Hi we're Philip and Lidia and in today's episode we're gonna show you how we transform
this piece of junk into a plain canvas to build our future dream home. In the
last episode we showed you how we went van shopping and got our vintage 69 Econoline
once we actually got our hands on it we realized it needs a lot more work than we expected.
This is "Sugar Cube" a 1969 Ford e300 Supervan and this is the very first episode of how we
turn this hunk of scrap metal into a groovy tiny home on wheels so stay
tuned and make sure to LIKE and SUBSCRIBE All right so it just got towed over here
and dropped off and it won't even start so step one we're gonna put some gas in
We bought a van that didn't even have gas in it, hopefully that's why it won't start
Yeah guys leave a comment down below if you think we're crazy buying a van that doesn't
even have gas in it doesn't even run just leave a comment... Guys cross the fingers that it starts
okay so we got gas in it and we got a new battery in it for
power and now we're gonna give it a go and see if it starts
Doesn't sound too bad actually
Sick it runs yeah are you stoked yeah I'm feeling pretty good
it runs no banging no knocking I think we're in good shape
We just lag actually the dude who we bought it from he had an extra
carburetor so I'm gonna try and swap that out and I know the brakes don't really work
too well and we're kind of stuck in the parking lot so we gotta have brakes so
check that out after the carburetor so yeah let's get the carburetor on there
You can see here it's leaking out of this front of the fuel bowl right there
so the gas is just like dumping out of it not really letting it run right
you can see like all the gas in there so we couldn't use the new carburetor
because it doesn't mount up right and then don't ask me how I figured that out but
I ended up replacing the part that was leaking on the old carburetor with the piece off the new
carburetor so it's it should work so let's try it out and cross our fingers and make sure it works
Looks like there's no leaks too yeah guys he's running
All right it runs now we just gotta fix the brakes and then we can drive it around he's a cleanup too
All right so it got late last night and got dark and I had to call it quits but basically I just
cleaned up the master cylinder it had some gunk in it added some new brake fluid and now with
a little help from my partner uh today we're gonna bleed the brakes and then hopefully we can
run and drive the van so yeah we're stoked we're gonna make this van run because we're still in
the same parking lot and it was raining and Philip is getting all wet to fix this brakes right now so
yeah can I get these things yeah we got to get out of here before we start getting tickets or
towed or yeah who knows what but yeah definitely this spot is not really legal
to park overnight but we had no choice because the brakes are not working so now
our first thing that we're going to do is fix them so yeah got to get this thing on the road.
We got the van yesterday and Philip just fixed the carburetor right away and put a
new battery in and now we're fixing the brakes and that's why we stayed in this parking lot
is because we couldn't drive anywhere like safely so we're fixing the brakes right now.
All right I'm ready all right press it and hold it okay all the way down all the way down.
Okay
All the way up all right down up up down down up up down down up up
After bleeding the brakes it was time for a test drive
Oh no the brakes are working guys
sharp brakes work you fixed the brakes now we can drive it around where are we gonna go yes
we need some groceries we need to clean up here. Oh this thing's the grocery getter for sure!
We're probably gonna get rid of everything that is here like
the pieces of the wall like some of these chunks right here everything has to be clean
and prep for painting soon and treating the metal and everything so let's put hands into this.
Oh I don't know what happened here before but this is a microphone oh god
Oh my goodness so much garbage, this is not a clean job guys I don't even want
to look what is in here I'm just putting it on the back.
Yeah I'm going to pull out all this big stuff too to make more room yeah
oh what is this oh this is like a Las Vegas map somebody went to Las Vegas in this van I guess
wait How old is it? What's the year? I don't know...
Gross...
I'm happy it's already seen some results here you guys it's not looking so bad it's not so rusty it
just needs a little bit of love and clean and pain and sandy and stuff but I'm so very stoked looks
good the floor is not even rusty at all it just needs a little like standing and paint and good to
go yeah guys we're removing the walls right now we are almost clean up right here so far for now oh
Now you see how to take this one...
There must be out spider in there Phillip is that afraid of spiders...
You guys that it was touching me... So like what we do with all our van builds we save
all of our screws because they can add up in the end when you're putting it all back together.
So now that the van is gutted and safe enough to drive well
kind of we took it for a solid test drive on the highway and limped it over to our warehouse
space where we're going to be completing the rest of the build I immediately put it up on
jack stands pulled the wheels off and did a full inspection and of course to find more problems.
The brake pedal was still super soft so I pulled the drums off to fully check them out.
That's not good at all looks like a piece of a broken spring.
All right so I'm going to show you real quick what's actually wrong with the brakes check it
out so these are the front and right here we have the self adjuster I don't know if you can see that
but it's hooked up to nothing and they have these little hose clamps here on the adjuster
and so what's going on is the adjuster is not out far enough and it can't be adjusted correctly
because it doesn't have the right parts so I'm gonna you know replace the shoes we got the
drums resurfaced and i'm gonna clean them all up real good and get them working good again
and as you can see over here on the other side too
it's the same thing the adjuster is just not on there and somebody had put a hose clamp on there
for some reason and that's just ghetto rigged and literally doesn't work at all and on the back
here the the shoes are worn out see this is the self adjuster that's supposed to be on the front
and it's not on there as you can see it holds it in place so it can be adjusted this one is
in decent shape on this last one here this last one this spring actually was broken so it's not
pulling in the the tops of the shoes which is probably why it got shredded I don't know if you
can see but these little rivets are completely worn down and those were just cutting into
the metal drum but it was able to be resurfaced and fixed so that's good because these are really
expensive so that's what's wrong with them I don't know if you guys want to see a video on how to fix
drum brakes or how to rebuild the drum brakes leave a comment down below and i could do a video
of that um some people are kind of intimidated by drum brakes but uh they're actually pretty simple
so let me know if you want a video on that all right let's uh get to fixing them.
Okay so that's it for the brakes which was probably the worst of it
now just a couple other mechanical issues to fix like the rear diff leaking,
fixing a sloppy steering wheel with a quick steering gear adjustment,
some fresh bushings to tighten up the suspension and a basic carb rebuild.
So I also changed all the fluids and filters on there but I was in a big rush so I didn't
really film it so if you guys want to see some of the how-to videos drop a comment down below
and let me know so I can put some of those out that wraps up this video pretty much we got it
all mechanically sound and gutted it all out and cleaned it so we got a nice clean slate to
build our tiny home on and also stay tuned because we're going to be doing
the solar the insulation the full build out of the inside and electrical stuff so
keep your eyes peeled plus we got "Hot Box" videos for that build coming out
on our other 4x4 van so make sure to check those out if you haven't seen them and uh yeah make
sure to LIKE and SUBSCRIBE because we can't really wait to see how these vans turn out so stay tuned
you.