I did a little research and found a steering stabilizer that comes standard on the Ford Van Ambulances but not the regular E series vans.
Archive for the ‘Do it Yourself’ Category
King of the Hammers 2012 Race Results
Posted by Mike on February 12th, 2012
Erik Miller. King of the Hammers 2012 Winner in Car # 4421
KOH 2012 Preparation
Posted by Mike on January 24th, 2012
Not a very exciting post but I changed the oil and bolted on a new class 4 hitch to the Van today. The oil = Mobile Synthetic 5w-40. The rear hitch will support the new KLR 650 dual purpose bike I just purchased to get me into places the van won’t fit. Pictures coming soon. [...]
39 Days till King of the Hammers 2012
Posted by Mike on January 2nd, 2012
39 Days till King of the Hammers 2011
SHTF – Staying Clean Long After a Disaster.
Posted by Mike on April 17th, 2011
That got me thinking. What if I could make soap in the wild? Then I could truly leave civilization behind, and not worry about using up that last sliver of soap I’d brought along, and needing to cut my adventure short in order to get clean. I could just make more!!
Lucas Oil | King of the Hammers 2011
Posted by Mike on February 22nd, 2011
Photos of Car 4478 Lucas Oil shot at Chocolate Thunder on February 11th
Van Worship?
Posted by Mike on December 20th, 2010
its handling is only fair, it gets lousy fuel mileage and very few people find vans beautiful
Solar Van visits Florida
Posted by Mike on December 19th, 2010
My family and I just wrapped up about a week and a half of travel time and another 2000 miles on the new 4.2 van engine
Honey, I shrunk the roof rack.
Posted by Mike on December 5th, 2010
A new roof rack for the solar panels on the van.
The squeak is dead, holding my breath….
Posted by Mike on December 3rd, 2010
This is just a reminder to myself that sometimes throwing parts at a problem is unnecessary.
Solar Van – A journey across America.
Posted by Mike on November 22nd, 2010
This article is about a cross country trip from Rehoboth Beach Delaware to Moab Utah and back. Despite the title of this article the “Solar Van” engine does not actually run on solar energy, it still requires gasoline to make it move from one place to another. Once there however the Sun provides all the [...]
Posted in Solar, Solar Van 
Tags: mobile solar, solar panels, solar van, solar-installation 
Comments OffOut West Roadtrip
Posted by Mike on October 29th, 2010
I picked up my good friend Jeremy in the van yesterday and we’re now headed west on a roadtrip. My final destination is Utah but we’ll hit Denver first. Follow our adventures on Twitter if you want @SolaRolla.
House Cleaning…. Trying to prep the van for the trip.
Posted by Mike on October 20th, 2010
Just a week and a half till the trip to Colorado and I’ve got a ton of work to do. Yesterday, although the tires on the van had almost 90% of their tread left dry rot had started to nibble at the sidewalls. Not wishing to have them leave me stranded in the boondocks I [...]
The 64 Dollar Question
Posted by Mike on July 13th, 2010
What do the numbers on the transmission mean? This is a 1997 4R70W RWD transmission.
Slow Bumber Progress
Posted by Mike on July 12th, 2010
I’ll be wrapping the bumper around the rear of the van all the way to the end of the rear fender. On the right side I’ll probably drill a 3″ hole for the exhaust to exit and mount the bottom of a heavy duty ladder. On the left I’ll add a swinging arm to hold [...]
Trying out POR15 Rust Preventive Paint
Posted by Mike on June 28th, 2010
My Dana 60 front axle was pretty rusty before I spent two days working on it with a grinder. To keep this from happening again I’m trying out POR15 Rust Preventative Paint which is a four step process. If I’m happy with the results I’ll do the entire van frame as well as any parts [...]
Junk Yard Dana 60 Axle Rebuild
Posted by Mike on June 27th, 2010
After a recent trip to Moab Utah with my father I decided to turn my non-running 1997 ford work van into a 4×4. After a good deal of research on the web I decided upon using a Dana 60 Axle up front. The Web told me I needed to locate a late 90′s – early [...]
Pulling the engine from a 1997 Ford E250 Van
Posted by Mike on June 27th, 2010
“Using the hoist the regular way would not give me enough room to lift the engine out of the bay. To make it work I ran the hoist chain over the top of the hoist rather than under it. This gave me at least three additional inches of lift.”
Aluminum engine parts clean up easily
Posted by Mike on June 27th, 2010
Here’s a before and after of shot of the bracket that holds my power steering pump. 120,000 miles on the engine and two years of sitting in the yard had left all of my aluminum parts in pretty nasty condition. I’m a bit of a clean freak and since I’m rebuilding the entire engine I [...]
A big thanks to Survivalblog.com for all the traffic!
Posted by Mike on April 15th, 2011
I was just looking at my web statistics from Google Analytics and noticed a huge spike in traffic. A quick check and I found that the traffic was due to a mention of my site on SurvivalBlog.com I did not set out to create a survival site but I guess you could take a lot [...]
