videocam_off
This livestream is currently offline
Check back later when the stream goes live
Up next in 10
Cardboard Template For Campervan Window Install! (CRL AW1033 Camper Window Edition!)
May 3, 2025
Today Nick at Van Builder HQ, Nick is showing how to create a cardboard template for his Ford Transit campervan conversion window install. Tune in, this one you don't want to miss!
Visit https://www.vanbuilderhq.com to learn more.
Interested in buying a van? Check out https://www.odysseycustomvans.com
Support Van Builder HQ on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/vanbuilderhq
Show More Show Less View Video Transcript
0:00
[Music]
0:08
hey guys welcome back to the shop today's video is a two-part video
0:13
so the first part of this video is about 17 minutes long and it's going to go over
0:19
the aw1033 awning style window it's going to show you how the whole window installs into the van
0:26
i talked a little bit about how it interacts with the installation of your van if you have a bump out uh
0:32
all that stuff kind of concerning how to fit the window into the van the full install however is going to be
0:39
in a separate video the card right here is going to link you to that video and i'll show the the
0:45
whole process start to finish second part of this video is creating the cardboard template so i go through
0:52
the whole process of creating a very precise cardboard template that you can use to make
0:58
installing this aw 1033 awning style window extremely easy straightforward you can copy it from one
1:04
side move it to the next and i'll show you that in the second part so hope you guys enjoy this video and we're gonna go
1:11
ahead and get into the next clip hey guys welcome back to the shop today we are starting part three of the
1:18
adventure wagon interior conversion kit now we're installing windows so that's not
1:24
part of the adventure wagon interior conversion kit itself but what i've decided to do is now is
1:30
the time to put these windows in before we get to the sound bedding material
1:36
the insulation and the upholstered panels that will complete our kit
1:42
so i'm assuming if you're doing the this adventure wagon install you've either put your windows in or
1:48
you've started the install of the venture wagon kit and you want to find a place a good place to
1:55
begin to put your windows in i think this is the best best place to do it so you can do it before even start or
2:03
i'm doing it right now the reason i'm delayed and didn't do it at the very beginning of this uh
2:09
van conversion is these have been on back order set since september i ordered these
2:16
probably middle of september and they came the middle of january so i've been waiting
2:23
i've been waiting on these windows forever and it's not just these windows i also ordered
2:29
two passenger sliding tv windows from crl
2:34
and i also ordered two driver side windows from crl
2:39
so those were also on back order so the four of those in total plus six of these windows
2:45
uh so yeah industry right now lead times logistics all that stuff it's pretty
2:50
wild so you gotta be really patient if you're working on a van build right now good news is i have enough windows for
2:57
this van and i have enough windows for my second van conversion that's over
3:02
there all right let's talk about these windows a little bit i really like these windows and the
3:08
reason i like them is because they are the awning style
3:14
they're not the half bunk sliders that a lot of people like to go with those are more readily available however
3:22
the environments which i want my clients customers to be able
3:28
to go to maybe a little bit harsher stormy weather snow that sort of thing
3:34
and so camping in my van with the awning that i
3:39
have and the tarp and stuff like that you know you need a lot of protection from
3:45
storms where if it's snow or rain when it blows in sideways against your
3:50
van if you don't have an awning style window or t vent windows for example
3:57
you can't really open up that half slider and not let rain into
4:04
your van or like mist stuff like that so the best way that i've decided is to
4:11
use these awning style windows so when you open these windows up
4:18
they open like this they twist open i see the only con about these windows
4:24
is they do not open a lot but you got to understand it's really
4:29
about surface area and right here you have a ton of surface a ton of a large opening where a lot of
4:36
air can come into your van so don't think that you're not gonna get a lot of
4:42
ventilation with this window you're gonna get a lot because this this gap right here is essentially um i mean i'm not gonna
