Category: Interior

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Mocking up cabinet locations

Cardboard cabinets - it's all we have for now!

We’ll be putting removable cabinets in the front of the van. We knew pretty much what size they needed to be in order to hold the items we want to carry, but we didn’t know what that meant for maneuverability in the living area of the van.

So, I resorted to a tool I use in my day job – paper prototyping. We’d already done this to work out the best configuration for the electrical components in the garage area of the van. Now, we just needed bigger cardboard boxes and more tape in order to make real-size mock-ups of the cabinets. Continue reading “Mocking up cabinet locations”

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Will it fit? Will it work? Cardboard boxes to the rescue!

Mocking up the electrical area with cardboard boxes

Mocking up the electrical area with cardboard boxes

It might look like a mess, but the cardboard boxes in the picture above helped me to work out the design of the battery box and electrical area in the back of the van.

I cut cardboard boxes to size for each of the main components, and also traced the shape of the smaller components like switches, gauges and connectors. Then, I tried different placements in the van.  Continue reading “Will it fit? Will it work? Cardboard boxes to the rescue!”

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Moving the bench seat

Bench seat in the third row position

The Crew van comes with a three person passenger bench seat behind the driver and co-driver seats. We want to use that room for a living area, so we have to move the seat back.

Luckily, the 2015 crew vans come with captive nuts under the floor in the positions the seats would take in a passenger van. It’s weird — Mercedes puts the nuts in place, but then puts a solid metal floor right over them.  Continue reading “Moving the bench seat”