Mission Alaska offroad van build episode 13

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]Go for it.

[00:00:02]Oh, yeah.

[00:00:08]Yeah.

[00:00:10]To get ready to paint this, I've got a few more little extra additions that I'm going to do to the frame. I think this front crossmember that we added is going to be very valuable, and I want to make sure it doesn't come off of there. So, what we did last time in the last video is we made these holes that we're going to use for a plate that's going to bolt behind our winch bumper because I want to make this winch bumper nice and stout on the back side there. And to make sure that there's no cracks that form in this crossmember over time, we've got these little fish plates that Nick just got done making so that I can weld on here.

[00:00:47]Whoa, don't drop it. So, we're going to put on a couple of fish plates. We're going to stiffen things up just a little bit. And then we're going to do one more crossmember that's going to go between the uh the engine mounts. So, we drilled an extra hole here. We're going to put a bolt in there or sorry, we're going to weld a nut in there and then we'll sandwich like a plate over. It'll make sense in the future, but right now we're just prepping for that because I think it's going to be very, very valuable to have one final crossmember that unbolts right underneath where the engine mounts to both sides of that frame. Front frame horns like the ones in this van flex a ton. And because it's going to be flexing and moving and we're anchoring it to something that's very solid and rigid, we need lots of inches of weld to make sure that that load can be spread out and that the parts that we're bolting and welding on here have the ability to reduce that flex without getting a bunch of cracks around our weld.

[00:01:48]I need to install these two guys. This is a threaded washer from Barnes four-wheel drive. And in my Samurai, I put these everywhere. They make awesome grounds if you're doing any chassis work at all. So, I pre-welded them back here.

[00:02:02]One, two. Those are going to go to the engine to make sure the engine is good and grounded. Um, this one is going to go right here. This is the last one to weld. And the reason I'm doing this one is so that we can have a nice short lead from our winch. So, the ground from the winch instead of going all the way to the battery is going to ground to the chassis right here. I like to do daisy chain grounds. Um, I don't know if this is a common thing, but it is for me. I don't like to just go A to B. I like to go A B C minimum. So, I want to have it mount to three bolts for one ground. So, we'll probably daisy chain from here to here and then from here, maybe to a beefy part of the body somewhere. I don't know yet. But the whole concept is if one starts to loosen up, you'll never even really know because you'll everything is so well grounded that you just don't have an interruption or a problem. But another benefit of these is there's a lot of thread that's pretty deep. So once we ground this, it's not going to come out. This is going to be a really good ground that we don't have to be delicate with cuz it's not just like a threaded part of the frame that's 3/16 thick. You know, this is probably a little maybe about/ inch of thread. So, we'll be able to really get some bite on there. Anyway, this goes without saying.

[00:03:14]This is a place for us to mount a shackle. And this is very important. We need to have a recovery point that is not on the bumper, that's not on our crossmember, um, and is somewhere on a very solid piece of frame. And the reason I want to do that is that this crumple zone up here scares me. It scares me because I don't want to get rid of it, but I know that this is going to be a problem if we don't do something to limp it along and make it stronger.

[00:03:41]So, for that reason, you can see where I extended my fish plates back here. This is going to stiffen this up a little bit while still allowing it to crumple, especially if it was hit like in a corner or something like that. It's still going to be able to crumple, but I don't want this to mess up these front frame horns and get them all wonky, which is absolutely possible. So, we have three different ways we're going to combat that. One is these fish plates. Two, I'm going to mount um an extra mount for the bumper uh into this crossmember. It's going to make that bumper to crossmember section spaced out. It's going to be like a ladder style, so it's going to be a really strong connection point. It's going to make this harder to move back and forth. It's going to be good. But number three is we need to have a second recovery location that is behind this crumple zone. And so my looking around here, this side would be okay, but I don't like the shape uh of some of the the sections of this side of the frame rail. This side is beefy. And so what I'm thinking is right on the other side of the steering box, I'm going to add a plate. And then I'm going to weld this to the plate and make it a very, very strong connection. And the reason that this is going to help the front stay alive is that if I ever need need to get pulled out with a strap or anything like that, I connect it to this, not to the bumper. And if I'm going to do very heavy pulls, because we're have a 15k winch up here, uh I'm even if it's just me pulling myself out, but I'm really high centered, I'm going to probably use a snatch block and I'm going to split the difference of load because if we run our winch line out to a pulley and we come back, if we hook it in front of this crumple zone area, we're not really doing oursel any favors. Yeah, we're increasing the winch rating, but we're not increasing the strength of where it's mounted to. So, if I mount this back here on a more solid section of frame that's behind this crumple zone, then it's going to make it to where I can split the difference uh of load between the section that is in front of our crumple zone and the section that is behind.

