window sealer. Other than that, a jig saw and a few hours of my time was all that it took.

You can also see the spoiler, the backs of the 12v horns and the tip of the left side of the dual exaust system that I pulled off my black van. I originally had it installed new on the black van..it's a dual system that runs to two cats and the then two dyno max turbos.

From the front you can see the LED signal lights; one is a parking light and the other is the signal light.

I grabbed the old school wiper arms off of the black van and snapped them on.

The hood scoop is just for looks. I may leave it off when I do all of thd body work and primer...any thoughts on that out there?

The grille is going to get replaced with the old school 70's style grille, complete with round headlights. It just came yesterday; I won it off ebay. I've been trying to find one of these for a while. Yeah, sure, they're easy to find if they're white but I had to get the all chrome one.

This means that the headlights will be replaced with round ones becasue that's how they came for the old grilles. Still in their box, I have two round diamond cut headlights just waiting to be hooked up. These are those lights that look almost blue-ish/white-ish that you see on nicer cars; they're going to look deadly!!

Here's a shot of the grille

And here are the headlights

So what's next you ask......?

I still have all of the body work to do and then priming and painting.

I've pulled the chrome bumpers from the black van and they will eventually get on to the yellow van.

I have to pull off all of the brakes from thd black van...lost of stuff to reclaim from it..then I can have it towed away.

Pull the purple underlight kit from the black van and eventually put them on the yellow van..man I miss those things...I know, they're cheesy but they look cool on a fly ride.

Change the front suspension springs back to the original ones, bringing it back to proper height which will let me put the proper sized tires up front again. The smaller tires always look saggy as they carry a lot of weight: people and engine.

It's going in to the shop next monday to hopefully fix a wire problem somewhere that has been giving me a lot of grief when the weather gets cool.....having to wiggle wires to get the engine to start is not cool and not being able to find the wire is even worse. I checked a bunch of wires out and after soldering the suspicious looking ones, still no luck.

You know that song: 'when something is wrong with my baby"? and it continues on to say 'something is wrong with me'? Well, that' s how I feel when something is wrong with the van.