1994 quigley e250 rehab

I started out looking for a 7.3 4x4 van right before covid kicked off for a family trip out west this summer. Went to look at one in North Carolina that the guy didn't disclose how bad it was rusted out, bad 4x4 conversion, and few sketchy fixes, before getting cash and driving in a one way rental to get it. So I bailed on the van and eventually found an early 94 e250 with a 351w. It was a third of the price and just as rusted out, but thought with the savings I could put a new motor, swap bodies and rehab it to near new for a reliable all purpose vehicle. So now I will start the photo dumps.
 
the floor patches looked like they worked well, but the outside is what it is. I don't like the jeep bumper, but still have it on there until I get around to building something better.
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The day I got it to work, and realized it had a huge bubble in the front tire, so it stayed there until I could find a set of wheels and tires (16.5" wheels and 35's)

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Found a set of wheels and tires for $450 that were a little bigger than I planned to get. but for the price I jumped on it. This is the first time that I should have sold it with the nice wheels on and made a few bucks off it..
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Instead of selling it for a quick buck, I tried scratching my head to figure out an upgrade to patch panels. All I could come up with was to take heavy duty steel tool boxes from a utility bed, or custom make some similar to those found on utility beds, and use the mostly wasted space outside of the frame rail, brace up the corner that was being eaten away and gain some exterior storage. Trying to keep it simple is a difficult task for me, but I feel I did well and went with a more normal approach and started looking for a rust free body to swap. Hopefully get some good parts, interior or drivetrain related in the process. I wanted to find the same-ish year to avoid swapping the wiring harness. I found a 1993 e150 mark 3 bump roof van with a 98% dent free body(3 dime size door dents), seemingly no rust, good motor, transmisison, brake lines, etc(broken water pump bolts and removed accessories from someone attempting to replace the water pump) but with an ugly old school blue interior for $600. So I went from the stranger danger van to the uncle daddy van.. have I mentioned yet that my wife hates this whole van idea/project? haha
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now the fun and frustration begins.. you can tell in the last pictures I am working out of a barn. Not that this van or process would fit in a garage, but after having concrete at my previous houses, I am over the dirt floors and old horse smell. So I have no lift, no solid substrate for easy rolling around of equipment or any of that silly stuff. So I used some of my vehicle extrication training to figure out how to do this whole body swap thing, with cribbing as my jack stands/lift. Now as a note of caution, this is not safe with the height I had to lift. I think it's 3-4' high with 2' cribbing, so I went about the process slowly and carefully like my life depended on it. haha. only dropped the body once or twice while lifting