[00:05:50]You want to talk about tedious. These little details certainly are tedious for a lot of people, but these little details can make or break a build. And so I I spend a lot of time thinking about these different aspects of how I'm going to use whatever it is that I'm going to build. So now that we have all this burned in and we're ready to move to the next phase of this, um we're we're ready for paint. And what's cool is that once we get this all cleaned up, we're going to be able to fill the inside frame rails with these weird little nozzles that I found on Amazon.

[00:06:19]>> Go for it.

[00:06:21]>> Oh yeah. So, these are nozzle extensions that I will add in like an Amazon shopping cart. Uh, that's like as a part of this video so that you can go and find them yourself. I want to say it was like $8 for five of these nozzle extensions. and for hosing down the inside of an axle truss, for hosing down the inside of a frame rail like you're seeing here. Anywhere that you need lots of coverage, and it doesn't matter what it looks like, uh this is a perfect solution in my opinion because it's going to just pile up tons and tons of coverage on the inside of this frame rail and then it's going to make it to where once salt and stuff finds its way into these different nooks and crannies, we're covered. At least covered with enough paint to make a difference.

[00:07:13]I don't know if you're going to be able to see that or not cuz I don't have my glasses on so I can't focus. But last night I got some pretty good overspray on my glasses and on this UV cover for my very expensive lens. We have a lot of paint in here and it needs to cure completely before we can put our top coat on. I'm obviously very motivated to get the top coat on here. Uh so the plan today is to kill time. I'm going to have Nick fix the K truck hopefully that uh just stopped working last week. And while he's doing that, I'm going to be working on the engine. And I'm going to I think what I'm going to do is I'm going to open up that door over there.

[00:07:52]We're going to lower this thing down and I'm going to have the fan I'm just going to be changing fan positions all day to make sure that I mean this feels great to the touch. It's definitely feels cured, but we want it to be 100% without a doubt cured. Otherwise, we're going to get a bunch of weird orange peel and our top coat is not going to adhere very well to the primer. So, we want to give this all day. I've got engine stuff to do. We're going to start on that right now.

[00:08:18]I had a commenter tell me that apparently there's a fuse that can blow that's around the battery box. So, I'd start there. The K truck was an easy fix. There was this little like solenoid that goes into the carburetor that whenever they go bad, they will pop the main fuse to everything. And so, Nick pulled that out. We ordered the new part, fired right up. The thing is good to go. My main focus today is getting everything on this engine as complete as I can. like engine transmission transfer case while it's out of the vehicle because I have so much better access and reach. All that to say, because we have a doghouse and whatnot, it is really easy to access stuff in the van, but it's still so much easier to do it out here on this slide around stand that I built. So, I'm going to take care of a couple small connections. We need to bend the uh linkage to our transmission to where the stick is going to come up at a little bit better position for the van. And then I'm going to install a cable shutdown solenoid.

[00:09:37]I don't love the position that I am looking into for this oil bypass filter.

[00:09:43]And so for now, we're going to table this. This is something I still have full access to if I decide to locate it on the engine. This filter is so huge, I can't imagine I'd find a place under the van that it'll fit, but we're just going to see what happens. For now, we're going to cap it off. Then I'm playing around with this intake horn. I don't know if the factory, well, this a factory style, meaning if it goes into the factory position, intake horn is going to fit in this van because of where the firewall firewall is and all that. But I'm still going to get everything prepped so that I can test it out once it goes in there. And then I'm going to move to the drain for our turbo. I got this universal line kit that's all the right size fittings and a couple of adapters. And I was able to piece together a drain for the turbo.