4:49
calculate the uh square inches of this but you've got you've got a lot of
4:56
a lot of opening right there because the benefit of this window is
5:02
that you are shielded from you know rain and snow coming in
5:07
big rainstorm at night and you want to open the windows keep the van ventilated it's just going to roll right off
5:14
and it also comes with
5:20
the integrated screen the screen's nice it's a metal frame screen
5:26
and it is velcroed i'm going to go ahead and close this
5:38
so you just put this on and it's really easy to take on and off
5:44
it's velcroed as you guys can see fits right over
5:50
the thing that opens it up and you can just take it off
5:56
now i haven't i'm not twisting this all the way because it does close really tightly but you can just peel this right
6:02
off and then that way you're back to an open window
6:08
so yeah we're going with the aw 1033 windows i also really really like the tent the
6:13
tint is extremely dark on here very nice dark tint and
6:19
last thing we'll show is the gasket so it's got a nice foam gasket here
6:26
some other windows use the almost like a window adhesive to glue
6:31
them in i'm open to that in the future about using those
6:36
however if you when we cut out our template today if we keep a really tight edge here
6:43
we'll be able to get as much of this gasket ceiling as possible that's one reason why you don't want to cut your
6:49
hole out too big if you catch your hole out too big that's you're using
6:55
a lesser amount of gasket to seal out the water
7:00
another point to mention is these windows are not curved they are
7:05
flat so the transit the side of this transit is slightly curved
7:12
so there will be a slight uh the sheet metal is going to contact
7:17
100 here and then right here it'll contact on the inside but this outer rim i will just be
7:25
lightly touching it's still going to seal but when you're installing these just
7:31
make a mental note that this is what you're going to end up with later we're going to install these we're
7:37
going to see how true that is this is the first time i'm installing the aw1033 windows into a
7:43
van so we're going to see if what other youtubers have experienced
7:49
the diy-ers have experienced is kind of true for us i'm thinking that
7:56
instead of going right up here to the edge we're actually going to come down a little bit and maybe we'll interact with a little bit more of a vertical flat
8:02
surface so take that for what it's worth um
8:08
we're going to do this whole thing start to finish so we'll you'll get to see all of it another concern that some people had was
8:16
the problem that they ran into
8:22
was that the bag of screws that come with this they've had issues
8:27
being able to really clamp down on this outer ring
8:34
um okay this is not part of the kit i'm going to talk about this in just a second this is
8:39
a just a exterior frame or interior frame okay
8:46
so this is your clamping ring that comes with the window if we put it on here it stays nice and
8:53
flush okay however when uh
9:00
some youtubers online diyers they've had an issue with
9:06
this ring clamping down all the way and making a good seal because
9:12
these screws are or they're saying that they're bottoming out
9:17
on this little lip and i would agree with that i'm anticipating that being the same
9:24
thing that's going to happen to us when we install these today there's this channel right here i'm
9:29
going to just hand screw one in and that way you guys can can see that
9:37
so right there's that screw um
9:42
there's nothing i measured it with the calipers there's like two and a half millimeters of
9:47
depth to tighten this in uh and some people
9:53
i just uh kind of i understand why they're doing it manufacturing wise because they can just
9:59
make this and this and then you kind of deal with it when you get the window
10:04
however for people who have not installed things or aren't too handy it can be a little bit of a challenge to
10:12
get this to really clamp down and have good clamping force to keep the water out keep it sealed
10:20
and also just makes the install frustrating so what i'm going to try to do and help you guys out with today is i've got a plan
10:26
um we're slightly snowed in at the moment there's a big winter storm that came through so um
10:34
it's a bunch of snow snow right outside the shop i'm not sure if i'll be able to go to lowe's and pick up these uh socket
10:41
head cap screws but my solution to this is to get m4 socket head cap screws
10:48
and drill a pilot hole and then tap it with an m4
10:55
