[Irontent]

Hey IronTent, sorry to hijack your thread again. Do you have any photos to share of the wiring on the back side of your Blue Sea panels inside the cabinet shown here? I’m trying to squeeze every last cubic inch out of our electrical cabinet, and I’m wondering just how much room needs to be left beside and behind those panels. Thanks!!!

I found a couple which might be useful to you. I've posted them, with some other info in this thread https://www.fordtransitusaforum.com/threads/passenger-van-irontent-ii-electrical-system.96047/page-3

Good luck.

 

[Irontent]

@Irontent - I read this with interest, though I'm nowhere near ready to do this. I have a 2018 passenger van and wonder if you have gnarly van's window covers, and if so, what you think.

I do have his window covers -- they are well made, and convenient. They fit snugly behind the wagon's window trim and stay in place with a combination of friction and several small magnets. I would buy them again without any hesitation.

 

[Irontent]

@Irontent , we have pretty much hijacked your thread at this point. I hope we haven't annoyed you too much. It's ok to call us/me out if we have.

No worries — we all want the same thing — to help the next guy up.

 

[Irontent]

@gregoryx @Irontent and anyone else experienced with lifting columns--
Did you ever feel you needed guide rails to limit the bed's movement in the raised position? I ask because my bed will be raised most of the time, including on rough roads, and I would like to learn from your experience.
Thank you,
jkd

My bed implementation seems very stable — both in the lowered and raised positions. However, I don’t have much experience traveling with it in the high position. WhIle the legs seem strong and well constructed, I doubt the Figrelli legs were engineered with the dynamic loads possible while bouncing down rough forest service roads and the like. So I plan to try to minimize traveling with the legs raised to the high position.

I also think the stability in the high position depends on the stiffness and stability of the leg attachment to the floor. I used two 1/4 steel plates sandwiching the factory floor — reinforced with additional stiffness (see some of the details early in this thread.) It will be important for you to maximize the strength, stiffness, and stability of the leg/floor attachment since you plan to leave it up most of the time.

Good luck.

@gregoryx likely has more experience actually using his implementation, since I only finished mine in late November.

 

[Irontent]

Could you guys help me understand why you went with the full size frame instead of the queen size frame? I assumed the narrower width of the full size frame was necessary to get the bed to fit between the D pillars. However, if I understand @Irontent's design correctly, the 1545 frame is 60 in wide and fits (barely) between the D pillars even with the plastic trim in place. Granted, I don't have access to our own van right now because it is stuck in the body shop, so my only way to make measurements is via the Ford CAD model. According to the CAD, the distance between the D pillars is 61.75 in. That measurement is neglecting any trim, clips, etc. that might be connected to the D pillars. It's merely the distance between the metal faces of each D pillar. It seems like the queen size Freestyle frame should fit between there. Am I overlooking something? Are there some other advantages to the standard size frame that I'm missing? Thanks in advance!

It's a real bummer that your van arrived damaged. Hopefully, the repair will be high quality.

My build is based on a passenger van which has plastic trim on the rear door frame.

The usable width of the door frame inside the plastic trim is a little over 60 inches at 24 inches from the floor. The door opening narrows as one moves up -- the usable width of the door frame inside the plastic trim is almost exactly 60 inches at 48 inches from the floor.

I considered two options for the bed base platform:

1. Sit the Rize base on top of the bed base platform. This choice means that the thickness of the entire assembly is bed base platform height plus Rize base height. I measured the Rize base height (for the model I purchased) at 3 inches. In looking at the deflection of various pieces of 8020 (using 8020.net online deflection calculator), I selected 1530 to achieve an acceptable amount of deflection, so the resulting bed base platform was also 3 inches -- yielding a total thickness of 6 inches. This enables the use of the queen size Rize base (60 inches wide), but makes shortening the base (to fit my layout requirements of about 74 inches) more challenging as Rize slats would need to be removed.

2. Sit the Rize base INSIDE the bed base platform. This choice means that the height of the bed base platform must be at least 3 inches tall to accommodate the full height of the Rize base since I wanted the top of the bed base platform and the top of the Rize base to be at the same height. This means that the mattress gets edge support from the bed base platform, while most of the mattress is supported by the Rize base. The overall thickness is 4.5 inches -- saving 1.5 inches in height from option 1.

I elected to use 4.5 inch 8020 material 1545 and incorporate the lateral supports for the Rize base inside the 4.5 inch height. This led me to select the Rize Full Size base which was easily trimmed to 70-5/8 in length. The width of the Rize Full Size base out of the box is 52-1/2 inches. So the trimmed Rize Full Size base fits easily inside the 1545 frame I made which is (outside dimensions) 60 x 74.