I started lifting the body and placing blocks/cribbing to capture progress. When the body was going to clear the engine and rear tires, I built another stack of cribbing that would clear the chassis width to roll out. I used a 4x4 post which was not strong enough, to bridge the span between those blocks. Any shock loading may have snapped it, so all the movement had to be smooth, safety note: no body parts between wood and body when placing cribbing, push it into place with another piece of cribbing, never sitting, always kneel or crouch to move quickly if needed. But it worked, I added a middle pillar and bottle jack to support the 4x4 while waiting and removing the other body. The rear of the body can be lifted between the frame rails if you remove the hitch and rear bumper, with a block of wood and a hi lift you can lift the back very quickly.
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rolled the 2wd chassis out, pulled the motor, trans, and fuel/brake line cluster out. Then lifted up the stranger danger body and rolled the 2wd chassis under it.
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Random body mount tidbit, the e150 chassis has a large football shaped hole for each body bushing that is similar to a motor mount and sits into the hole. the e250 body mounts were different, simple but large body mounts that sandwiched the frame with a sleeve and 1.25" or so hole, they were all seized and had rusted the frame where the busing sandwiched the top of the frame, besides where someone patched the fire wall body mounts/floors. a few of the uncle daddy van body bolts were also seized and the others would free spin after tearing the lower half of the bushing apart. so I cut the head of the bolts off on both vans. I also found some rust on the second to last body mounts of the uncle daddy van, where it had grown and bubbled up between the sheet metal floor and the layers of metal that make up the structure of the body mount. The stranger danger van had rust clearance fenders and I still needed to do a little cutting and hammering to the fenders. One fender had a small portion welded on from the previous owner and the other fender bungeed at the bottom with hardly any fender left. Looking at how modular the body to frame stuff was, the repairs needed to the body mount holes, cost and availability of body mount bushings, and my propensity to not leave well enough alone. I decided to "patch" the body mounts with 3"x.25" square tube and use universal body mount bushings. This lead me down the rabbit hole of scooting the body back on the frame a few inches to get better clearance with the fender/door. That way I wouldn't need to hack the bottom of the fender to almost nothing, or have a weird fender flare that goes into the door. So what the heck. just have to drill an extra hole at each mount and see if it works. if it didn't, I could just shove it forward to where it should be. The frame had some surface rust, nothing too terrible for the most part. I grinded, flap wheeled, wire wheeled. cut and welded on the body lift/body mount patches. and ordered a reman. roller motor off ebay so I wouldn't have to do a core charge or return one of my flat tappet 351's.. now in the middle fo quarantine, supposed to have my motor in 30 days, gives me time to finish up the frame stuff, slap the motor in and move on by the end of covid.
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With the sections of square tube welded to the frame, I needed to lower the body onto the chassis, measure a bunch and make sure the body was straight, and mark the holes. I thought about making a wood template from the interior of the body but was feeling pretty good about my cribbing setup and not having any screw ups with a copy of a copy transfer.
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Then drilling... I am terribly impatient when it comes to drilling.. I ended up needing to weld a perch on the side of the body mount that extends out of the frame near the fire wall for the body to be pushed back.. I think I went with 2" back from stock mounting. I applied ospho(acid etch/converter), primer and paint. I used to paint cars as a primary job, and kept going back and forth using some random tractor type paint from ace, or if I should go get some good epoxy primer and base/clear.. but went with the ace stuff in the end so hopefully it holds up ok.
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waiting for the motor.... still waiting... I decided to go with Toyota voo doo blue for the paint, my kids didn't want the desert sand or od green style. To help with the fact that my wife hates this van project I picked up the 08-16 front end to help with the old creeper van vibes and that Im always driving old dumpy vehicles to get the kids and went with a flashier front end. I got around to cleaning up the valve covers, oil pan and intake for paint... but the early 90's ford font is hideous, so I tried taking the fat top of the letters down to a normal size on the intake manifold. But then it kinda looked like a burger logo to me so I took off the line up top too. Then painted it voo doo blue..:cool:
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still waiting on the motor to get done, get a couple covid excuses when I call to check on status

Below the battery was the one rusty spot I knew about when I got the uncle daddy van, I went ahead and patched that before I got started on the engine bay clean up.
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got the motor in, painted the frame black and ready for the body to go back on.

made some spacers and tabs to mount the newer front end, a lot more involved than i expected. then painted it white so it wouldn't be multi colored for a few months.


The front bumper is still ugly, but a lot better match to the newer front end
 
Found an f-150 rear bumper for really cheap on facebook marketplace and assumed I could make it fit more easily than building one. It was indeed pretty easy, just not a huge fan of the vent hole things.. maybe it'll grow on me with some LED reverse lights, or extra brake lights. If not, the convenience and price still justified it. I had to trim the middle of the bumper, the truck bumper has a really flat edge where the van has a slight curvature to it, then filled the top where the bumper normally wraps around the bed corner. I had to trim that edge down also, I haven't taken a grinder to any of it to do a final clean up yet. I was able to drill a hole or two in the frame end for the mounting to work, but the body is moved back 2" so that may take a little more trimming or adding on a normal van body.
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removing the factory stripes took FOREVER.. and a ton of eraser wheel residue.. 20200822_020303.jpg

"new" motor didn't have compression in cyl. number 5.. out of frustration, I pulled the motor out and put the old flat tappet engine in so I could still take it to work while figuring out what to do next(crappy warranty), and continue cleaning it up outside. I should have left it in and thoroughly diagnosed it. I didn't realize how tired and clapped out the old motor was when I decided to switch them, and turns out it may just be a pushrod length issue.

but it got shined up until and in preparation of voo doo blue coming soon.
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And it sat for a while with other house projects/life going on, mildly dreading pulling the motor and front clip again. I wanted to initiate a second wind on the project, so over the last few days I made a simple bumper for motivation. To do an upgrade type project instead of messing with all the stuff that's needed fixed and replaced so far. haha20201121_153758.jpg
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After thanksgiving, I'll get into re-installing and checking the pushrods and rockers, hopefully change the motor and accessories over again without event and be done with that part of the build.
 

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