thread thread and i'm doing that because you can
11:02
you need this these should have been designed in a way where you can just
11:09
screw a screw in here because this is not really i mean this is a screw but it's more of
11:15
like a sheet metal screw and you need a little bit of finer threads to get that
11:22
nice compression around this whole entire gasket so that's what i'm going to do um
11:28
in today's video we're probably just going to get the template cut out in one of the windows cut out
11:34
and the following videos will go into uh i mean for you guys this all being one
11:40
video but the next segment of this i'll go in and have i'll have the bolts and everything ready but today i just wanted
11:47
to go ahead and get this video started to show you what we're installing so it's the aw 1033 window
11:54
this is what comes with it and we got our screen so
12:01
that is uh that's the whole thing right there we're gonna do one behind the slider door and then two
12:07
on the driver's side now we're doing the inventure wagon interior
12:13
conversion kit and there's a company i'm going to pull their box right over
12:19
here so we're using this company it's called flatline
12:24
fanco and we're using them for the roof system
12:31
the side ladder roof rack and
12:37
they make a product right here it's a it's designed for this awning style
12:42
window the aw1033 and it's this inner
12:49
trim ring so this trim ring is going to go inside the van
12:54
so if you guys can imagine this is the obviously this is the outside
13:01
this trim ring will get put around this window
13:07
and then what this does is see if you guys can see this on the overhead you're going to have
13:14
the window the sheet metal of your van this trim ring that compresses it to
13:20
make the seal and then you're going to have this outer this inner trim ring for your van
13:28
and what this is doing is this is making up for the insulation
13:35
thickness as well as the adventure wagon interior panels
13:43
so once you have the insulation put in and that's pressed down and then you have your
13:52
interior panels you got quite a bit of thickness that you need to be able to adjust for
13:59
so they make this kit and it's designed to work with the adventure wagon
14:05
interior kit and you put this in first once you've
14:10
put your window in and then this trim ring
14:16
uh so this will actually be the whole this will be the what you cut out of your interior
14:23
panel from adventure wagon you'll cut out this square profile and once you've cut that out this ring
14:30
slips in side of it it's got four bolts here so you can
14:35
adjust how thick your insulation is so i'll show that above
14:43
see if i can do that so you guys can see you can adjust how
14:48
wide or narrow it is and then when you get finished
14:55
you put your window in the ring and when you're finished with your interior kit you put your panel in
15:00
what this is going to do is this is going to finish out your kit and make a nice clean
15:08
outer frame which is functional and it looks really good too
15:15
and you have three bolts up here and three bolts up here and these will you'll screw directly into your
15:22
adventure wagon panel and i've got one over here
15:33
so this is one of the this right here is one of the interior
15:38
bump outs and so the thickness that you are making up for
15:46
is the thickness of this plastic so you got the plastic
15:51
this little little eighth inch insulation you've got your material
15:56
and then you'll have your you'll have one layer of insulation here so if you can imagine
16:05
this being this panel you can see you've got
16:10
you know quite a bit of space that you need to make up for and that's what this is going to do
16:22
so inside the van we've already marked out where we're going to uh to
16:27
cut this we've we've got close to an idea of exactly what we're going to do but
16:34
that's the whole point of the video today is to have you guys just join along with me in
16:39
putting this together and so the first thing we're going to do
16:45
is we're going to move on to actually cutting out our template so that's probably the most important part
16:51
that's why i've set up this whole entire rig here is so that you guys can
16:59
learn from all the videos that i've watched and i've got a playlist that i'll link
17:05
and it's about six youtube videos from people all over the u.s and it's how they installed it
17:11
each one has a different problem that they ran into and so i'm probably pretty much taking those six or ten videos that i watched
17:18
and kind of rolling it into this video so anything that i saw really worked for them that helped them out i'm putting it
