Step van housetruck conversion project

per·ti·nac·i·ty (pûr'tn-as'i-te) n. The quality or state of being pertinacious: "Again and again ... with the inexorable pertinacity of a child ... did he renew his efforts" (Nathaniel Hawthorne).

Synonyms: firmness, determination, resolution. See perseverance.

This is the latest in a succession of homes-on-wheels (or home-away-from home as the case is now) and the conversion has just started. Follow along and feel free to let this inspire you to build your own! There's no one way to do any of this, so I encourage you to research and build what's right for your needs, situation and abilities. That's what I'm doing and this is how I'm doing it. :)

Quickie index (though you're encouraged to read this page and click to the next at the bottom, and so forth).
NOTE: PICS & TEXT ARE BEING ADDED WITH EVERY UPDATE, EVEN ON THE "DONE" PAGES...
Intro & mechanicals
A basic overview of life aboard
Planning & gathering parts
Interior
Rear door area
Systems & stuff
Heating & cooling
Making it livable
Travels

Just prior to its first real trip "Budgie the Step Van" got its formal name, as any good ship should have: Day Sailer. Not sailor as in a person, but sailer as in something that sails the days. There's a kind of a Zen-like depth to those words, day sailer; but really while I love that and it is very true to the nature of a housetruck, it was named after a small sail boat my stepdad Jay had and loved dearly despite his Charlie Brown / Lucy with the football-esque relationship with it. He named it "Pertinacity"; virtually everyone else had other things they called it. I named it in memory of him; he always had a motorhome when I was a kid. It definitely fits though; one builds a housetruck to sail the days in, life in the slow lane, movement at will, self contained, takin' it as it comes. Day Sailer indeed!

First step in converting a vehicle is to decide you want to build something vs. buy something. I ruled out motorhomes by being in & around them over the years, and finding them to be poorly made of cheap materials and chintzy fittings. They leak, mold, and basically deteriorate drastically over the long term. Then I figured I'd give one a go and bartered for an old Chinook Futura. I figured hey, fiberglass doesn't delaminate and I'll just fix a soft spot in the floor. You can see how that worked out here. Back to what I knew to be right for my needs! I also, having no van for a while, can tell you it's a necessity for me to get the most out of life. Though me & SheDweller are homesteading in the woods, I still like to take road trips and to live "on the road" while doing it. I like to "be where I'm at."

Second step is deciding what to build. Having spent time in & with various sizes of motorhomes, vans, box trucks, and a 72-passenger school bus, I knew van-sized was my thing. But they're tight for two and even solo you live more "out" of them that "in" them. The best little housetruck I had was Blue Moon, a '72 Ford "Parcel van" I converted and lived in for 2000 and 2001. It was just about perfect, and if it hadn't spent most of its life back East and the rot was fixable, I'd be doing that right now. Alas, its road days are over and it sleeps down a quiet path out here at the nest to become a temple or tiny guest cabin at some point.

I knew I wanted something strong; taking to the roads in anything else in these times of distracted cell-phone yapping soccer moms and frazzled commuters is like playing highway roulette. Most folks aren't bad, they don't mean anything malicious... but you don't mean anything to them except as an obstacle if it ever even occurs to them you exist at all. Given that, I want some metal around me and big steel bumpers. I also want a chassis that'll hold the weight of built-in interior & systems without wallowing around or burning up rear axle bearings. It should, despite what I build in, still handle, stop and drive safely.

I knew I wanted something old-school technology-wise: no computers, no excess optional gadgetry to break and malfunction and cause other problems. No unnecessary mechanical clutter. And no rust! In 2009 it's getting really hard to find anything easy to work on as the 70s and early 80s recedes farther back into history. Even here where cars don't rot. To narrow it down, I decided it would be a box van or a step van. In looking at both over the years, it also made sense to buy something that wasn't beat to death mechanically AND was something you can get parts for. Those old International Metros are cool and stuff like that is around, but if you need a steering box what the hell is it off of? And for what years? That can be the tip of the iceberg on old vehicles built from others' parts. Grummans with Ford engines last made in the early 80s, and... well, which suspension is this if I need shocks? Springs? Kingpins?

