WonderVan Adventures

I will give more equipment details later but I think it is time for a video tour. We took the van out on it’s maiden voyage the first Saturday of November, 2 months after taking delivery of our WonderVan. We headed to  Joseph Grant Park  in San Jose. I will do a review on the campground in the next post.  Here is a video of our van in progress plus a bonus video of our Blackstone in action. Here’s a quick video of Dennis cooking in action...

As I wrote in the previous post, there are two “drawers”. One is an actual drawer and the other is a access hatch/counter extension.  Dennis is a pro with the pocket hole jig. Not sure what we would do with out it.  In addition to building the drawers, he also built the side cabinet for the back. We are using narrow cabinet pullouts for organization and ease for retrieving things from the back. Here he is in action.  This day the smoke was pretty bad in the air so we are all wearing masks. Before installing any more items, we are screwing the structure down to the metal floor. The vacuum serves as a way to prevent metal shavings from going everywhere. This structure is going no where. The drawer works and locks in place.  Here is the back of the van so far. Cooler on the left, drawer (pulled out) in the middle and cabinet on the right. It’s coming together.

So it is time to start building. There as been a lot of discussing and planning and at some point you just got to build and problem solve along the way. This is our official pandemic project and Dennis definitely needs a project. He has pretty much finished every home improvement project we had. Dennis is a really good woodworker and with a a chop saw, our neighbor’s table saw and a pocket hole jig we are ready to start.  We started with the outside structure.  Each framing side has to take into account the 4.5 degree angle of the floor.  The two sides are braced together near the front seats. With these three sides in place it is time to scrape off all of the contact paper.  Now we have a very shiny floor!  Next the framing for the pull out elements needed to be built.  There are two pullouts.  The first pullout is on a 48” full extension. This is part serves two purposes.  The first it is a hatch to access the storage area below. The second will...

We finalized the design. Our original plan was to install a built in fridge drawer but we found an electric cooler the will just fit in our tight space. We ordered a  36L KUPPET portable cooler.  Because we need the mattress to be as long as possible, the cooler can’t be too deep.  This model doesn’t have handles that extend from the sides and that makes it fit in a tighter space. It is capable of freezing temperatures but does not have zones so ice cubes are likely not in our future.  The cooler will be run off of an battery power bank/generator called the  Eco Flow Delta 1300 Portable Power Station.  Because of the size of our van and the fact that the main accessory we are running is the cooler, we felt we did not need a larger more complicated power system.  The size is small but it packs a lot of power. Living in Northern California, rolling power outages during fire season has become common. It’s nice to know we could use it in a pinch ...

Measuring has been completed. As a reminder, this van is built on a Dodge Caravan platform. It is a classic minivan with no rear seats with remaining details like cup holders in the molded sides and slots where seatbelts would have gone. This model came in a variety of forms, many with solid panels where we have windows. We were definitely looking for one that was more minivan-like than cargo van. Dennis really wanted operating rear windows for ventilation.  There is a metal platform that has been screwed over the dips and unevenness of the van floor. The floor is covered in a something similar to contact paper.  It is pretty scratched up so it will have to go. One of the cool things that this van has are storage hatches in the floor. Storage is everything and we will want to be able to access these spaces.   So with a pen, paper and a measuring tape, I measured everything. One of the trickiest issues this van brings is the floor is on a 4.5 degree angle. This angle will ...