Ford Transit Van Conversion - Rear Vent Install

Summer is an amazing time to get out and put some miles on the van, but we learned quickly that getting air flow to the rear bed area of the van was crucial on warmer nights.  Our Maxxair fan is located in the center / front of the van with our only other vent being the window slider on our passenger side sliding door.  This design left the rear of the van stuffy and a warmer than we liked when the temperatures started to rise.  After significant online searching, we found a vent that fit the flat space above the window of our passenger side rear door.

Tools & Hardware

Black aluminum low profile vent - amazon.com
Jigsaw -amazon.com
Milwaukee Tool drill and impact driver - amazon.com
Bosch 12" drill bit - amazon.com
Bosch 5.25" metal jigsaw blade - amazon.com
Wet/Dry vac -amazon.com
Plastic drop cloth -amazon.com
Metal File -amazon.com
Rustoleum white paint -amazon.com
Small foam paint brush -amazon.com
Silicon - amazon.com
Painters tape
Tape measure
Acetone


The Install

The install of this rear door vent was very straight forward and only took about 2 hours. 

The vent comes with a paper template to trace the hole that is required to cut.  When selecting the exact location for this vent, you want to ensure the gasket (included with the vent) sits as flush as possible against the van.  The tops of the rear doors on the Transit are anything but flat, but the dimensions of this vent fit perfectly on the roughly 6.5" flat section of the door.  Another thing to keep in mind is top closure latch on the rear door.  Ensure that the vent is far enough away from the latch to not interfere with the normal operation of the door.  Once we had the exact location selected, we taped the paper template down to the rear door and used a sharpie trace the cut line.

The section of the rear door we needed to cut consisted of a single panel of metal, about a 5" gap and then another panel of metal.  In an effort to only require a single cut, purchased a long drill bit and drilled a hole through both sheets of metal on the inside of the bottom right section of our traced cutting area.  We then used a thicker drill bit to enlarge the hole to fit our jigsaw blade.  We did buy an extra long jigsaw blade for this job as the ones we had were not long enough to span the gap between the metal.  With the starter hole drilled, we began cutting out our traced area, using blue painters tape to as we went to keep the cut metal from flapping around.  We then used a file to remove any burrs, painted the cut edge to prevent any rust in the future and cleaned the surrounding surface with acetone. 

Prior to installing the vent, we covered the small holes with leftover bug screen from our sliding side door project and secured with gorilla glue.  This ensured that no little critters would fly or crawl through the open vent. 

The vent comes with a gasket which we put a thin bead of silicon on both sides and secured the vent in place with self tapping screws.