After who knows how long, they were starting to fall apart. Stepping in certain places made it feel like you were going to step right through.
The van had lived in Indiana for many years, and the snow and salt had taken its toll on the mounting gear. And, honestly, I found the running boards tacky and a little ugly. We figured we could do better.
Other than the few brackets under the van holding them on, they just bolted to the “mud flaps”. I kinda liked the look of the flaps, so I just left them in place. The can of Raid is because the driveway was covered in ants and I didn’t want to die. Sorry, ants, this is my driveway.
Although I’m noticing a trend of using parts from truck and Jeep companies on my van…
Anyway! We decided to go with their Nerf-style step system for the Ford Econoline. Since the van bodies are mostly identical across the 150, 250, and 350 models, N-FAB is able to support all of them. However, there were quite a lot of different configurations of the vans, including longer and shorter versions, and some revisions throughout this body generation, so, in our case, the step is a little short-looking.
You do have some flexibility on bolting the step to the van, but not a ton. As you can see, centering it between the wheels would’ve resulted in the steps being in an odd place. But this still looks way better than the crappy running boards! And with the mud flaps it kind of has a little bit of a mad max vibe, especially with the steel wheels.
I used two jacks to get the step system up into place and then crawled under the van to take measurements and make marks.
Yes, just like building a race car, you need to drill holes. I spent a LOT of time measuring for where these holes would go. N-FAB uses carriage bolts instead of a bolt and a nut, so you don’t have a lot of wiggle room when it comes to getting the holes right. Measure a lot, measure again, and then get to drilling.
Remember, kids, use pilot holes.
After the holes are drilled, it’s quick work to bolt the steps on to the vehicle.
Aesthetically this is nice. And I can see how trying to get a wrench or something in there would be a little bit frustrating.
Man that looks good! You can see that Van Diesel has been busy doing diesel-y things, like getting muddy. One disadvantage of the van is that it’s 2WD/RWD with an open differential. It’s prone to getting stuck in slippery/yucky conditions. Maybe a 4WD conversion? No that’s crazy…
Anyway, now we can easily get in and out of the van and not worry about dying. Because who wants to die at the race track getting into the support vehicle? That would be embarrassing. My race car is busy trying to kill me, I don’t need the support vehicle to do it.
So now that we can see both our vehicle’s health and where we are going, and now that we can easily get in and out, wouldn’t it be nice if it were easy to hook up to the trailer?
Stay tuned, and we’ll be towtally ready in the next segment.
14 comments
@EricJacobs, my E450 is a gas V10. I don’t know if they have a tune for your powerstroke diesel, but I wrote about it in https://motoiq.com/tow-vehicle-5-star-tuning-update/ .
@EricJacobs, my E450 is a gas V10. I don’t know if they have a tune for your powerstroke diesel, but I wrote about it in https://motoiq.com/tow-vehicle-5-star-tuning-update/ .
@EricJacobs, my E450 is a gas V10. I don’t know if they have a tune for your powerstroke diesel, but I wrote about it in https://motoiq.com/tow-vehicle-5-star-tuning-update/ .
@EricJacobs, my E450 is a gas V10. I don’t know if they have a tune for your powerstroke diesel, but I wrote about it in https://motoiq.com/tow-vehicle-5-star-tuning-update/ .
@EricJacobs, my E450 is a gas V10. I don’t know if they have a tune for your powerstroke diesel, but I wrote about it in https://motoiq.com/tow-vehicle-5-star-tuning-update/ .
@EricJacobs, my E450 is a gas V10. I don’t know if they have a tune for your powerstroke diesel, but I wrote about it in https://motoiq.com/tow-vehicle-5-star-tuning-update/ .
@EricJacobs, my E450 is a gas V10. I don’t know if they have a tune for your powerstroke diesel, but I wrote about it in https://motoiq.com/tow-vehicle-5-star-tuning-update/ .
@EricJacobs, my E450 is a gas V10. I don’t know if they have a tune for your powerstroke diesel, but I wrote about it in https://motoiq.com/tow-vehicle-5-star-tuning-update/ .
@EricJacobs, my E450 is a gas V10. I don’t know if they have a tune for your powerstroke diesel, but I wrote about it in https://motoiq.com/tow-vehicle-5-star-tuning-update/ .
@EricJacobs, my E450 is a gas V10. I don’t know if they have a tune for your powerstroke diesel, but I wrote about it in https://motoiq.com/tow-vehicle-5-star-tuning-update/ .
@EricJacobs, my E450 is a gas V10. I don’t know if they have a tune for your powerstroke diesel, but I wrote about it in https://motoiq.com/tow-vehicle-5-star-tuning-update/ .
@EricJacobs, my E450 is a gas V10. I don’t know if they have a tune for your powerstroke diesel, but I wrote about it in https://motoiq.com/tow-vehicle-5-star-tuning-update/ .
@EricJacobs, my E450 is a gas V10. I don’t know if they have a tune for your powerstroke diesel, but I wrote about it in https://motoiq.com/tow-vehicle-5-star-tuning-update/ .
@EricJacobs, my E450 is a gas V10. I don’t know if they have a tune for your powerstroke diesel, but I wrote about it in https://motoiq.com/tow-vehicle-5-star-tuning-update/ .