The 8020 framing for all of the above is all designed together. The bench could be removed without tearing into the fridge cavity - same for the heater. But overall a lot of interdependencies for securely attaching all of this weight to the van. The starting point was the image above in Sketchup - a 3D CAD package.

Below is the rough framing starting to take shape. Added some poplar hardwood blocking in several areas so that fridge mounting screws had somewhere to land. Oversized the blocks just in case the fridge prematurely dies and we have to change to the second brand of fridges that still fits in the same opening.

3D printed some riser feet for the fridge. The existing fridge feet fit inside the top of the 3D part perfectly and then they add another 1" of height to encourage airflow and make access easier for any spills/drips/condensation.

Then sealed the 8020 'box' under the fridge with a bead of silicone on the inside perimeter. If water does drop down, I want it contained and not running under the 8020 to under the shower pan or other places impossible to wipe up. Also insulated the heater ducting as it runs to the back of the van behind the fridge and under the shower pan.

Fridge move in day is always exciting. Starting to feel a bit more like an adventure camper.

Starting to work on trimming out the final Arctic Tern window. You can also see the shelf above the fridge for the microwave/convection oven/air fryer/do everything unit.

XPS pink foam and lower upholstered wall panel coming into the picture. Tons of crazy angles and shaving here and there to align with van walls and warts.

Landau foam mops up lots of sins - and adds a wee bit of insulation.

The little bench seat hides some of the Velit heater, ducting, and the front small electrical panel, starter battery charger. There's an ESP32 mini controlled Noctua 12V fan tucked in there on the left side. When all done, it draws air in around the outside of the heater, its turret heat sink, and out through the fridge cavity.

Final result came out well I think.

Wonderful neighbor across the street is a sewing wizard and the pop of color is fun. You can also see the last minute addition of a dimmable LED strip to the underside of the shelf above the driver and passenger seats.

Tucked a little switch bank on the side of the bench. Switches are for bench lights, overhead shelf led strip, and the onboard air compressor. Easy access while driving with my left hand so I can top off the tank 5 min before arriving at the night's destination. That way tweaking the level with the air bags doesn't cycle the slightly noisy compressor.

Was going to use a piano hinge on the bench seat, but decided to try some perfect fit simple rails instead. This lets me easily tip up the seat for quick access to shoes, the Dyson, etc. I can also just grab the whole seat and lift it off which makes cleaning way easier. And this provides better + faster access to the electronics and the furnace if needed.

Hidden in the shelf above the bench is another ESP32 controlled Noctua 12V fan. This provides better cooling when using the convection or air fryer modes of the oven. I ran it a bunch in various modes and used a heat gun on it to find the hot spots. Added a bit of aluminum tape to keep heat transfer down to the back wall of the cabinet area. The leads and ESP32 box are temporarily hanging out there (found a few times I've had to power cycle the ESP32 manually and having access to the box vs. buried in the wall behind the panel makes that far easier).

Used 1/4" scrap baltic birch plywood chunks for spacers as I cut and installed each board. A few of them were very laborious (measure 53 times and then cut for 30 seconds sort of things).

But the results are pretty stunning. I've read other build threads which claim getting the ceiling done changes the whole feel of the van. I have to agree completely.

Planning the exact location of the puck lighting was a complete PITA. I actually had a google spreadsheet at one point with all the potential interferences, each rib location, where on each rib's furring strip had the overlap I could drill into, etc. Finally arrived at a plan where they could be 20" on center between each light except for the most rear - which isn't visually apparent from the front slider area. The shower forced 2 lights off their alignment line a bit, but at least they didn't end up "halfway" into the shower door. The lights have to be in the center of the 3.5" boards ideally so that added another constraint. And despite the visual 'disguise' I was able to use, there's spots where the curvature of the van itself made things challenging.

And I FINALLY have awesome lighting for the final portion of the build vs. some janky temporary half dozen pucks just shoved in a board up there.

Weight

I'm sure some are thinking "that must be crazy heavy." I weighed a 12" chunk of the 3/8 by 3.5" ash = 5.68 oz. Then used a laser measure to add up the lengths of all the boards = 1817 inches or roughly 151 feet of board. So the ash weighs 53.75 pounds plus maybe 3? pounds of duck cotton cloth.

