My Chevrolet Express van Class B- camper

J herb wrote:
.........Have you done anymore van mods ? I'm going to build a cabinet on the upper right side above the bed after the first of the year.

Stay safe and well, Jay

I have not done anything other than minor little fine-tuning items to the van and actually using it for camping. This coming week the temps are supposed to be in the 50's in the Black Hills so we are planning a camping trip to Custer State Park. I have been spending my time in my wood shop making infinity boxes for my brother, sisters, and grand daughters. Pumped out eleven of them for upcoming Christmas presents. Last year I made everyone ring-toss games and the year before that I made them all yard Yahtzee games with 4"x4" dice made from an old square post I had handy. Not sure what I will do next Christmas. The old barn is starting to fall apart at my parents old farm so I may try to make some lamps out of old barn wood. I collect ideas all year long so I have many to choose from. I am working on my next van update. It will be a long box for my roof rack to hold my fishing rods, radio controlled car, golf clubs and my metal detector. After watching "The Detectorists" series on British TV, I am ready to take mine out again.





When I get my roof rack box finished I will post info on it. I am also working on another project. I made a couple of shelves from the grills of my old 1990 K-Blazer 1500 for my 1/64 scale models of my Corvette collection. I found another grill from an old Chevrolet pickup that I will modify to hold the 1/64 scale models of all the cars I previously owned and my collection of old Tootsietoys cars I had as a kid. The openings in the Blazer and pickup grills are just about perfect for these small models. I just have to add a little extension in the back of each opening to make a deeper space to set the car.


My brother-in-law found me the grill from an older Chevrolet pickup that I reworked like the 90 Blazer/Suburban grills. It is not as good as the vertical spacing for the cars was only 1 1/8" so a lot of my cars would not fit. I did add a lighted Chevrolet emblem to it and some highway striped road tape from Hot wheels for the top shelf on this one. The others I just covered with sticky back black felt. I also spray painted the entire grill flat black (it was gray like the one below) and added a stripe of chrome tape down the middle to better match the 90 Blazer/Suburban grills. The 73-78 pickup grill below may work better but I have no tried one yet. It looks like it has taller slots like the 90 Blazer/Suburban grills.


I used the top two grill shelves for my 1/64 scale Corvette car collection. The bottom grill I use for my old 1950-60's Tootsie toy car collection that I played with as a youngster. I also have small models of each car that I owned or drove in my life. I had to repaint some of them to match the cars I owned. I also included a model of my Dad's H & M tractors that I drove on the farm, the 1957 Ford Fairlane 500 that I learned to drive on, and my Dad's first pickup which was a 1958 Chevrolet fleetside.