Stop looking at the walls, look out the window.
Although cutting a huge hole into the side of my van was one of the scariest things about the conversion and making the wooden frame fit was a pain-in-the-ass task, the window installation wasn't actually that bad.
All we needed was the following material:
- Seitz slide window 1000x600 mm
- parts of plywood slats for the wooden frame
- 40 mm screws
First, my father and I had to cut the old side panels with the jig saw to get rid of the part where the window was going to be installed. Since we had already dismounted the side panels on the side where all the electrics would go, we seized the opportunity to pull in some wires. A few. Not even that many. Only about double the wires on the picture above.
The task of installing the window and mounting the side panel on this side had to be done simultaneously since the side panel went between the two parts of the window. So from outside to inside it is window, wooden frame, van's body, window's inner frame.
What is not on the pictures are the vertical parts of the wooden frame. We cut these slats tapered off to a point to fit it to the van's curvy outside wall. We did not screw the frame onto the window, we only fixated it with silicone adhesive.
The lower part of the wooden frame can be seen now as the window is installed. I also painted it with hardwood floor finish and it makes a great windowsill that fits a glass, bottle or can perfectly.
And now we come to the really scary part: actually cutting a hole into Willi. We protected the exterior where we would position the jig saw with masking tape (don't do that! It is terrible to get off again. I would rather use gaffer tape.), center-punched and drilled the corners of the area with a 6.5 mm drill and just cut. Perfectly in time with our finished cut came the rain, so we covered the hole up and waited for the rain to stop.
When the rain passed, we applied silicone to the inside of the window frame, pressed it onto the opening in the van, screwed the inner frame on, removed the excess silicone (Do that properly, or else every single dirt molecule that sniffs out your van will stick to the silicone residue and it will look messy!) and enjoyed the view into the van.
The only thing is that we think the window lacks covers for the inside frame. The window was sold on ebay due to the closing of the business. The window was new and we only paid a fraction of the original price but we suspect that the window should actually have come with covers for the inside frame to cover the screws. So what.