A 4x8 sheet of 1/4" baltic birch is 25 pounds and I'd need roughly 2 sheets - but you'd also want some marine vinyl or other upholstery on the plywood so I think the two approaches are very close weight wise. And I vastly prefer the finished look of mine.

The screws are very easy to back out (torx head) so taking a few boards down to get at wiring or change things is straightforward.

MVP: XPS Pink Foam

After all the boards were up, the front area by the headliner needed some love. It looked kinda raw with slight vertical alignment issues with some of the boards as they're just sitting there under tension. The perfect 1/4" spacing between them is achieved with sneaky little 1/4" baltic birch chunks with black sharpie on them shoved in between. Plenty of tension to keep those in place without any glue or fasteners.

After my huge success using XPS foam chunks to frame out my windows, I figured why not try it here as well.

Add a bit of landau foam and upholstery and the magic illusion happens and it all looks perfect.

The alternative was adding a whole cut down trim piece of ash and having to find special tiny, shallow 3/4" fasteners so that I could 'pin' all the boards into the cross piece - still all floating - but would just guarantee alignment.

But using the foam was far faster and I think looks much better in the end.

Mostly followed Thrivans approach for a slatted hardwood ceiling. Didn't want tongue and groove for the complicated install and massive squeak potential. Moser Makes had a similar approach with some valuable tips also.

The requisite 'before' shot for context where I'm starting from is above. The white furring strips are 5/8 baltic birch with zinser mold and mildew proof paint (all wood not visible in the van got 2 coats of this paint). The black is 2 layers of thinsulate insulation.

The ash was sourced from Kettle Moraine Hardwoods and they did the mill work needed for pennies. I would have had to join a local maker wood shop for a month to use their large planer and joiner and make huge mounds of sawdust. Far cheaper in my case to just have KMH do it thankfully. Was able to source 12 to 12.5 foot long boards, 3/8 thick, 3.5 wide. 28 of them - that way we have plenty to pick from for prime appearance with grain and color variation - and we have plenty leftover in case we rework the layout at some point and need a few patch pieces some day. Total was about ~$360.

I added a soft break on them using a router and then sanded. Used Rubio Monocoat in the Smoke color for the finish (tried 4 or 5 samples from them and liked what Thrivans recommended the best also). Finished all surfaces of each board to prevent warping with humidity changes.

Crafted an uber el cheapo, space efficient drying rack for the rubio boards using some xps foam chunks and a few dowels chopped up and shoved in them.

Sorting the candidates a bit.

And then started wrestling with a 15 x 5 foot swath of black cotton duck cloth. In hindsight we should have used some tailor chalk on the back side to make ANY kind of reference mark so we could tell if things were squarish or not while trying to staple. But we guessed and got close - had to add a few narrow patch pieces on the sides in 2 places with some 3M 90.

I added center screw reference points on each furring strip which were critical once everything disappears behind the black cloth.

Putting the first center board up takes forever. It's in 3 pieces due to the fan and AC vents breaking it up. Yet all 3 pieces must be perfectly aligned or everything else goes into the ditch once you start spacing out each side from it and then try to match your first contiguous 12 foot board against it. The blue tape marks are where the 16 puck light pig tails with wagos are hiding behind the duck cloth.

The front forehead curve of the Transit required some kerf cuts on the back side of those boards. Just pushing on them you could feel an immediate change of less force required with the kerfs. I wasn't confident the screws would hold over time without them.

Beyond the 5 easy peasy ceiling ribs with furring strips I was nervous how things would work out at each end of the boards.

Up front I thought I might have to burn tons of time dropping the entire headliner again and adding rivnuts and another small furring strip up there. But with a single test board, the tension the board is under given the curve of the ceiling pins the end in place pretty good by itself right above that bracing the headliner plastic pins push up into.

Moser Makes added extra complexity with a whole fake rib up front and I just skipped all of that as unnecessary. And Thrivans videos are all Sprinters so no help in this area.

