If you are looking at this page and you own a van, you're obviously pretty damn cool, if not, I guess I'm left wondering when you'll see the light.

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---LATEST UPDATE: 10/25/05---
All of the work in this update took place during June, July, and August this summer, but it took until now for my lazy ass to make the update. Update includes: all new interior lighting, new LED underbody kit, new headlights and clear-corners, a PA system, a beautiful custom amprack, and ofcourse an improved sub box to compliment it. Enjoy!

---ALL NEW RED INTERIOR LIGHTING: "THE RED LIGHT DISTRICT"---

These LED lights have replaced the front map lights and the center dome light in the back. In the picture on the left you can see them laying next to one of the standard bulbs they replaced. In the picture on the right you can see the 9 LED's that make up each new bulb. They are not as bright as I would like so I do sacrifice alittle practicality, but they do help provide the mood I was going for in the van.

On the left are the pair of Varad LED bulds I bought right here on SD to replace the shit ass red painted bulbs I had in the back map lights before. On the right you can see exactly what happens when you buy the painted bulbs over LED's.

Here you can see the new LED's installed without the cover on.

With the rear hatch lights I was not as lucky as I was with the others, I could night find replacement bulbs anywhere, so I had to take matters into my own hands. I cut up a heavy duty ziploc freezer bag and spraypainted it red then cut them out using the hatch light covers as a templates. I also layer clear plastic between the paint and the actual bulb to try and give the paint some protection from the heat of the bulb.

Here you can see one of the hatch lights, it has kind of an orange hue in this picture, I think that is more the camera than the light, but I think I am going to double up on the red ziploc eventually just to be sure.

Here is a shot of the "Red Light District" from the rear of the van.

I am student at Michigan State and so I wanted to have some green somewhere on the ride, but I didn't want to sacrifice the "Red Light District" theme I had going on in the interior with a random green light, I thought throwing one in the glove box would be a great solution, I know it's there, but it is not there for everyone to see. On the left is the pair of bulbs, purchased right here on SD, on the right is a really bad picture of one one of the bulbs in action.

---NEW STREETGLOW MULTI-COLOR LED UNDERBODY KIT---
Bought this kit of ebay for about $165. It has 7 colors, about 20 different patterns, and I believe 320 seperate LED's. I love this kit pure and simple. A $100,000 Benz might look better than my humble van during the day, but at night my ride is going to be the one with the crowd around it. Some people say underbody kits are stupid and I understand where they are coming from, but the bottom line is I am a guy that likes to have some stupid simple fun from time to time and when that mood hits this kit can't be beat.

Above you can see the inspiration for this purchase, my previous underbody kit, a standard reactor red neon kit, was destroyed, the front tube broke right in half after about a year of use.

Here on the left, you can see the underbody unpackaged on the glorious day that they arrived, and on the right can see a close up of the bulbs, sorry about the blurryness, my hands are only so steady.

Comparison: Old vs. New. Obvious improvement I feel.

On the left, the bulbs ready to be installed, and on the right you can see them illuminated during a quick test to make sure they all work before I spend a whole day under my car installing them.

Some shots of the install under the car. It is a pretty simple yet awkward practice since you are laying on your back and holding everything up right infront of your face.

The van up on ramps and my dog helping out with the install.

I ran the wire from the control module to the underbody through the floor right behind the front driver's side wheelwell, it's thinner than the firewall and just as accessible. On the left is the view from below and on the right is the view from above. I sealed off the hole with electrical tape and leftover spray on asphalt sound dampener.

Here you can see the center console all torn apart so I could have as much room as possible to get in and deal with all of the wiring. Sights like these are really what let you know you are neck deep in an install.

Here you can see the hole I had to drill in the back of the center console to route the control module wires our of sight.

Here is the control module all snuggled up in its new home.

Some shots of the kit in action. The flashing patterns were imposible to capture in still photos, but trust me, they are a good time.

---3/4" WHITE WIRE LOOM---
Bought right here on SD for $5 I believe, just wanted alittle something to brighten up under the hood, no complaints.

Shot of the package, and shot of the install, looks pretty clean I think.

---CASCADE AUDIO ACCOUSTIC BLANKET---
I had already gone to significant sound deadening legnths on the rear hatch, 3 layers of eDead V.2, but I was still getting some rattle so I purchased this blanket for about $30 here on SD. The blanket is about 1/4" thick and is a compressed cotton matieral sandwhiched by foil on each side. It was a pretty simple install, just a matter of cutting out the blanket to fit the shape of the hatch and using some good ol' duct tape to hold in place before sticking the panel back in place.

Shot of the package, shot of the install.

---CLEAR HEADLIGHT HOUSINGS AND XENON WHITE BULBS---
Bought the housings off ebay for about $130 if memory serves me. I always hated that amber plastic stuck in the headlight housings for the turn signal so I finally decided to do something about it. The Xenon bulbs are StreetGlow and were purchased here on SD.

On the left is a shot of old and new together mid install. On the right a shot of Xenon's in the package.