The inside dimensions of the 1545 frame I made is 57 x 71 so there is (57 minus 52-1/2) 4-1/2 inches of open space between the sides of the Rize base and the bed base platform. To fill this void under the mattress, I simply added another piece of 8020 on each side inside the bed base platform. I used 1530 for these two pieces as they sit on top of the bed base platform lateral ("bed slat") members. This yields free space between the Rize and the bed base platform of 1-1/2 inches or about 3/4 inches on each side. I left 1/2 inch between the bed base platform and the added 1530 member and 1/4 inch between the added 1530 member and the Rize base on each side.

If you are building on a cargo van, you have a little more space with which to work since there is no trim on the metal of the door frame. But, you probably want to trim it out someway, as the metal frame will be cold if you are overnighting at a ski area.

In summary, I picked the Full Size Rize base as it required less modification that the queen Rize base, and is also a little cheaper. In combination with the bed base platform I built, it provides a good foundation for the 6 inch mattress we use. The bed is as comfortable as our bed at home.

I'm extremely happy with my design choices.

 

[Irontent]

Thanks for all the detailed information and discussion here! My wife and I are on the verge of pulling the trigger on the Progressive Automation legs and the Rize Home Freestyle full-size bed. After reading the user manual for the Freestyle bed, I noticed two things:

1. The bed frame requires support around its perimeter only. Cross supports do not seem necessary for residential use. Maybe we don't need them in van use, either.
2. There might be a chance that the bed can be powered directly from a DC source, eliminating the need to have an inverter turned on.

Glad you are finding the info useful.

It appeared to me that the Rize bed was designed to be mounted to a flat surface. The 1x2 square tubing which provides side-to-side supports looks like it is designed to lay flat on the flat surface. I decided that I didn't want to add a 3/4 plywood base (which would require lateral supports too) upon which to sit the Rize base, so I added 8020 supports upon which the Rize lateral supports can rest. The added benefit of this approach is that the Rize slats are mostly open to the underside of the bed, providing good air circulation eliminating any potential problems with moisture in the summer.

In my van, I've made the decision to keep the house inverter on all the time since I have a relatively large Li batteries (10 kWh) which get recharged whenever I'm driving -- about 1-1.5 kW / hour, or run the engine while sitting somewhere.

But, I also decided (and have pulled appropriate DC wires close to the 120vac plug for the bed lift and Rize base) that if leaving the house inverter on all the time was a problem, I would add a 300 watt point-of-use 120vac inverter to power the base (along with the 120vac exhaust fan I'm using). The Giandel 300Watt inverter can be had on their website for about $50. Pure Sine Wave Power Inverter 300Watt 12V DC to 120V AC. While it seemed straight-forward to supply for the bed lift and the Rize base with DC power, I decided it wasn't worth the time/effort just to eliminate bed 120vac needs. YMMV.

 

[Irontent]

Between the two of you... if I were going to need to cut down the width to fit inside the rear door frame and perhaps the length as well... go with the dual-actuator queen and do some cutting? Or go full and extend the sides if necessary? 🤔

Or do I just go with what I KNOW I can do well and build my own again? 🤷‍♀️

Our frame is only an inch or two from the back door when closed. We utilized ALL the length available by protruding as far back as possible. I left the inch or so space between the back door and the rear of the frame so the up/down could be done with the rear doors closed -- just barely. You can see in the first picture in post 4 above how far back into the trim / door frame the bed protrudes.

The full size Glideaway we used has a total of four actuators -- two for the head incline and two for the foot/knee incline. With the frame width we added, a queen size mattress (shortened to 74 inches long) fits nicely on TOP of the frame and, since the Glideaway top is the same height as the "surround" frame, the mattress is fully supported when the bed is flat.

With the full Glideaway in the head and/or foot/knee incline position, the sides of the mattress are unsupported on each side about 3.5 inches. In actuality, this makes no difference in our use.

And, using the full-size with a shortened queen mattress (60 wide & 74 long) means you only need to cut the square tubing on each side/end flush with the Glideaway cross members at the head/foot -- doing so took a few seconds for each cut with a 120v grinder/cut-off wheel -- easy/peazy.