In the rear, the last rib is maybe ~20" at most away from the rear door arch and figured the ends could just float there and be good enough - or maybe cut down a chunk of ash and make a small 1" x 45"-ish cross piece to align them. But then I realized the very rear puck lights we have are reading lights that pivot around and you push on them directly to turn them on/off. So I need some kind of real framing there or the end of the ash board just floats all over when you push up on the light. Sigh.

Studied older van photos from last summer and got lucky! I had added rivnuts to every hole on that back upper door arch. Using the photos and a needle, I could locate them behind the foam + upholstery. Used an old soldering iron to melt through the upholstery and foam to expose the rivnuts while also sealing up the edges to avoid fraying. Then crafted a chunk of leftover poplar to make a tiny 'rib' I could bolt to the upper door framing. Perfect!

With north/south beds, we have room on each side above for 'reasonable' sized storage cabinets with less risk of forehead contusions. Before shot above with the just bare skeleton frame of the cabinets clamped up. Mostly followed the recipe from humble road and thrivans. Huge thanks to both of them. But adapting to a Transit vs. Sprinter required some creative 8020 and FR4 bushings.

We measured folded clothes and various packing cubes we liked to make sure the upper cabinets were well matched to our needs. Otherwise it's a complete gamble I guess.

Rear upper cabinets are mostly symmetrical, but we decided to make the driver side a bit shorter with about a 1 foot gap from the back of the shower wall. This gives us a perfect spot with some hooks to hang coats and such out of the way.

Ceiling plan has 16 puck lights - two rows of 6 - but when the upper cabinet doors are open, they will block the light so found a way in the 8020 build to run an LED strip along the upper edge which nicely illuminates every cabinet. Ran all of that back to a single switch for efficiency (all interior cabinets are lit or not, no need to micro optimize that).

Sourcing the white plastic panels of various thickness for the sides and curved back was a complete PITA. Wasted a few days optimizing that and figuring out how to have them cut it down to eliminate freight shipping nuttiness, yet still be usable sizes for my needs.

Panels are all 1/4" baltic birch with Rubio monocoat smoke color on all the inside surfaces and Wilsonart manitoba maple laminate and edge trim for all the exterior. Ikea Utrusta door hinges. Functionally they are awesome, but they are heavy. Couldn't trust any hinge alone to keep things from flying so southco slam latches are on every door - same as my entire kitchen galley lower cabinet. Note that you need to flip the latch 180 degrees for the upper cabinets and I initially thought that would feel really awkward trying to open the latch, but after a day it is no issue whatsoever - you don't even notice it.

The Transit upper wall cavities are much higher than a Sprinter so you can see how I had to get creative 'stacking' 8020 pieces on that rear edge to reach up to the 'lip' of the cavity so I could secure against it.

At the top of that little stack there are two fasteners that pinch the wall and transfer most of the weight of the cabinet to the wall. The other fasteners are through bolted to the white 5/8" furring strips across the ceiling.

Flexible backs of cabinet pockets getting tuned and a little heat formed for relief.

Once the cabinet frame is mounted firmly to the van, you need some kind of 'handhold' to push in the back plastic panel and curve it around into place. So you can see in the shot below I added small access holes to fit a right angle pick into so that I could man handle the piece into place so it rested in the 8020 groove on the top and flush at the back.

Thivans cuts big finger holes in the top, but my tiny holes seem to work just as well and I prefer the look. It's super putzy and tricky trying to get each back panel and side panel to match tight so you don't end up with an ugly gap. Each cabinet area might have different interference behind it with various Ford umbilicals and such so every one of them is a custom tweak fest of fun.

I have some very thin VHB tape I'll put on the very lower edge to tack the back panels into place with zero gap for appearance. I haven't done that yet in any of these shots.

This one I kicked down the road forever, figuring I'll solve it "someday" and building away on the utility cabinets with a blind eye.

Gotta pay the piper at some point. Roughly the ugly starting point above.

What can I possibly anchor any window trim framing to? It's just a huge void area, mostly filled with 2 or 3 layers of thinsulate. The lower window edge framing would be just hanging in space.

As I embarked on the wall panels, a plan came together. I had saved a whole row of rivnuts for the top edge of the wall panels to secure into. But the future bottom anchor was still unsolved.

I considered just taking blocks of hardwood and gluing them to the van outer wall in various points as a solid structure to anchor against.