17:23
in this video but what i'm going to do is i'm going to go ahead and clean off this table
17:30
move this insulation and then we'll have this laid out make sure that you have your crl box
17:37
with you because that is what we're going to use to create our template
17:43
we're going to need a fine tipped permanent marker we'll need a
17:50
razor blade to cut it out with a brand new nice clean super sharp blade
17:56
and then i'll go ahead and start creating my template so let's get this
18:01
cleaned off and then we will start making our template
18:06
all right we're back got our cro box got our permanent marker and
18:12
razor razor blade and we're gonna go ahead and just uh
18:17
kind of disassemble the box [Applause]
18:25
and we're going to cut down one side cut down the other side
18:52
then what i'm gonna do is uh flip this over so we got a nice uh
19:00
give you guys a headache on that video uh we're gonna put this down here
19:07
and let me just double check on our framing make sure you guys can actually see what's going on perfect
19:14
nice
19:20
as you guys can already tell my stuff is very long form highly detailed so
19:26
feel free to fast forward on any of this you know scrub through it to get to a point where you want to uh just kind of
19:32
move on from where i'm at you might have already got the cardboard cut out know how to do all of this
19:37
that's completely cool so i mean this this video is ultra detailed for somebody who
19:43
really has no idea where to start
19:48
and that way it can benefit everyone so the first thing i'm going to do is uh
19:55
take off this frame we don't need that i'm going to tell you why
20:01
i'm not going to use this and there was a there's a couple videos that i saw
20:07
and what the comments from those videos of people that are installing this is
20:14
this tends to flex and it really doesn't give you an accurate
20:19
representation of where the cutout needs to be
20:24
there was somebody on youtube that also made a template for this
20:29
they took pieces of wood uh
20:35
this is a bad example but they took pieces of wood and actually made a exterior frame to hold this to
20:41
where it didn't flex so they could get a nice accurate read on this inside
20:46
because what people are doing is they are tracing this inside ring
20:52
for the obvious reason of well that's what fits around this and that should be
20:58
my rate my dimensions for what i should trace here's the problem
21:06
you get a lot of up and down movement and you have a lot of side to side movement
21:14
you have almost a quarter of an inch left to right and i say you got about
21:24
definitely over an eighth up to down up and down that's not good
21:30
you want a better tolerance than that for your cutting your hole out because remember
21:36
the tighter you get your hole the tighter you get that
21:42
template and dimensions number one to get a little bit of wiggle room to where if you
21:47
uh if you cut it out too much and remove it remove that material you're that's it that's
21:53
uh your sol you you can't add more sheet metal back
21:59
so aaron on the side of caution is going to help you out but also
22:05
you want as much of this gasket to touch the sheet metal of the van as possible
22:10
the more this gasket that's touching the better seal that you're going to get
22:16
and also it's going to you know wobble less because it's getting as much bite onto
22:23
the side of the van so everything helps out just tight as you can get this
22:29
so what i'm going to do and we're going to see if it's going to work out because i haven't seen anybody do it
22:38
but just in my mind is what i think is going to work
22:44
so make sure you take everything off and what we're going to do
22:50
uh one annoying part is this knob but i'm trying to use the edge of the table to
22:55
knock that off so first thing i'm going to do is i need
23:00
to i just need to cut some more of this cardboard off here
23:07
and i'm actually going to do a straight cut so i can use this um
23:16
let me tell you what i'm doing so this outer
23:24
this outer rim right here which is what is going to go through our hole that needs to be what is referenced
23:31
so from here from here to here
23:37
that is what needs to be our minimum width and then from here to here
23:44
our min okay minimum height and then from here to here minimum width uh we can go ahead and i
23:51
can already tell you how ridiculously different that is so right here if you guys see we got 10
23:58
and one two three let's see one two three four five six
24:08
ten and three eighths this just shy of ten and three eighths