And, attaching the 1545 to the top plates of the Figrelli lifts is also easy -- I just used 1515 inside corners (2 or 3 per lift leg) with the vertical leg bolted to the 1545 in the north two legs (bolted to two of the 1530 slats for the south two legs), and the horizontal leg bolted through the top plate (portion that is not obscured by the leg itself). Only required enlarging a couple of the existing Figrelli holes, and in a couple of cases a new hole due to the exact location of each specific Figrelli leg in my case since the legs don't form a perfect rectangle.

I dreaded build the bed, but it turned out to be very straight forward once once i took precise measurements of the actual Glideaway base I used. I thought about building the frame on the outside, then lifting it in, but I assembled a portion of it sitting on the legs in the van, and just kept going. Took all of 2 hours to assemble the entire 8020 portion of the base.

My wife and I found lifting the Glideaway into the frame through the back doors was also not a big deal. With your young, fit son, it would be a 10 minute job. It took my wife and I about 1/2 hour since we are old and slow.

To secure the Glideaway to the frame, I simply drilled two 5/16 inch holes in each of the head / foot 1x2 steel tube east/west members, through the 1.5 inch 8020 "slat", and secured with 8mm class 10 bolts, washers, and locks. Again, a piece of cake.

I am attaching some additional pictures showing some more details:

This one shows the NE bed frame attachment to the Figrelli leg top plate using 8020 inside corners.

This pic shows the SW lift leg attachment, and also shows how the 1530 & 1515 slats, anchored to the 1545, support the inner piece of 1530 forming the inside of the frame. The vertical 1545 and 1530 on each side support the queen mattress when the Glideaway is in the down position.

This one shows the rear door clearance with the door shut on one side looking directly across the frame at the head of the bed. The bed is in the upmost position.

This one with the foot/knee inclined shows the two bolts holding the foot portion of the frame to the 8020 frame slat.

This one with the head inclined shows the two bolts holding the head portion of the frame to the 8020 frame slat.

All in all, turned out to be one of the more straight-forward parts of the build.

 

[Irontent]

Totally doing your Glideaway on our new van, @Irontent. Looks like there's still some on discount. Any observations / advice on mounting? 4.5x1.5 rails seem like more than necessary; is that accurate? Or is the bed frame pretty flimsy and really needs bulking up? Anything else I should be thinking about?

I used the 4.5x1.5 1545 rails since I wanted the top of the Glideaway to be the same height as the top of the rails, and I wanted the bottom support to be inside the bottom part of the 4.5x1.5.

To clearly describe directions in the van, I use NEWS with N being the front of the van, S being the rear of the van, E being the P-side of the van, and W being the D-side of the van.

I mounted the bed NS with the head of the bed on the South end. I think you went the same way in your present van.

The Glideaway bed base itself seems to have plenty of steel and is roughly 3 inches tall, but it is designed to sit on a flat platform. I didn't want to add a flat surface, so I used 1515 and 1530 "slats" running East/West directly under the guideway horizontal members which carry the load of the mattress / people when in the bed.

A big design point for us was to have a true queen width (60 inches). We wanted the length of the bed sleeping surface to be 72, but due to our "surround" frame approach, I ended up going with an outside sleeping length of 74 to accommodate the Glideaway. I picked the "full-size" Glideaway since it would require less modification to fit inside the "surround" frame I envisioned.

In my van, due to factory rear air, I could not position the south Figrelli legs directly across from each other, so I used two 1530 slats to catch each of the south Firgrelli legs. These two slats probably could have been 1515. If the Figrelli legs were each the same distance from the two North Figrelli legs (perfect rectangle), I could have eliminated one or both of these 1530 supports.

And, I used another 1530 slat to support the very center of the glidway. The Full size Glideway comes in two big pieces. These are joined by inserting a steel bar on each side of the Glideaway N/S supports (which are basically 1x2 steel tubes. Again, 1530 is likely overkill, but my motto is "Anything worth doing is worth overdoing."

One could go with a 1530 outside frame, and put the horizontal supports on the bottom of the 1530 size rails, but I wanted to use anchor fasteners for strength, and liked the idea of the slats being inside the 4.5x15 1545 frame. To avoid a gap between the sides of the full size Glideaway and the 1545 side rails, I put in two 1530 side rails -- one on each side which rest on the east/west bottom slats as well as anchor-fastened to the east/west 1545. Again, this might have been overkill.

I used a 1530 slat at the north end of the bed since we sit on the bed at the north end to be able to slide back into the sleeping position. Maybe overkill as well, but I wanted plenty of metal under the entry point of the bed.