But then the rewards of an 8020 build came and I added some vertical bracing chunks that the panel can rest against and be secured with t-nuts and screws. You can see them in the above picture in lower left and right corners of the window.

The 'interstitial' space between the finished wall panel and the squirrelly shaped van wall is a nightmare. Used pink XPS foam of all things to bridge the gap since it's not structural or weight bearing. Was originally thinking of the popular 'oval-ish rectangle' look, but the dimensions just didn't cater to that. The window shade frame is rectangular anyway so just gave up on that idea. There is no 'top edge' to the frame - the landau foam and fabric is right on the sloped van wall. The filler side pieces are glued to the wall and window frame "forever". The bottom filler piece had to be floating so that when I need to remove the panel, I could remove the bottom filler and still reach behind the panel for utility cabinet maintenance.

The XPS foam upholstered in various ways gave me all the flexibility. Lots of filler pieces in spots to get things flush and semi-sane. Have no idea how this would have worked with real wood.

Victory declared:

The black shade + screen for the Arctic Tern windows needs a bit of vertical up/down room to add or remove. So the vertical space above/below the window is by design.

I added high power USB-C 2 port outlets on each side of the bed. Those are the black circles in the middle of the panel.

Primary goal for the build was to easily carry both bikes in the garage area (no 'yard sale' bike rack hanging on the back blocking the brake lights, no wrestling with covers, no weather exposure, less risk of theft, quicker to deploy & stow).

I'm using the Unaka low profile fork mounts - solid, cheaper, and low gives more flexibility than the Rocky ones that are pretty tall. And I don’t want any lock on them - they are inside the van already. Wish I would have got orange.

Last summer with a cardboard template of the inner tray size, I spent most of a day on the origami puzzle of how to 'nest' the two bikes as tight as possible to fit on a single tray. Enough confidence to pull the trigger on 2 trays and move forward and hope it works out.

Was about to figure out where they should go and just drill though the FVCO pull out tray to add the unaka mounts and then paused. Seemed short sighted. I'll inevitably need to move them a bit and when we replace a bike someday, I don't want the tray to look like swiss cheese. Or what if a friend comes and has a different bike geometry?

The 8020 build experience offered a great solution. Used half size 1050 extrusion in 2 dimensions. In seconds I can:

• move mount forward and back
• move mount side to side
• raise/lower mount just by stacking small 4" sections of 10 series
• remove the top cross pieces entirely
  (maybe a trip doesn't need bikes and I don't want the fork mounts as obstacles to using the entire tray for tubs)

All came together today.

The 1050 didn't raise the mount that much so not sacrificing much height for all this flexibility. I saw a few vans with a single horizontal L track chunk for this, but the 1050 is much more flexible - infinite adjustability. The bottom most 'side rails' of 1050 are reverse bolted - the BHCS comes up through the tray and into a t-nut in the channel. Had to do this way because of bolt interference with the ones that through bolt the entire tray to the van floor.

Thrilled to finally see confirmation that the design all worked out (and before the snow flies). The second FVCO pull out tray will drop in right after I'm done with the ceiling. No pedal interference with the second tray which I'm really happy with. Our stacking plastic tubs for the 2nd tray will work great.

Plenty of room at the front of the bikes also for hanging helmets, storing bike shoes, and gear on the VanEssential rear door storage things.

For those into bikes left one is a 56 cm Trek Checkpoint, right one is Small Trek FX 5. No e-bikes for us (yet) - we need the exercise and enjoy a few challenges. Added OneUp dropper posts last summer for more flexibility. Could just barely squeak in without them, but way nicer with them. Can't recommend OneUp v3 dropper posts enough - they go down to the hard-to-find 27.2mm diameter seat posts that we needed. And they're a great Canadian company.

With the build out, the van is on the heavy end of the GVWR of 9,500 lbs. The factory van suspension isn't designed to drive around "full" all the time so we decided to improve things:

• Remove the rear 2 5/16" Trail lift blocks
• Add all 5 of the Van Compass Mini Leaf Spring Pack
• Add Van Compass rear leaf spring shackles (not actually green)
• Add Van Compass Falcon 3.3 SP2 rear shocks
• Add Quadvan rear shock relocation brackets + skid plate

The full additional leaf pack + the shackles should come out about the same height as the Trail block or close enough for lift purposes (to retain proper shock travel).

