An overview of how we built our Ford Transit Van with 80/20
Wes Vance
July 31, 2024
We posted a picture on Reddit and got a ton of question on building the van with 80/20, so we wanted to show how we used it in our van!
The diablo non ferrous blade is expensive, but can cut through the 80/20. I had a blowback which broke my general purpose blade (You can see the missing teeth).
After the blowback, I started excessively clamping everything down...
Our rough initial blueprints to follow
We purchased our 80/20 from 8020.net
Cut and laid the initial layout down, nothing is bolted down or together at this point
Using the cross nuts, I was able to attach an 80/20 bar across the ceiling. This is strong enough to support 3 people handing on it! I'll attach all the vertical pillars back to this point.
Crossnuts were crucial to affixing the 80/20 to the vans body
Flat ceiling in our bathroom. This joint is super strong, it can easily support my weight.
How to easily join 80/20 not at a right 90 degree angle. It requires a custom 2" right angle bracket to be fabricated
We laid the 80/20 down on the subfloor, then build the floor around this!
We used a 'Lug Nut' to attach the frame to the sub-floor. We used a spacer to avoid the screw from penetrating the vans metal floor.
I made a bunch of custom brackets, its way cheaper but takes a ton of time to make them just right.
Comparison of the 1.5" from 80/20 vs the 2" brackets I built
We also used the 80/20 for our roof-rack! Our solar panels (and maybe rooftop deck) will attach to these bars
We wanted to build a frame to put our fridge slide on so our fridge could slide in and out
Fridge on the slide, attached to the 80/20. We had JUST enough room to make it work under the cabinet.
Cabinet built around fridge & slide, it works great!
70% finished with the frame. It looks easy, but it was a LOT of work.
And today, before installing the lights. Got the frame, floor, and structure all together!