24:16
okay so let's get this piece
24:22
and we'll give it a fighting chance we'll measure it here so it's not flexing
24:29
okay so we went from ten and three eighths
24:38
to ten one two three four five eights
24:48
man that's crazy
24:55
like 11 16 10 11 16 almost ten and three quarters almost ten
25:00
and three quarters so huge difference huge difference you don't want that
25:08
big of a difference when you're cutting these windows out so i'm going to make sure that we
25:16
get these just as tight as possible
25:22
so i'm going to start out with watch my time on the camera here
25:29
i'm going to start off by just getting a straight edge for our cardboard
25:35
so we're just going to go down here and get a straight line
25:51
i'm using a drywall dry wall square for that
26:12
just a little bit left over okay so now we got our straight edge
26:18
here and then the next thing we're gonna do
26:25
is we're going to do our measurement
26:31
right here and we got this little plastic plastic tab here and a plastic tab here there's
26:37
nothing here there is a little spot weld with some slag on it right here
26:43
we'll take care of that later we can always do like a little just grind a little notch out so that'll
26:49
pop in so we got ten and a half inches right there ten and a half
26:58
all right right where that plastic is which is our so we're gonna do ten and a half
27:07
and i know i told you the other dimension earlier but that did not include this little plastic
27:13
tab right here so i need we need to take care of that
27:20
we're gonna go ten and a half
27:41
and put my mark slightly above the line that way when i go
27:46
here i'm able to uh to make that work
27:52
and what i'm actually gonna do is move this stuff so don't scratch it the
28:00
pieces i'm going to take my drywall square
28:11
i'm actually going to square off this piece of cardboard
28:37
so
28:53
okay that way we got a nice right angle you can start moving on from that
29:00
so i'm going to leave this till last i'm going to go ahead and square this edge off where we where we need it
29:06
width-wise so let's bring this on here and be careful this is really abrasive
29:13
so don't don't try not to slide this window
29:19
uh all over this so i'm trying to just keep it to where i just lay it straight down
29:29
okay and then we got 32
29:36
a little less than 32. let's make sure there's no bumps
29:41
okay we got 32
29:51
32 and a half
30:10
i think i go 32 and a half
30:30
and this may look like overkill but i was an engineer for
30:37
a couple years and i worked for a textile company and we had to
30:43
uh keep these machines running and there was no spare parts available
30:49
because these machines were designed in the 50s and 60s so if you needed if a part broke you had
30:55
to literally recreate the part so redesign it or
31:02
that sort of thing and so what i picked up is uh
31:07
just having to just having to be ultra precise because you know you had bearing clearances and stuff like that and
31:15
uh slip fits interference fits and
31:20
for those of you that don't know that means uh like for a shaft to fit into a hole
31:26
there's a certain type of clearance but you had to be ultra precise or it just wouldn't work at all
31:33
this is not the case we're talking about eighth of an inch sixteenth of an inch
31:38
which is huge compared to bearing tolerances and stuff like that
31:46
but i know that if i'm as precise as i could possibly be it's just gonna it's gonna fit perfect the first time and i
31:54
don't have to get all this anxiety going i can just i just know that it'll be right when i go
32:00
to do it so we got our measurement here we got 32 and a half
32:07
right there and i'm gonna come in
32:13
i'm going to come in an eighth of an inch because
32:22
that was where i was that was right where i was at and i'm going to make sure that i cut on
32:28
the outside of my marker so
32:35
we got 32 we're going to do 32 and a half exactly for the cardboard and then i'm going to
32:40
come in my marker will be an eighth of an inch in so that when we cut it out on the
32:46
outside it'll be a perfect replica of our our window
32:54
okay so we got 32
33:00
and a half we got 32 and a half
33:07
push down so nothing moves we're going to go ahead and make our mark
33:19
okay just triple check
33:30
this top is good
33:36
the bottom is off somehow
33:56
actually we're good we're just gonna yeah make sure we do the outside of that yeah we'll be perfect
34:02
we're good there so now since this is our right angle our true right angle we can just come back over here
34:10
and get this matched up it's the way you match up the square
