Creating a Permanent Wall out of the Rollup Door

One of the biggest changes to my truck and main framing job was putting down the roll-up door permanently. If you're planning on doing that, here's how you do it. (or at least, how I did it.)

Of the few people that talk about their box truck conversions online; Most people seem to put their normal door through the roll-up door. In my case I'll be building a motorcycle carrier and propane storage on the back, so I put the door into the side instead.
It's actually (surprisingly) made of a compressed engineered-wood composite, not metal. Also, when the door is down it actually moves a bit when you press against it. Considering that this will not only be my kitchen wall with my sliding window, it needs to be strong enough to hold the weight of drywall, studs, etc.

Originally I was thinking of removing the whole thing, but why when I can use it to act as external plywood for my wall. If you decide to remove the whole door, or put it down permanently, you still have one safety factor to consider: The door is connected to and pulled up by two metal wires on the side that run the height on the outside, up into a coil inside the truck above the door and main header. These springs have really high tension and are very dangerous - people have been seriously hurt when they cut the strings and aren't careful. We'll get to how I did that in a minute.
I can't recommend how to remove the door entirely, but there are certainly ways people have done it online. Please do some research if you end up going that route.

Framing the door first

Before I cut the wires and keep the door down forever, I needed to re-structure it so that it didn't move back and forth. I did this by adding in a baseplate first, and then a horizontal crossbrace connected to the side walls. This left me just enough room to slide a vertical 2 x 4 between that brace and the roll-up door - forcing the door to be straight.

I put the crossbrace low enough so it would be hidden inside my kitchen cabinets. This framing was pretty odd, i'll admit - but it worked. I added in more studs so it became a 16in center wall (just with extra studs)

Fortunately, it didn't take too many 2 x 4s to make the door sturdy enough to hit without it moving or anything. (Of course, every stud was screwed into from the outside.)

 

Cutting the wires

Oh, the nervous part. Unfortunately, I didn't take photos of this part - but it's pretty straightforward. 

When the door is down, the wires have high tension so when you cut them they're going to snap up very quickly and spin around that coil on the inside.

The wires are thin enough where I figured I could stand on the side of the truck and cut the very bottom of the wire where it connects to the door, and be safe. You just don't want to be facing the wire when it whips forward and up. This worked great.

I stood on the side with my angle grinder, my arm reaching around, and cut one of the wires at an angle similar to \ , and it just did a weak "pop." - didn't whip up, anything. I was surprised, but still careful, so I walked around the truck to the other side to cut the other wire in the same fashion. As soon as I cut through the second wire, both of them shot up and whipped around on the inside, but stopped after a second or so. Make sure you're on the side.

I checked the roof on the inside afterwards, but thankfully it didn't dent anything. That was it! I was nervous, but it was finally done. 

Cutting through the door / Adding in the sliding window

 

Since the door is made of a wood composite, I had to use my circular saw to cut the hole I needed. This was a pain to say the least - I ended up using a sawzall to get the hole to the right size. There are hinges on the inside that connect the panels of the door together - since these were steel and I didn't want to send sparks flying everywhere, I positioned the hole for my window just barely around the hinges so I only had to cut the wood.

Otherwise the framing was just like a normal window! 

Now that the door was down and the window was in, I added my spray foam along the edges of the door, and my window framing.

One large can of sprayfoam filled all the gaps for the door by the way.

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Now the rollup door is finally in place, and I can work on plumbing and my kitchen.

Thank you for reading, and I hope this post helps show how to take down the door if you choose to!

Till next time,

Kelli

 

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Update: Feb 27, 2022

 

The door has worked great! I've put a lot of weight unto it and it has never been a problem. The only thing that would have been a lot easier is when I framed the small window, I wish I made the frame for it more flush. I ended up hand-chiseling the "window sill" part on the bottom off when I did the wall planks for the kitchen.