Curtains!

In far less masculine news, I've been thinking about curtains today. These won't be lacy affairs with pretty pink trim though - no, I've decided I need to make some man-style practical super bomber curtains to improve my van while simultaneously adding much needed color and flair to my currently bland interior. The plan is to get some Warm Window material online and then get some blue fabric from a fabric store. I got this idea from two sites. The Warm Window idea comes from one of my personal favorites the Vanagon for All Seasons Site. You can check them out here. Here is a picture of the ones on their van



The blue idea comes from a new site I found the other day about a couple that has taken a Vanagon all the way from Canada down into Central America. They had this picture on their blog and I liked the look.



Anyway, I figure I'll make some of those to replace the stock ones in there now. Should be sweet.

Weekend Plans

This weekend will be another Vanagon focused affair. My plan is to remove the fridge and rear cabinents as well as clean out and sound dampen the front cab. I've got to remove the camping stuff in order to get the rest of the carpet out so I can prep for the new stuff/get the sound proofing in place. This will be my first time behind the dreaded camping equipment and I'm already having rust nightmares. I've got seam rust bubbling under the paint on the driver's side so I'm expecting to be horrified at what I find behind the stove/fridge. The thing that is scarrier than the seam rust is that I'm not sure what I'm going to do about it exactly. I've read everything on the Samba about rust and its still unclear to me what the most practical approach is to dealing with it.

What I know at this point is that the only real way to fix seam rust is to replace the entire panel. If you are lucky then you only have to replace the rocker panel. The problem is that I do not have a shop and I cannot weld. It's probably worth my time to at least get some estimates from a couple of reputable vanagon focused shops in the area but I don't think I can spend much on this job. Then again, if the van is just going to rust away then what is the point of doing all this work on it in the first place.

The smart (read expensive) thing to do would be to get all body work done, all rust ground off, treatment put in place, and a nice paint job. Somehow this would become the dumb option if brought up to my wife. She would say that this is just a fun van, who cares if it has rust. Sadly we would both be correct, only her correctness would keep us from spending several thousand dollars. It would also make serious modifications like Suburu engines kind of pointless. Nobody ever said Vanagon ownership was all rainbows and unicorns.

So I'm going to look at this as the first skirmish of the rust war. I'll remove the camping equipment and I'll sand/grind what I can out of the interior. Then I'll get myself a POR-15 starter kit and apply it to the entire area being sure to photograph extensively. I'll then forget what I saw, finish removing my carpet, and finish installing the sound deadening stuff. I've still got to get my replacement carpet but once I get that then I'll put my camper back together and not think about that rust again until next spring. Then I'll have a year to save up and let the situation digest at which point I'll make a decision to either just leave it be and drive this van into the ground or to fight it. Plus you never know, I might just learn to weld/get a garage to work in during that time. I do think the body stuff is "cool" and I've certainly got a good project perfect to learn on.

More Interior Thoughts

Today I'm leaning towards getting new carpet for the interior. I've been studying the stuff that I pulled out and it is really really gross. I've done a bit of spot cleaning on it and so far I'm not impressed. Maybe 24 years is enough service for one set of carpet. The bad part about new carpet is that I have to decide what color to get. Deciding colors where there honestly aren't all that many great choices to choose from is hard. I suppose I could just go to a carpet store and find something that I actually like and then use my existing carpets to use as a guide for cutting the new stuff. Wow, that is actually not that bad of an idea. I bet I would save a ton too. There really isn't anything special about that carpet. Maybe I could find some super durable automotive type carpet as well. I think I'm going to have to look into that further.

In other news, I'm thinking it might be a bad idea to use vinyl on the rear bench seat and engine cushion. Since that is a bed and since my dog often sleeps there it seems really likely that he'll eventually puncture that vinyl and that will make me sad. So when I do get it recovered I'm going to go with a nylon tweed. It seems about as durable/puncture proof as possible and isn't quite as bad with hair as something like velour. It would have looked REALLY slick to use that off-white and brown vinyl on the bed but it just doesn't seem practical. My plan is to go with a vivid blue kind of a color. I think it will look nice enough against the brown, black, and cream all over the rest of the van and I'll finally get some color. To tie things in a bit more I'll get the armrest covered in the brown vinyl. After that I'm thinking I'll buy some of that same tweed fabric from the Sew Fine guys and make a new set of curtains. Thanks to the Vanagon for All Seasons site, I'm also going to put some insulation material on the back side of the curtains to help regulate cabin temps.

Other than that I have just been thinking of what to do with the panels. My ideal would be to have them all done in the off-white and brown vinyl that I'm getting the front seats done in. Its a bit pricey to have Sew Fine do that for me so I'm going to give it a try myself. I'd like to get a padded look so my plan is to use the old panels as patterns to cut new ones out of masonite or whatever is thin and moisture resistant. Then I'll jigsaw out the pattern and use the tricks I learn from looking at the driver and passenger door panels to cut vinyl to fit my new panels. I may also try adding a bit of foam to the panel surface to give it a padded look and then spray mount it all together with the mounting snaps already inside of the panel. If it looks awesome then I'll do the rest of the panels in the van. I may also try to do a simple stripe in the panel so I can carry that off-white stripe from the front bucket seats all the way around the van. Hopefully it will look slick.

I Finally Did It

I actually placed my order for front seat covers to SewFine. It took months but I finally settled on a plan. Thanks to my wife I decided on brown backs and sides with an off white stripe down the center of each seat. I'm doing an all vinyl setup for ease of cleaning and durability. I am concerned about what my dog is going to do to the seats but decided in the long run that the vinyl was the better option. There is certainly a chance that my dog could puncture the seat with his claws so I'm just going to make a little pillow to keep in the passenger seat whenever he is in the car. I'm not sure how long that will actually last but I was thinking that having the ability to just take out the cushion and wash it and then wipe down the seat is a lot better than dog hair and dirt encrusted tweed.

By the way I really have liked dealing with Sew Fine. It is strange to have to actually call a person to place an order but their phone folks are really nice and great at answering questions. Plus the guy told me that I should be able to get them in plenty of time to get them installed for our first big camping trip of the year which is the first weekend in May. Now I'm excited.

Interior Removed!

After finishing the sound deadening/insulation on my passenger door I decided to go ahead and do the entire front of the van. I ripped out all of the carpet in the front and removed the hardware on the driver's side door. Right now things are a pretty huge mess but I'm really excited to report no signs of rust in the front cab of the van! I was really worried that I'd be greeted by massive rust when I ripped all that old carpet up. It wasn't exactly nice under there but at least it isn't rusty.

Next I'm going to clean everything out and apply the same duct insulation all over the cab. After that I've got a decision to make. I've got to decide if I'm going to replace the carpet or not in the front. At first my plan was to just take the old stuff out and clean it. However, once I saw all that dirty carpet sitting there on the floor, the idea of putting it back in the van wasn't all that appealing. Plus I did rip the carpet in a couple of places while I was taking it out. So now I am considering just replacing it all with new stuff.