I spent the last 2.5 days doing that in the driveway. Burned half a day getting staged with tooling and extra 2x12 blocking that would fit under the 6 ton jack stands as you need extra height to use the jacking point right in front of the rear leaf spring. Other two days averaged ~6 hours (second side goes faster of course). I'm slow apparently - but there's lots of wrench/socket clearance issues using more and more magic tools, extensions, etc. and really beefy torque specs which take awhile. I also had 2 false starts on jacking for various reasons before being satisfied I would probably still be able to spend my retirement funds vs. squashed on the driveway.

I was able to do this one side at a time (other side remained on the ground with the tire). Certainly adds some confidence when 4000+ lbs are in the air above you.

The original Trail lift block under the leaf springs:

Original lower shock mount:

Using a cut off wheel to remove 'optional' parts of shock bracket:

The new shock bracket with integrated skid plate:

Trail block gone, 5 additional mini-leaf springs in, and new Falcon rear shocks. The air bags I added last Fall.

The longer rear leaf shackle:

And the best tip ever for struggling with large heavy tires when trying to magically line up 6! lugs. Use an air lift wedge jack! You can focus on alignment and rotation on a few lugs while raising slightly with a few squeezes. A little push home and you're golden.

Way back on the first post as motivation #1 for the build was easy, fast, secure, interior bike storage. Here is one of the full extension bike trays in the van. A second identical one goes alongside it. We can 'nest' both gravel bikes onto a single tray carefully and then the second tray will hold easy access tubs and gear.

Each side of the BluTech Trio water filter above has stainless steel quick disconnects - and the flex hose gives me enough leeway to be able to yank the entire filter assembly out and replace it with a 'straight pipe'. Will make replacing filters a lot easier - and if it starts leaking during a trip, could bypass it this way. Also useful in freezing weather if we want to leave the van unheated for a week or two, but just grab the filter assembly into the house to avoid all the complexity with winterizing it.

Every water line in the van past the 'supply side' has a cut off valve. We can isolate a fixture or line if it starts leaking mid-trip and still use the rest of the water system.

The water system took way more space than I had hoped, but it is working well so far. The kitchen galley plumbing is soon and you'll see more details on where those lines go then.

Wow, where has the time gone. I'm way behind on keeping up the blog - but I have been working almost every day on advancing the build. What a project.

Water is critical. The final design:

That looks relatively easy and logical on paper. A bit harder to reduce to the physical water cabinet. The key challenge is the required motorized valves had orientations where piping jutted into 3D space - so not easy to just lay out on the back panel the design like I could with the electrical side.

Similar to the other tanks, the primary interior 31 gallon Trionic water tank got a KUS level sensor and service hatch sandwich.

But this tank was a 'blank' one and added uniseal fittings on the top for the vent, fill inlet, and draw tube. Being inside the van, it is the highest 'van destroying' risk. If a fitting 'low' on the tank developed some leak, I could end up opening the doors after an adventure to a 31 gallon flood inside the van = epic disaster. By exclusively using top mounted fittings and never leaving the van with the water pump on, any flood risk is mitigated to a gallon or so at most of what might be in a long pex supply line (probably a lot less even).

Further, the Trionic tanks are super beefy = 3/8" min walls. Much thicker than the undermount gray and fresh tank walls.

To reduce chances of condensation with cold water fills in humid weather I used 3M 90 to adhere closed cell minicel to the bottom and walls. Top may get some selectively later.

Early skeleton of the water cabinet with lots of routing notes by green tape.

Cabinet is 10 series with a specific installation order. The cabinet goes in and is bolted to the wall in 8 places. Then the water tank can be added. And then the final 'cage' cross member pieces securing the tank in place and adding key support are added (all anchor fasteners). I found this cabinet harder to layout than the electrical one as you can't just lay it out horizontally since some of the 3 way valves and tees 'hover in space'.

The Bosch 4 gallon water heater is just slightly too deep, but I realized I could recess it into the wall area and buy myself a little more than an inch - so that's why that square section is 'missing' in the back panel above the wheel well. The water heater back panel is bolted right to the wall via 3 rivnuts. And the rachet strap keeps it from bouncing upwards. Sits on a scrap of minicel for slight cushion and noise reduction.