A couple mid install shots, van looks so old and busted with no headlights.

See the difference, and it isn't even that great of a picture. I had also bought APC Titan turn signal bulbs here on SD that are polarized so when the bulb is not lit they would appear silver but still have a street legal amber glow when on, but one of the bulbs arrived damaged so I wasn't able to install them.

Front shot of the housings and the SteetGlow Xenon's at night, not sure if it shows up on the picture, but let me just say, those Xenon bulbs make an INCREDIBLE difference, so much whiter.

---PUBLIC ADDRESS SYSTEM---
This, like the underbody kit, was a purchase made just to have stupid simple fun in the van, and again like the underbosy, it had delivered. I am sure you can imagine the limitless possibilities, I could fill up half of this webpage with fun stories about using the PA. It is a COGA PA, bought on ebay for $60. In addition to just being able to talk over it, it has dozens of preprogramed sounds it can play, my personal fav being the various animal noises, and you can record and save you own sounds that you want to play.

Here are some shots of the install, on the left a shot of the mounting bracket, and then on the right a shot of the speaker installed. I spent a fair ammount of time under the car trying to decide where would be the best place to install it and in the picture on the right to give you an idea of its location you can see the front driver's side tire on the left and the front underbody tube on the right.

I wanted to make sure I had a clean install on this, not just a hidden speaker with a bunch of wires running all around the interior and sticking out of the cigerette lighter, so I built a custom faceplate to install into the center console and make the PA controls look like they belonged there. In the pictures above you can see the faceplate during construction before it was painted and installed. I used 3/4" MDF and plexiglass to build it since I had plenty of both laying around.

On the left you can see the safety switch that I use as the on switch for the unit, just the switch alone is fun to play with; it was $5 here on SD. On the right is a 4-pack of red Varad hyper LED's, I used a piar of them to light of the letters "PA" when the unit is on, they were also purchased here on SD, I believe for $6.

Here you can see some shots of the complete install in the centerconsole, I think it came out pretty well, almost looks like ti belongs there, and that bucket works out real well to hold all of the handset's wire.

---REFINED SUB BOX, NEW SUB, AND CUSTOM AMPRACK---
I spent a lot of time building a beutiful sub box two years ago, but I never built an amprack so the amps were just sitting on the floor sliding around and shit, I am not going to lie, it was ghetto, so long story short, I fixed the problem.

I had originally painted the sub box black, but then thought, why? Nothing in my van is black, the whole interior is gray, so in there two pics you can see some wet sanding and priming.

Another problem I had was the H-nuts. My old sub, the e15A, broke early in the summer, no worries it was under warranty, but seeing as Elemental Designs no longer produces the e15A, they replaced my sub with a new generation e16O, no complaints from my end. Anyway, the e15A did not have a logo, the e16O does, so unless I wanted the logo crooked, which would drive me crazy, I needed to reinstall all of the H-nuts to match the new bolt pattern. Additionally, the lip on the new speaker was thinner so in the picture above you can see that I had to grind the H-nuts down to a smaller diameter so that they would fit.

To ensure the the sub would sit flush to the box, I recessed the H-nuts into the MDF. On the left you can see the recessing, and on the right you can see an H-nut pounded in place.

In these pictures you can see the safety screws I use and the sanded woodfiller that I put over top of the H-nuts. Now all I had to do was put the final coats of gray paint on.

Let me the first to say, that I did not take near enough pictures of the amprack construction process, but it to like the sub box started out as just a 3/4" thick 4'x8' sheet of MDF. Here you can see the first test fits of all of the boards after they and the windows had been cut out.

On the left you can see one of the front amp windows in progress and on the right you can see the template I drew and then cut out of a file folder for the windows on the top of the amprack.

In the three above pictures you can see the routering that I did on the back sides of the windows to make a place for the plexiglass. I also cut out all of the plexiglass windows myself, but sadly I did not take any pictures; but let me just say, what a mess, there is plastic snow everywhere, and it smells something awful.

Here you can see the feet for the amps to sit on so that airflow would be allowed underneath them to help with cooling.

In these pictures you can see the cut-outs for the fans blowing into the amp chambers (on the bottom) and for the neon wiring (on the top).

On the left you can see a close up of the angle of the fan doors, this what to help to maximize airflow from one corner of the other. On the right you can see all of the neon tubes that went into the amprack: 1 20" lightning tube. and 7 9" neon tubes, 3 in each amp chamber, and 1 in the back window of the sub port.

Some daytime shots of the whole complete picture: the refined sub box, the new e16O sub, and the custom amprack.

Night shots of the system in its glory.

Table of Contents:
Page 1: Latest Editions
Page 2: Exterior
Page 3: Interior
Page 4: Equipment
Page 5: Kappa Install
Page 6: Box Building
Page 7: PIAA Foglight Install
Page 8: Yellow Top and Tsunami dist. block Install
Page 9: Sound-Deadening
Page 10: Old System and To Do List