We are building all of the interior structure out of Parker IPS aluminum extrusion. This is convenient since it comes out of the same plant where I work. They gave me a good price and I save a ton on shipping since I pick it up at lunch time. This is the extrusion for our bed and headboard. Think of the extrusion as an adult erector set, it is also referred to as industrial two by fours. The plant cuts to length for me and drills holes where I specify. All I need to assemble is an Allen wrench. The plant manager saw me carrying the extrusion out of the plant and asked if I was stealing it.This looks pretty simple just glue and screw battens to the ribs of the van ceiling. Turns out our combination metal and wood drill bits barely scratched the surface of the sheet metal. Apparently FORD uses a very hard metal and we were stumped. Then we decided to install riv nuts and attached the battens that way. After a few stops, starts and F bombs we got the hang of installing them. Then we learned that most of the remaining openings in the van were not the same size as our inserts. Two hours into it and we had not made much progress. Off to Home Depot, I think we are wearing a groove in the pavement from our house to the store given all of our last minute trips. We planned on getting a step drill bit to enlarge the existing holes but all they had was imperial bits and our riv nuts were metric. I did see a regular drill bit made for hard metal so we decided to buy it and and try again to drill holes and attach the battens with sheet metal screws.Back home again and trying the new bit in my drill, same crappy results. I then switched to the hammer drill and it went through fast. Actually a little too quickly, the drill bit hit the exterior sheet metal, no damage but we needed a stop. I did not want to go back to the store so I tried the cork from last nights bottle of wine and it worked perfectly. The drill went through the first layer and the cork stopped it from going further. Problem solved and the wine was also good.All the battens are installed and now we are ready to install the ceiling. We thought this would go quickly, yeah right. The ceiling has 2 layers of insulation: 3M Thinsulate next to the roof provides most of the insulation and then we put E-Z Kool over that for a vapor barrier and thermal break. I read many places not to cover everything with a vapor barrier so the entire system can breath. Made sense to me, time will tell.The geometry of the van was driving me crazy. The walls get narrower going to the back and the front part of the roof slopes sharply to the front seats, what a pain. Ram Promasters are popular for van conversions since they have a square box, no slopes.. Downside you have to buy a crappy Dodge. Ceiling is done. The part that is not covered will be in the cabinets. Some paint for touchups and some trim to cover our screwups and this part is done.