The Aquor hydrants are all on the far left in the rear of the cabinet so that when you need to rotate in the 'faucet adapter' handle, you have room for it to swing down on the right side of it. The top bank of switches are lights and compressor. The bottom row is motorized water valves, water pump, and water heater. Tossed in a 'cig lighter' DC plug just in case as it was laying around and figured somebody someday might have some accessory.

Jammed into that lower rear corner is the air compressor and the manifold for it is slightly above that. Hoping it lasts longer out of the elements as the usual mounting spot would be on the underside of the van somewhere. Mounted it directly to the AL frame using rubber isolation feet for noise/vibration.

The van starts life as a very exposed metal box with little ventilation. So it gets either really, really hot inside or really, really cold. Neither extreme is that comfortable for us delicate types.

So we insulated the floor with 1" of polyiso foam. Much of the roof and walls have a lightweight thin closed cell foam + aluminum foil material to counter thermal radiation and condensation. And finally all of the walls and ceiling have 2 layers of thinsulate. It's white on one side and black on the other - and that's what you're seeing in all the wall cavities.

Mary Jo measured and exhaustively cut 60+ panels of thinsulate to fit all the spots. Even coming up with a labeling system for all of them and which layer they were was challenging.

Installing all of the thinsulate was days of using the air compressor with the harbor freight spray gun and special DAP Weldwood High Heat Resistant contact cement. All in full respirators so not the most comfortable. Bit of a race to get this done in late Fall as the contact cement requires 65F+ ambient temp and needs lots of venting.

The "8020" aluminum extrusion cabinetry can also be an issue when bolted securely to the van wall metal. It's basically a giant heat/cold sink so you need to devise 'thermal breaks' to prevent that.

We used two methods:

1. Crafted 'washers' out of FR4 rod because it has very high compressive strength and low thermal transfer. Many use nylon washers, but they don't hold up well at all under sustained compression loads (will loosen up).
2. Encased any van metal that couldn't take thinsulate with 1/8" thick neoprene to prevent thermal radiation of heat/cold. Having to tape over ~100+ rivnuts and then later cut them out of the neoprene is another fun task.

The doors also need insulation so we removed all the paneling and put thinsulate inside most of the cavities, but avoided areas near door handles or locks that always weep water in all vehicles.

Restoring the factory moisture barrier in the passenger sliding door.

And finally used landau foam and upholstered the panel for a proper finished look.

Lithium battery technology is amazing for a van - high energy density, long life, and you can use almost all of the energy in them without damage vs only 50% or less for previous battery technology.

The only drawbacks are cost and the inconvenient fact that you cannot charge them below freezing. Some batteries have internal heating plates that use some of the batteries own energy to keep itself warm. Victron batteries do not so I created an equivalent system.

I modeled some aluminum heater plates and had sendcutsend.com create them for me. Then bought some bee hive heater pads off Amazon and wired them up. The Victron control system 'brain' (Cerbo GX) has a relay that can turn the heater pads on/off based on thermostat rules I setup. The Cerbo GX has a temperature input probe that is attached to negative battery post of the lowest battery (the coldest one).

When we're using the van in freezing weather, the heater will keep the entire interior and batteries plenty warm to take a charge. But the plates might be handy if we want to leave the van unheated for awhile (or put the heater thermostat very low).

In cold seasons, I'll put more insulation around all 3 of the batteries. But that's removable because in warm seasons, the batteries perform better when they aren't too hot so best not to install anything permanently over the top of them.

The 'Final' electrical cabinet install requires tons of other wiring run throughout the van. I've done almost all of it except for some lights and other miscellaneous DC circuits that will be easy to route with the cabinet in place.

It becomes a stunning amount of wire. Each end needs to be meticulously labeled w/ clear heat shrink over the top to remain sane. And most needs to be put inside some wire loom protection when run through the walls.

Finally reach the stage where the cabinet is getting mounted to the wall 'forever'. Of course as soon as you think that, you find 5 other branch circuits or pig tails you should probably run now while it is easy. More delays. Put everything into place - recheck wiring end points 3 times.