I suppose we could have gone with the queen size Glideway, and built a platform instead. But I think it would have ended up the same overall thickness -- or maybe thicker. And, I didn't want the bed to be 80 inches long and it looked like more work to shorten the queen size glideaway. It was easy to cut off the excess tubing on the full size, and provide a little more width in the frame.

In my van, the rear trim clearance is exactly 60 inches, so a 60 inch wide frame slides well inside the rear door trim on my medium roof passenger van. You will want to verify this measurement on the rear of your specific van just to make sure. If the Figrelli height was taller than 48, the frame would need to be less than 60 inches as the trim gets more narrow higher than 48.

When I built my wooden prototype bed frame, I didn't raise it up to 48 high. I got very lucky picking 60 inches wide. I may have gone with 59 or 58 inches if I had realized the the door trim was exactly 60 inches at 48 inches high.

The only real advice I would offer is to purchase the Glideaway first, and take your own measurements to make sure before you order the aluminum.

I'm happy to email you the Tnutz order and a rough sketch I built from. The Tnutz order turned out to be spot on (I may have ended up with an extra 1515 east/west bed slat) and I ordered the required anchors on another order. Let me know.

We are skipping AZ for a couple of months so I can finish the galley and water system. If you end up in Denver (maybe Colorado skiing), let me know, and you can inspect in person. We gave up skiing a couple of years ago (wife's back and my knees), but with this most recent snow event, there's plenty of powder at most of the ski areas now.

I'm happy to answer any other questions you might have. Good luck.

 

[Irontent]

Awesome. Can you confirm the minimum height in the garage when the bed is down, and also confirm that you have the medium roof?

Thanks for the kind words.

The minimum height when down is about 24 inches. My build is a medium roof.

 

[Irontent]

Once installed, we added a 6 inch foam mattress HD36-HQ Foam - Standard Mattress

The length of the queen mattress was reduced (using an electric bass cleaning knife) to 76 inches.

We purchased this mattress 10 months ago, and had been sleeping on it since, and found it very comfortable in our house.

Once trimmed and in the van, it provides a great nights sleep. We just returned from a 3500 mile trip to the east coast to visit family, and slept comfortably in the van several nights.

The Glideaway mechanism lifts the queen mattress even through the mattress is unsupported on the sides a couple of inches once elevated. We didn't find the foot elevation particularly useful, but it is very nice to be able to incline the head of the bed to read and watch TV.

Of course it should be noted that the entire bed is heavy. But the rest of my build is light. With the bed, 200 Lbs of lithium batteries, electrical system, fully stocked refer, prototyped wooden galley, water, wife, lots of tools, and clothes for two weeks, we are still about 1,000 Lbs under the GVW limit of the van.

The galley and refer cabinet (both connected to the walls and floor using seat bracket connections) will hopefully help prevent the bed from moving forward during an unplanned, sudden stop.

 

[Irontent]

I fabricated a basic frame out of 4.5 inch 8020 with the outside dimensions of 60 inches wide and 74 inches long. The mattress rests on the surface of this frame.

Base supports were cut using 1530L and 1515L. The 1530 supports were positioned to provide stable supports for the bed lift posts at the rear of the van. The front of the van lift legs support the 1545 8020 side rails.

One length-wise 1530 side rail was added on each side inside the 1545 outer frame member, and resting on the east/west supports. This creates an inner pocket that accommodates the full-size Glideaway adjustable base. (A slight modification was made to each end of the adjustable base to reduce the length of the base to fit inside the available inner length of 71 inches. This was done with a cut-off wheel on a grinder removing the excess material from the bed base).

 

[Irontent]

Our design objective was to have a queen size bed (at least queen width -- positioned north-south) which provides the same quality sleep experience as our home bed.

The Firgelli lift legs were installed early in the build. Since I'm using the factory passenger wagon floor (to keep the rear heat ducts), I added reinforcement material under the factory engineered wood top floor layer in place of the factory supplied high-density foam under the lift legs.

I fabricated 1/4 steel plates (sendcutsend.com) which sandwich the factory floor and the van sheet metal floor. Locations were selected so that the sheet metal is near the van frame member attachment points where the metal floor has added thickness.

The bottom of each lift leg is connected to a top plate with a high-grade M8 bolt from the underside of the plate. Then four high-grade M8x80mm bolts connect the top plate -- through the floor and reinforcements -- to the bottom plate on the underside of the van. The four bolts were torqued to 25 Nm then a nylock nut was added snug against the torqued bolt as an added precaution against the bolts loosening over time. Picture shows plate without Nylocks which were added later. The plate is sealed with a layer of butyl rubber.