Storage
space is crucial in a camper van, but very hard to design in without
losing head space or valuable room to move around. So where to store the large windshield cover and the thick window foam covers that will be used in winter to slow down heat loss ?
Luckily, the High Roof Ford Transit model presents a massive 'forehead' above the cabin.
A relatively tiny shelf occupies the space, but a huge volume is left
unused. Now, let's fix that, should be easy 💪 Oh well... fast forward a
couple of months 😂:
It took a while to build and paint it, but the result is well worth it. We now have a cavernous storage box that does not impinge on the living space, and people can still freely move in and out of the cabin without contortions.
The 1st step was to remove the top of the center console on the shelf.
Sliding the 2 storage bins out, removing a few screws and popping the
plastic rivets with a knife + car trim removal tool did the trick:
It was also a good time to install a bundle of LAN
& power cables from the electrical
panel to the dashboard, for who-knows-what use later. After removing the headliner's side handle and the A pillar's handle &
cover, the wires could be pulled through. Warning: do not to interfere in any way with the operation of the curtain airbag !
Removing a few more screws loosened the headliner. Sound dampening tiles and insulation were then put up inside the whale's forehead:
Also
visible in the pic above is the bottom of the cabinet. A cardboard
template was first created to match the shelf's curves, and countless
grinding rounds made the 3 vertical boards fit snuggly inside the
headliner. The angled panel could then be attached:
From there a template was scribed against the face of the headliner, and the front face was cut and attached. What a beauty 😙
As
can be seen on the very 1st pic, the top of the cabinet is held by 4
bolts aligned with rivet nuts inserted in the ceiling rib. Its vertical
plane is about 4" forward of the headliner's front, though, so an
additional strip was used to connect to the rest of the cabinet. And
here it is, the most bizarre cabinet piece I have ever built:
1 month of priming / sanding / painting / lining with felt later...
Once secured in place, to close the space between the shelf's lip and the bottom of the cabinet,
grey color matching weather strips were installed along the lip. Screws
were then driven from inside the cabinet, all along the lip where a
plastic channel provides grip for the screws without poking through the
shelf's bottom.
And there we have it, a monstrously cavernous piece of furniture that will eat up your limbs whole 😂
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