[00:10:42]This is a modern coolant bottle. And this is what came. Well, one just like this came in this van. I bought a brand new one and this is made for the 6 L Ford. I couldn't tell if there was a difference in capacity or whatever else, but because the 6 liter Ford is a diesel, I figured might as well order one that's for the diesel. We're going to use this as a way to update and improve the cooling system of the 59 Cummins uh and be able to purge air out of it very easily. So, what's first off the way this system this is an old school system that's made to just be an in andout out of a radiator and the radiator have a cap. You fill everything through there. You burp burp your you burp your air through there and all that. And that's worked fine. They worked fine for many many decades.

[00:11:25]Modern cooling systems you'll see are a lot more complicated, but they work so much better at cooling when things are really hot and heating when things are really cold. The big problem with these old school systems, two problems. One, it's really hard to purge the air out of them. And two, it's really hard to get them hot in the winter and to keep them cold in the summer. So, usually you're going to have one or the other. And with these Cumins, I can verify they are so cold bloodooded in the winter. They start fine, but you I've ran months without getting to operating temp on many different second gen Cummins that I've owned. So, this is going to help combat that in a few different ways.

[00:12:04]Well, the whole system. Instead of the coolant just flowing through this intake port and then right back out of uh this top port and then going into the radiator, we're going to use the factory closed loop radiator that came in this van. And I am going to put this special fitting right here that is going to make it to where we have a purge valve that's going to not only purge the air out into our water bottle, but it's going to help distribute the coolant temperature a lot more evenly in the engine. 100% of our coolant flows through here. It comes into this low this low pressure port. It goes through the impeller of our water pump. It gets charged into our system.

[00:12:44]It flows into the block. It flows into the head and then flows out of the head.

[00:12:48]The problem with this design is that it has a tendency to just keep the front three or four cylinders cool and all the coolant stay up here. So, because I took off one of these plugs back here and we're going to force a certain a small amount, but we're going to force a certain amount of coolant to flow out of the top of the head and the back of the engine. It's going to allow this to cool. It's going to allow it to heat and cool in a much more uniform way. Not to mention the fact that it's going to be able to collect air bubbles very easily up here and purge all the air out of the system. Now, if you watched a previous video, you saw me address this thing.

[00:13:25]So, my intention here is that this is going to allow me to have essentially two cooling systems. And I'm trying to mirror what a lot of modern cooling how a lot of modern cooling systems work.

[00:13:36]I'm telling you, if you look at modern cooling systems, there's pipe and tube that go everywhere. But when you actually start to walk through why they do it in the way they do it, it's genius and they work so much better. So, we're going to have a smaller radiator than what came in this Dodge pickup that we pulled um this engine out of, but it's still going to be, in my opinion, it's still going to be large enough to keep this cool in normal conditions. So what we're going to do or so what I did rather is I put a 190°ree thermostat in here and that is going to be our normal op engine operating temperature. I would have loved to have gone hotter but I wouldn't have been able to do it two-stage like this. This has a separate thermostat in the back that opens up at like 205 or 203 something like that. I can't remember. I It was the hottest one that I could get at the auto parts store. And what that's going to do is it's going to make it to where in the winter this is going to heat up way better and way faster, which is so important for engine life, for oil life, for all of that. You don't want to be running around at 150 or 160°, which is what my experience has been with these Cumins engines. Um because you're not burning all of your fuel, you're making things dirtier. The the closer to engine temp you can get it, the better for engine longevity you're going to get.

