The Van’s Done (mostly).

The Van.

Well, the van is mechanically ready to travel. It has 5 new BFG KO2 tires on it, new springs, new steering box, a working throttle body fuel injection, new front brakes and all new ignition parts.
The only thing left to do is to give it a grease job. I will do that next week.

Preparing for the Continental Divide

The last couple of days we have been gathering stuff for the Continental Divide trip.

I picked up a water filter at REI. We will carry 9 gallons of water with us in the van but I figured that a water filter/pump would be a good thing to have along.
I used to carry one it the van but couldn’t find it. Now that I bought a new one the old one will probably show up. I hope so as it would be nice to have two.

New Mosquito Netting.

Back in 2003 Patti and I drove the van to Alaska. We lived in the van for three months up there.
One of the things that made it possible for us to survive in the van in Alaska in the summer was a mosquito netting that I rigged over the bunks.

While preparing for this up coming trip on the Continental Divide, I felt that the mosquitos in the Rocky’s are no less plentiful than the ones in Alaska so some mosquito netting would be a good thing to have.
Again I looked through all my stuff for the old mosquito netting that I took to Alaska and again I came up empty. I know I have it some where.  

I ordered some mosquito netting from Walmart and it arrived Thursday.

Friday morning, I installed the mosquito netting.
I had to put a zipper in the netting so we can get into bed easily. Especially the top bunk.
I used hot glue to attach the netting to the zipper

The old tie points that I used in Alaska were still in place so all I had to do was to tie the corners up and make a couple slits in the back to allow for the top bunk wall mount.

That should keep us safe from the mosquitos while we sleep.

Head Liner.

The roof over the cab of the van is steel  and gets real hot so I needed a head liner of some kind . I decided to glue a piece of carpet to the ceiling in the hope that that will cut down on the heat and noise.

I cut out a piece of the same carpet that I used on the floor of the van to fit the roof of the cab. I drew a line across the center of the roof and another line across the center of the carpet. Then I sprayed 3M 77 contact cement on both surfaces. I waited a while and then Patti and I installed the carpet on the roof. Boy, is that stuff sticky. It was pretty interesting trying to get that piece of carper in the right place. We lined the two lines up as much as possible and tried to smooth the carpet out.
Our alignment was a little off and a couple times the carpet got stuck together or stuck to the wrong spot but after a while we got it put in.

Okay, that is about it for now.