Sorry for the 2 month gap in posts. There's been a lot of little bits going on with the van like servicing it and changing the brakes and discs, wiring up additional rear view cameras, and other stuff which I've not documented. A lot of that time has also been spent deliberating on parts, particularly what floor to go with. I went for Altro Orchestra in the colour "Fusion".
Prep
First thing to do was rip out the old ply floor. This required removing a lot of screws, many of which were rusty and wouldn't unscrew. When the screws wouldn't come out the only option was to go hulk on the ply and rip it out with brute force.
The holes were also plugged up with Sikaflex.
Foundations
Next was to figure out where I wanted the floor battens to go. I drew out the floor plan again then used 25mm x 50mm roofing battens to lay down the foundations, which took about 2 days to do.
Some of the battens required lifting a bit to counteract the gap left by the elevated floor sections. For this I cut an 8mm piece and stuck it on the bottom with wood glue. The battens were then stuck down using Sikaflex and self drilling screws (190 of them!).
Insulation
Next I used 25mm PIR insulation board to fill in the gaps between the battens. This was pretty easy to cut with a utility knife. I used nearly 3 sheets for this. If I were a bit cleverer about it I possibly could've got away with just 2, but I'm glad I got the extra because it gave me room to make mistakes.
Ply floor
For this I used 4 sheets of 9mm ply. My plan with this was to match it to the contours of the furniture in places so that I could have as much of one continuous sheet over the walkway as possible to minimise flex and the chance of creaking. It was also quite tricky as I realised the back of the van floor is slightly wider than the front by about 6cm due to the way the sills are made.
For sheets 3 and 4 I had the luxury of being able to use the existing ply lining for the wheel arch cutouts. Next is to screw everything down. To ensure I got the screws in the right place I found each end of the battens and drew a line between them. The battens don't seem to have spectacular screw retention properties, but most of them went in without stripping out.
Vinyl floor
This was one of the biggest decisions to make as it's the first proper one regarding aesthetics and once it goes down, that's it, you're committed to it. I was originally going to go with Altro Walkway as it's a very hard-wearing surface, however I went with Altro Orchestra as it's slightly less abrasive, whilst still being grippy, and slightly softer under foot which should make it nicer to walk on.
For all the cutting I used a utility knife.
Remember how I said the back of the van is wider than the front? Well this involved cutting a bit more out of the front.
I then needed to get the front of the vinyl to fit the contours of the front of the floor like I did for the ply, so I made a template out of card.
Next came sticking it down. For this I used exactly 3 cans of Trim-Fix. I got the vinyl in place and then stuck down the front followed by the back.
Bonus
A little extra bit I did at the same time was replace the side markers with "stealth" black ones. They're not really stealth because they're shiny and the plastic panels are matte, but I found them cheap online and prefer them to the big orange ones.