I passed on some cool stuff once I started looking, based on what I'd seen over the years. I decided too that I wanted to go Chevrolet. I'm a Mopar guy at heart and I do love those old Ford Econolines, but my local mechanic is a Chevy guy, Chevy parts are a dime a dozen, you can find a 350 anywhere on the continent in about 5 minutes if you need one, and I'm going for overall trouble-freeness and cheap, easy fixes when it DOES break (as they all do). I looked at & drove exactly 2 vehicles this time around. In briefly testing the "newer" waters since the old stuff is hard to find (darn near impossible up in the rust belts) I looked at an early '90s Chevy cube van, 1-ton, van front end with a 14-foot box. It had 300,000 miles on the chassis, supposedly a rebuilt drivetrain, and was reasonably clean. It drove like a truck with 300K on it and there was no paper trail for these "new" parts. Obviously it had been fixed, or it wouldn't be running at 300K. But as to what & when the fixes & rebuilds were, who knows? So that reinforced that if I'm going to get something that needs work, as they all will, it should be something without computers and little plastic sensors that fail and a bunch of wires & hoses going to mystery magic dingus boxes through brittle long-past-service-life connectors all over the damn hell place.

I decided I wanted a Chevrolet P-series step van. You can find parts in any auto parts store computer system, they've made a bazillion of these things over the years, and all the mechanical parts are right off standard Chevrolet pickups & vans. A 292 straight 6 or small V8 would be fine by me. So here's what I found in Houston - a low mileage, cream puff of an 82 Chevy P-20. Short enough to park anywhere, tall enough to stand in, single rear wheels (cheaper to run, better mileage), 350/automatic. A P10 is light duty like the ice cream trucks; P30s are monstrous, like the tool pusher trucks. They say a P20 is "Three quarter ton" but with the 8-lug wheels and stack of leafs in the rear springs, this one is essentially a one-ton.

I realistically assessed its needs, what I had to spend, took into account the fact one cannot price-shop a relatively low mileage old step van that's exactly what you want size & equipment-wise (you can only compare it to whatever else you may find) and decided to buy.

Vehicle Specs:
1982 Chevrolet P20
350 cubic inch 4-barrel V8
Turbo 400 3-speed automatic
Power brakes
Power steering
Huge gas tank
Goodyear tires on 16" 8-lug wheels

The drive home:
(coming)

Home.

Getting it mechanically sound:
Engine: It ran good, but was down on power. Ran smooth, no smoke. Felt like a carb issue; just ran out of breath and for having a big ol' 4bbl carb on it, I sure wasn't hearing or feeling those secondaries open up. Felt poorly timed too. Step one is to rebuild the old popping-back mis-tweaked Quadrajet. Local Guru of Goodwrench Steve worked his magic on it and that helped. Plugs looked good. While in there, I took note that the factory air cleaner assembly, which only goes on one way, pinches some wires against a brace and hides (and pushes on) the fuel filter. So I replaced it with an open-filter Moroso unit, replaced the plastic filter housing with metal, and replaced the rubber fuel lines - heat & oil do a number on these and a spewing gas leak over a hot engine is no fun. Peace of mind man, peace of mind; take care of it now, leave that worry behind.
Transmission: Shifts great, very strong. It does kind of slam into reverse, I'll research this on the 'net. Whatever issue I have with anything in my world, someone else has already asked about it online. You search enough answers the truth makes itself clear. Can't tell you how much I've learned this way! Bought an auxiliary tranny cooler off ebay and will be installing that. Tightened pan bolts a hair, seeps a little.
Front suspension & steering: The sway bar bushings were gone, so I replaced those - it's a 1-1/4" sway bar! Rest of it was tight.
Exhaust etc.: Had an exhaust leak and a rigged exhaust - poor welds & fitting. A local put in everything behind the Y-pipe, tucked it up nice, and left me room for tanks (tanks alot!) (sorry) - I told him I would be converting this and needed all the space between the frame rails & body sides. This quieted things down to where he could find the front leak coming from an exhaust crossover piece on the intake manifold. This being a Chevy small-block, every car guy in town had some kicking around and they'd all fit. I had a feeling it would be like this tinkering with a Chevy! Steve (hometown backwoods car guy) gave me one off a spare engine he has, and I pulled it, cleaned it, and did the swap over at his place, with his help. Steve restabbed the distributor & retimed it and boy did it come to life! While it was out, I replaced the (stuck) 190 thermostat with a 180.
Brakes: Haul this thing down on a dime & give you 5 cents change. No work needed. They must be huge.
Safety: Need to put in an auxiliary horn button. Replaced wipers with the longest ones that fit, an inch longer than what was on there. Remounted the seat base forward to fit me, I'm shorter than the average Step Van driver.

Working on the step van is really taking care of my longing for a regular van. Most of my adult life I've had vans; I've road tripped, lived in, homesteaded in, and recorded albums in these things. But even in the simple old ones, working on them can be tight. The step van is a simple, square commercial fleet vehicle and so far I can get at everything even better than in a car! I'll show examples as we go.

