So, we finally finished restoring our Transit Van that we bought the last October, so I wanted to share some work with you guys!
The van
We searched online a lot for a van, we were looking something with 9 seats so that we could use it at best (we could remove seats to carry cargo or we could carry 9 people). We found a 2005 Transit Van in Brescia which is 500km away from our city Florence.
The van was pretty beaten up, the dash had some broken pieces and it was missing the third row of seats, but the price was pretty good, so we could do some work on it, and we went for it.
The first works
We immediately removed the side panels and the only left row of seats to give it a good cleaning (I'll let you imagine how many bugs have we found inside).
Then we removed the floor, and we used it as a guide to cut some new boards in place.
Then we cut out also some wood-like textured vinyl, because it's the easiest to clean, and still looks pretty cool. Finally we assembled everything together.
Decorations
We sewed some curtains fitted with magnets to apply them and remove them whenever we wanted.
Our Ford logo on the front was broken so since we needed to replace it we thought of giving it a unique look, so we edited it into Fof (our group: FOF Media) and 3D printed it.
Later we also painted our bumpers with black spray paint.
The missing/broken pieces
We replaced the rear lights housing on both sides and our front light bulbs with some brighter lights.
We bought from some junkyard the third row of seats, the broken air vent on the dash, and a missing plastic rim.
The handles to adjust the driver's seat were broken so we fixed them in our way.
Then things started to get messy, the air con was not blowing in the correct direction, so we had to dismantle all the dash, also with the help of the Haynes Manual. We discovered a broken piece so we 3D printed a new one!
The breakdown
At this point our van had a little "accident", our fuel injection valve was malfunctioning so we had to take it to the doc, then Coronavirus came out so we had to stay locked down and our van stayed at the mechanic for 3 months...
The electrical system
We got our van back and decided to work on the electrical/entertainment system.
We bought a touchscreen radio, with a rear parking camera, and we wired it up. We also bought a parking sensors kit, super useful!
The we started figuring out a system of 12V outlets + 230V outlets for camping. Also we bought 4 speakers for our radio.
We also bought and installed an additional battery so we could have power on-the-go and not worry about getting stuck because of a dead engine battery. Next to our main battery we setup the Voltage Sensitive Relay and all the fuses for our system.
The finishing touch
We installed a megaphone under the hood just for fun, with our console being in the passenger side.
Then we started working on the side panels (interior, doors, rear, ...) with outlets and double-folding tables.
Finally we added some bench/containers to the rear of the van.
And that's it, after 8 months and LOTS of money invested we are really proud of the result, it may not be perfect but we did everything ourselves, we learnt a lot of new things and it was super fun to build.
Now we hope to use it for some trips around Europe!