Five years ago during a multi-week cross country trip to the north-west and back, the cabinet above the driver developed a irritable squeak when driving. While driving with that cabinet door open, I was able to grab the base of the cabinet above with my right hand and put some of my body weight on it which stopped the squeaking.
Once back home I called Kermit the owner of Phoenix USA at the time, to pick his brain on what might be going on. After his first recommended attempt at a diagnosis yielded nothing, he suggested I bring in our PC and have them take care of it for me. To avoid a special trip, I asked him if I could do it myself and so he told me what to do which completely eliminated the squeak. It has been five years since I fixed it and the squeak has not returned. If it does return, I should be able to remedy it by simply tighten the screws Kermit had me add.
The process is simply adding four screws through the upper cabinet floor into the steel Ford van roof. To be proactive, I did the same in the cabinet above the passenger.
Here are the required tools and screws I decided to use for the project. Six screws are pictured but I decided to add four per side for a total of eight screws.
Here is the van roof I screwed into.
Here is where the four screws on each side go, distance between screws is not critical. I placed the fourth screw near the cabinet corner as extra assurance where I thought it might be needed most. You want to measure three inches in from the cabinet face to assure you hit the van roof steel. I first drilled tiny pilot holes to make sure I hit steel below. There is an air gap between cabinet floor and steel roof of at least one half inch. The cabinet floor material is very thin wood. Adding four screws distributes the clamping stress across the entire length of the cabinet so the cabinet floor does not get distorted. I taped threads into the steel roof and used flat head machine screws. The cabinet floor is soft enough wood for the flat head to sink itself into the wood without pre-countersinking the hole.