Even if you just had a barely running rust free truck to start with, you could rebuild something like this stem to stern for 10 grand and get 200,000 miles out of it. There just isn't that much there; simple engine, tranny, and rear end; basic cooling, braking, and electrical system; old-school front suspension & steering. Exhaust. Tires. That's it, no accessories, no computers, no black boxes, no mysteries. It's not like restoring a Cadillac - It's simple, basic and uses common parts. And what on earth are you going to get new like this for 10 grand?! I was lucky to find this for a quarter of that; or about what the prior owners spent on the engine and tires.

Here are some pics:

	Clean, straight, no evidence of damage in, on or under.
	Driver's side
	View in from the rear
	Engine compartment
	Underneath...
	27 year old frame rails you could eat off of.
	God bless Texas! I think back to my early car nut years in the Northeast, breaking bolts, scraping rust, street-signing the floors... no thanks.
	Speedometer/odometer was non-functional, so it really had more than 110K on it. How much? Well, snooping around under the dash, I found this inscription from early '06. This tied in with the relative cleanliness of the engine and evidence of a decal on the valve cover under the black paint; a decal whose shape & very location I had seen before on Goodwrench GM factory replacement engines. Tires are date-coded, and these Goodyears dated to late '06 manufacture. By roughly estimating how much service they'd seen by the tread left (roughly half) and the dates & mileages at hand, I could guess the truck had about 130-140K on it. Probably less. Still a guess, but it makes sense with the chronology of the other clues. Used car forensics. :) The longest speedo cable I have ever seen was pulled out (and pulled out, and pulled out...) and ordered from C&Js, my local parts place. Used to be "Breedlove's" 'til Mr. Breedlove retired a few years back. Most folks still call it that. In a small town, this is how you know who has been here for a while. They give directions like "Yeh member where ol' Cawley had his restrint? Out on what used to be Farm Road 8? Well take a left past where the creek used to come through on what was 318."
	Wise Elders are essential association. Having done many hundreds of manifold swaps, Steve helps me with the trickier parts. It has more to do with experience - how to hold it, how to stand, what to look out for, easiest bolt to fit first, what bolts to do last so the linkage brackets go in right... tricks of the trade... than the knowledge part, which is just nuts & bolts really. Now timing with no timing marks? That takes a real mechanic. Steve got it spot on by finding TDC on piston #1 and dialing it in from there based on knowing what literally thousands of small block Chevies sound like & respond like when they're timed right.
	Major work will give you a chance to check out what's inside.Manifolds & accessories are generally swapped from the "old" engine so they're old looking and... well, old. But look at the access! In a lesser van the engine is up under the dash and you're contorting around the seats.
	Here's the culprit - a rusted manifold exhaust crossover / carb heat line plate area. Can't remove the plate or weld it up properly, and with so many Chevy manifolds around why bother? And who the hell ever heard of an exhaust leak out of the intake?!
	This confirms the recent engine. Believe it or not, that is a clean engine! Usually this area is caked & scorched on a well used engine. The black here is just used engine oil. Nice!
	Finished up with the older (it fit & everything hooked in, by '82 nothing much had changed from the 70s) orange intake I pulled off of one of Steve's spare Chevy small blocks (I told you, these things are everywhere) It wouldn't shift during the test drive; there's that one little vacuum hose going down to the solenoid on the transmission. If you live in an area where rubber dry rots from heat, the ends of your little underhood hoses have it even harder... and they GET hard, and the ends crack, so they look like they're hooked up and doing something, but they're really just sucking air and causing problems. Much like your average politician. Cheap, easy fix and now it's done & shifting great. This is the type of thing, by the way, those tranny shops that aren't totally honest would talk you into a new trans over. And fix the hose for a dollar. And hand you a bill for two grand. I cut an inch off & slipped it back on.
	Running like a top! Shakedown cruise was a 200-mile overnighter down to I-10, over to Kerrville and back up through the Hill Country - Fredericksburg, Johnson City, beautiful 2-lanes through rural areas. The fun factor outweighs how noisy these are - imagine sticking your head in an empty 55-gal. drum and having sadists beat it with tree limbs and rocks; that's what a rough patch of road sounds like. The interior will take care of that. Handles & drives great - mileage a bit worse than expected but a lot of that is me learning how it likes to be driven, seeing what it'd do on the highway, getting used to the feel of the pedal for smooth starts, etc. Plus I'll do some tweaking and fit an air dam; we'll see. I'm sure it'll improve a bit.
	Informally nicknamed "Budgie"...
	The end... of part 1!

Part two: layout, collecting parts & interior prep!