And then at some point you reach for the 3 big red battery switches, rotate, and make sure the fire extinguisher and spare fuses are nearby.

And are over the moon that expected blinky lights and noises are the result. More phased testing of all the major systems and trimming of branch circuits to be done.

There are a number of things in the van that would be super handy to control from the drivers seat. So with some careful dremel work, I stuffed in a 6 position toggle switch bank and all the wiring needed for that when I had the entire headliner removed for insulation work. Pleased with the way it came out, but am changing the labels to white on black background to blend.

Now comes the disappointment of trying to fit "the small stuff" fully into the cabinet. I really only focused on where the 3 heavy batteries and the large, heavy Multiplus inverter would live and assumed I'd figure out the rest later with the 'acres of space' leftover. Yeah right.

The back panel of the cabinet is 1/2" Baltic Birch. 3 batteries and 3 battery cutoff switches, all with giant thick AWG 4/0 cable that must be the same length for every battery is a huge layout problem. And given how pricey Ancor 4/0 cabling is, I sure don't want to waste any. Bought a cheap vinyl, stiff garden hose that I could cut up and use as a stand-in for testing bending radius and routing while trying to solve it.

Picture above shows I had to get creative with the orientation of the cutoff switches and needed to 3D print a 'spacer block' behind one of the cutoff switches to make all the cable routing work (its the middle switch that has the red spacer block behind it).

Once that rats nest was solved, on to laying out the rest of the panel. One of ~12 variations I was messing with below.

After some research I resolved to routing much of my wiring BEHIND the back panel. No possible way I could get all the AWG 4/0 stuff from the far right way back to the Multiplus and chassis ground on the left with wires on the front side of the panel - would be a giant mess.

Planned extensively for exactly where I needed cable access holes, how big, how much bend radius, etc. Then you drill and install back side T-Nuts to over 120 holes. Better hope they're in the right spot.

Wood screws might work, but these things have to be serviceable - bolt/unbolt them easily from the panel without the holes getting 'lose'. And the 42 lb Multiplus needs solid attachment. There's no way a t-nut will get pulled through the panel; the bolt will strip first. I wasn't confident threaded inserts wouldn't pull out on a good bounce (and they're not any easier or cheaper to put in at this stage).

Ah yes, the rear panel facing the rear doors. That's where all my AC circuit breaker switches are and an active cabinet ventilation fan. Need to fabricate that and laminate it.

And discover that centering the items in the panel will drive you nuts in the future because they won't appear centered from the rear of the van. Because about 3" or more of the cabinet is hidden by the rear door threshold. Sigh. Make another panel and be thankful you discovered this before laminating.

V1 on the right, the correct V2 on the left.

I skipped the gory details of stringing heavy Ancor AWG 4/0 cabling all the way from the alternator, across the engine bay, up to the interior through the wall interstitial behind the driver, and then back to the electrical cabinet area.

I bought 50 foot rolls of Ancor AWG 4/0 and used it all. And it needs to be put inside either heat shielding wire wrap or plastic conduit for some protection.

Now that I have the paper schematic dream, a huge pile of very expensive blue boxes, and the alternator installed, I need to figure out how to mount all this stuff in the back of the van.

Reducing the electrical 'schematic' to minimal physical space is one of those primary challenges of van building. And of course like anything in the build, "everything is dependent on everything else". So I really needed to solve both the electrical and water cabinet layout before I could declare victory.

We prioritized fitting two full extension 5 foot long pull out trays between the left and right cabinet area and that dictated everything. Virtually no van build can fit 2 trays, but ours can. Some use a giant single tray, but then accessing anything in the middle is really awkward.

Used SketchUp to 3D model both cabinets and the cross beams that support the queen bed platform (the picture above).

Once you struggle for an hour or so, the (free) app becomes pretty easy to use and super valuable. I redesigned many aspects of the structure a dozen times or more as you run out to the van to measure something or a component and then adjust the plan.

Here's the giant pile of aluminum extrusion slowly coming together into something cabinet-like.

And here's the skeleton with a proof of concept with both pull out trays in the van.

Next up - finding a solution to mounting tons of things inside those empty metal skeletons.