[00:14:53]So, I want this to actually be able to get to operating temperature in the winter. In the summertime, or if it's just an not even necessarily the summer time, but just if there's a moment where I'm towing or it's just a high demand, I'm going up a big hill and things start to get hot because it's a smaller radiator, the secondary uh the secondary thermostat's going to open and it's going to allow this to flow coolant through a secondary radiator, which will then be the full capacity of our cooling system. So, we're going to be running at like 2/3 capacity most of the time and then whenever we need it, we'll open up that other third to we'll still have just as big of a cooling system as we had of the Dodge. It's going to be in two stages. Now, the way that this was originally designed is to flow coolant from back here to right here. because this is designed to just help give you a more uniform flow throughout the block and make it to where it heats and cools more evenly. So having it flow through to right here is makes a lot of sense for us because we're going through an extra cooler. I want to make sure that that coolant is then delivered right back into the engine cuz this way it would bypass the engine. It would go through the radiator. So, it would just have it would just be able to use the hot water from out here to bypass the rest of the system and go to the radiator. But what we're going to do is we're going to take it, we're going to cool it in our secondary radiator. We're going to plug it in right down here, what used to be the heater return, and we're going to now return our heater up here. And the whole point is that if we're going to open this up to try to deliver cold water directly back into the engine, I want to flow it back into this low pressure side instead of having it have to go through the entire system again to get back into the low pressure side. I hope that makes sense. Anyway, it's a little bit of extra plumbing.

[00:16:45]It's still a very simple system and it's like entirely mechanical which is really nice. I do need to get a couple more lines. They don't make I just went to my local hose and fitting place and they don't use this size there and they use I mean I've been able to get some really weird stuff there. So to me that's an indication that we need to upgrade this.

[00:17:05]This is the original line that supplied our turbo with oil. And these fittings are unique enough that if I was on the road and this started to leak, I would have to find this exact OEM line.

[00:17:18]Whereas, if I take these fittings off right here and right here, and I take them into our local place, we'll be able to get those to they're going to adapt to a -6 and then it'll be a very universal -6 line that if it ever had a failure out in the field, I could go to anywhere that makes custom hoses and they'd be able to knock one out for me.

[00:17:34]This is a big moment. It's been what, 7 8 months or something like that that I've been working on this van. And we're finally to the point where we can reassemble all of this stuff. all of these different systems we've been playing with. We've been taking apart.

[00:17:46]We've been rebuilding. And now after a little bit of finetuning and fine details, we're able to slide it underneath the van. We're going to hook everything up. And for the first time, we're going to lift the engine and transmission off of this cradle with them fully secured permanently into the van.

[00:18:09]It's officially a turbo diesel van, dude.

[00:18:12]>> Hell yeah.

[00:18:28]I'm continuing to throw various pieces on the scale just to make sure that once we weigh the whole van, I can figure out how much of that is unsprung, how much of that is sprung. And this is just data that I find interesting. Then I'm moving on to installing the front axle and testing out some of these bump stops.

[00:18:43]The ones that I wanted to use turns out way too soft. So, we went to something a little bit firmer and something a little bit more backbone. And I think these are going to work out really well for the weight of the vehicle. And uh then I take a little break and I help Nick in the back so we can throw all the suspension in this thing. And I want to see it just like not on jack stands. So, these are the Chevy Suburban springs.

[00:19:08]And I mean, they're they're okay.

[00:19:10]They're holding up the weight. I figured the rear of a Suburban would be similar to the rear of this. And I'd say we're not that far off. We don't know how far off we are until we get the front under its own weight. And I have to build that panh hard bar first. Uh then we can see what the ride height's going to be in the front. Then we'll be able to kind of play with the front and the back to see which one needs to change. But right now, I can tell you with having no spare tire, no kids in the back, no water in the tank, none of that, these springs are too soft, which a lot of people said might be the case. I think I got these for like 40 or 50 bucks on uh eBay, so I knew that it was worth giving them a shot. So, the upgrade to these for a lot of guys apparently comes from the H2s. I think the Hummer. Those are supposed to be like a heavy duty spring version of these. So, I will get on eBay and find a set of those that we can try.

[00:20:24]The next item on the agenda is the panh hard bar. And this is something that I don't want to put in until I put the steering box in. It probably doesn't make a difference, but I just I want to see how everything's going to fit in there. So, I'm putting some special fittings in the steering box in order to angle the lines where I want them for the hydro assisting. And then I'm going to figure out exactly how wonky this panh hard bar is going to end up in order to work in this van.

[00:21:10]Heat.

[00:21:30]Heat.

[00:21:45]This is the weirdest track bar I've ever made.

[00:21:51]So, for those of you that are unaware of how how to set up a track bar, as long as from joint to joint, if we measured from joint to joint, as long as the joint to joint measurement on this big goofy bar is the same as the joint to joint measurement on the one that I designed and I've already made sure works, we're going to get the exact same performance.

