After months of test drives, endless visits to questionable used commercial vehicle dealerships, and several false positives, I finally picked up a 2008 Ford E-250 Extended with 92k miles on Halloween, 2016. I had to drive all the way out to Pleasanton to get it, but Ankoor was nice enough to drive me out to pick it up. It’s fortunate that I got the van that specific weekend, as it was also the weekend that we were moving out of our apartment, and the van doubled as our moving truck.
After finishing the move, the very first thing to do was to unmount the cargo divider that the van came with. This was riveted & bolted into the walls and required me to break out my angle grinder to get it completely out. It was incredibly heavy, and had I cared more I’m sure i could have sold this on craigslist for a few dollars. However, I was working full time and concerned about my build timeline, so I ended up taking it to the junkyard along with a bunch of other material that came out of the van.
Next, I had to rip out the cargo liner on the walls, the cardboard headliner, and rubber floor & insulation that covered the bare metal. The cargo liner walls proved to be a greater challenge than expected because they were riveted to the metal underneath, and I had to whip out the trusty angle grinder again.
Once the plastic, rubber, and cardboard were finally off, I was in for a bit of a shock. There was a considerable amount of rust on the floor, due no doubt to the rubber floor and insulation pad trapping moisture down there. I picked up a wire brush for the angle grinder, and settled into grinding it all away.
After getting all that rust off, I sealed the bare metal with two coats of Rustoleum.Having finished all that unplanned work, I was finally ready to get started on insulating the van! Step 0 Complete!
