Blue View – Installing Rivet Nuts

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Blue View – Installing Rivet Nuts

Rivet nuts are a great invention and are an immense aid in upfitting a van. They are inserted into a hole in the sheet metal of the van, and, using an inexpensive tool, they convert the hole into a captive nut. I used them to attach the ceiling panels to the roof bows, to construct a 'containment' wall to keep everything in its place when we were hauling dozens of crates of stuff from Nine of Cups to Las Vegas, and I'll use a lot more when we begin mounting wall panels, cabinets, and Murphy beds to the interior of Blue. Here's how I install them.

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Blue View – An Armrest for Blue's Co-Pilot

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Blue View – An Armrest for Blue's Co-Pilot

An issue Marcie has had with Blue is the lack of an armrest for her co-pilot's seat - for some reason, a standard Ford Transit comes with an armrest only for the driver's seat. Where do you put your arm when there's no armrest? It just sort of hangs there. You can put it in your lap, but that's only comfortable for a little while. Since we plan on spending a lot of time in Blue, it really needs to be comfortable for both of us, and so we investigated how we might add an armrest to her seat.

The first solution we looked at was ...

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Blue View – Building Blue's Header

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Blue View – Building Blue's Header

It's been brutally cold here in New England, but we've managed to continue work on Blue. Any project that involves adhesives or paint isn't practical in these temps, but one project that we could get done was to build the ceiling header. We've had lots of time to think about it and had several criteria for our new header.

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