[00:22:17]The difference could potentially be durability, but I think we're going to be just fine. I mean, this is inch and 3/4 DOM. This is good stuff. But this is just this is so weird. But once I get it built and put in there, we'll we'll fully we're going to fully compress that suspension and I'll we'll we'll see why it's so weird.

[00:23:00]Heat. Heat.

[00:23:16]Heat.

[00:23:19]Heat.

[00:23:44]That is a crazy track bar.

[00:23:50]But check it out. That was first shot. I had to make some adjustments, don't get me wrong, but we were able to make this happen with only one bar. Just our initial test piece actually fits really well. So, we're at full stuff right now. So, there's two different levels of stuff based on the way that I built these bump stops. We have full compression. So, if we're going to be driving fast down a dirt road and we hit a just giant pothole, like some we jump it on accident, something happens that makes it to where we just completely compress the fully the entire front suspension. Those are the bump stops that we're on right now. We are on these ones.

[00:24:36]These ones.

[00:24:37]So whenever we flex from side to side, so if we're on a trail or rock crawling, that's when it's actually going to roll into this other bump stop, which is a hard stop to protect the shocks and limit our uptra.

[00:24:53]As you can see, I don't have this one on, but it's going to strike right there. But either way, you know, at first I was like, I I hate this track bar.

[00:25:05]But but now I think it's kind of badass.

[00:25:07]I've never built a track bar like this.

[00:25:09]I've never even seen a track bar that has to do this many crazy turns and twists. Um, and it's going to look goofy and I'm probably always going to get weird comments about it on the internet the whole time I own this van. But dude, there's just no other way around it.

[00:25:25]Look at where our steering is. I can't move it forward to get in front of the axle. Um I if I move it backward, it just gets worse. We get deeper into the engine. So this is this is where it ends up. So, for the vans that are out there that don't have funky panh hard bars like this, it's because they're not doing everything in their power to make sure that the arc of travel for their panh hard bar matches the arc of travel for their steering. In order for us to optimize our steering angles, we had to make some sacrifices.

[00:26:02]And this is some of those sacrifices.

[00:26:05]What a crazy setup. Now, what's going to get complicated as well is going to be our steering because we've got a huge This is going to go up still quite a bit for our steering arm and that is going to make make it to where we're going to have to bend our steering in a similar fashion.

[00:26:27]It's going to be really interesting to see how it all looks. Um, but I'm confident that we're going to be able to make all this clear. It's just going to look funny going down the trail.

[00:26:47]This massive coilover is the next step.

[00:26:50]This is from Acutune Off-Road. Thank God for companies like them that log weights of different builds that they do. So, they were able to get us ballpark for our spring rates. Um, and we're going to be able to throw these in there in the next video. My plan was to have him in here at the end of this video, and I'd love to tell you I'm out of time. The reality is it's Saturday. I've already burned half of my day out here. I would like to spend the second half of the day with my family. So, I'm going to go do that. Before I go, though, why don't we stare at this van and ugle a little bit and think about how cool it is that we've got I mean, we're officially This van is officially a four-wheel drive van now, right? I mean, I know we don't have everything hooked up, but I would I'd consider it a four-wheel drive van. I'd also consider it a turbo diesel van. Neither system has been tested, but it's all on there. So, it feels like we accomplished some stuff today. It feels like we got a lot of stuff done, which is so exciting. And I love seeing it all come together. All the work we did to trim these inner fender wells in order to truly fit a 40 stuffed. Um, there's just so many little details I'm seeing now that it's like painted and going together. And I hope that those of you who are watching every week are enjoying this as much as I'm enjoying making this stuff. This has been a blast to build.

[00:28:13]And I'm very much looking forward to the next two months as we like finish this thing out and get it out of the shop for the first time and then in dirt for the first time and all that and talk about all the different metrics. How much does it weigh? What kind of fuel economy does it get? uh what are the measurements like you know angles and clearances and all that stuff. It's all stuff that I want to go over and work out and test and maybe put this on boat ramp or something crazy, you know. So, it's a very exciting time in the shop here. I hope you enjoyed the video. We'll see you on the next one.