34:16
you don't want to like going like that you want to make sure it's nice and tight
34:21
slide down and this was our 10 and a half inch measurement
34:37
it's just a little off over here
34:54
okay we're good here
35:19
uh since this is the first window of the aw1033 series that i've
35:24
installed i'm assuming that manufacturing wise they may be off about a sixteenth of an
35:31
inch or eighth of an inch possibly um they could
35:37
they could wow me and uh it could be much more accurate than that
35:42
but i'm not sure
35:47
okay two and a half good so we're going to go ahead and leave this where it's at
35:53
we're going to bear down and we're going to go ahead and make our cut
36:40
and the same thing over here get this window
36:45
out of the way i do have an extra one of those
36:52
i bought an extra one just in case something happened in the shop one broke
36:57
um because i actually only need five i don't need six
37:15
i'm just going to tell you guys that i'm human i'm not a robot i did kind of slightly cut into
37:21
the wrong side of my line
37:28
so i just got to be careful there it is
37:36
so i'm tracing you guys will see right there
37:43
that this part is off
37:54
so i might put a piece of tape right there
38:08
actually masking tape is what i need
38:45
okay and we can check that we got ten and a half we've got ten and
38:52
a half we've got ten and a half okay so if you goof and cut your piece of
38:57
cardboard instead of making doing the whole entire thing just put a little piece of tape right there
39:06
okay so we got this started so let's go back and look at our window
39:14
and let's
39:31
all right you guys are gonna love this when i was cutting this to get my right angles
39:37
uh i forgot to measure this width side so
39:43
this is not wide enough it's okay
39:49
this is this is the place you want to mess up you don't want to mess up later
39:57
so i didn't realize this box was that narrow i thought i could just go for it
40:03
and not need that extra width but i was wrong
40:10
yeah so we have to use every bit of that box [Music]
40:33
back in the game okay one thing i will do
40:40
since we made that little goof on this one is i'm going to use this one to practice my radius on and then i will uh
40:48
i'll be back to do the other part all right we're going to let nova bark
40:54
for a minute while we explain how important cutting the radius out correctly is
41:01
so a lot of the problems that come with installing this window are in this radius that i'm cutting right here
41:06
so if you take the outer ring that the compression ring that holds the window into the
41:13
its spot if you trace that it's just too big of a radius and that allows not enough
41:19
ceiling area to happen between the four corners and that is actually what causes the
41:26
leaks in this window so you want to make sure when you are tracing out that radius that you are
41:32
tracing the tighter radius not the wider radius
41:37
okay i got the camera restarted so now we can take our template that we haven't cut the edges
41:43
off yet let's put it on here
41:51
it's looking amazing
41:56
these with these sides are perfect don't mess with this these top and bottom
42:03
are perfect let's not mess with that so what i'm going to do is i'm actually
42:08
going to tape down the sides
42:14
alright so this next part is very important as well tape down the side so you don't have any movement between the top and bottom that you got very
42:21
accurate this next part is we're going to precisely trim the corners and we're
42:26
going to cut it while it's actually taped to the frame this way we can use the frame as a guide
42:33
don't worry about scratching it it's aluminum and this part will not show because it'll be hidden by the
42:39
trim ring but make sure you're we are taking the razor the sharpest one you have and
42:46
we're just kind of shaving off that corner just as precisely as possible
42:53
and that way you're only cutting out the hole in which the window is going to go
42:58
through and nothing more it's going to give you the best seal possible and once you're done with that
43:05
you're pretty much finished with the template and you go ahead and trace it out on the van and start cutting out the hole
43:13
this is really good we got this taken care of so the next thing we're going to do
43:18
is we're going to put it on the van and we will start to begin
43:24
doing our tracing out and our preparation to cut our first hole out in
43:29
the van
43:35
[Music]
43:48
you
#Campers & RVs
#Motor Vehicles (By Type)
#Trucks, Vans & SUVs
#Home Improvement
#Doors & Windows
#Convertibles