Camper van conversions

This is a contribution I made to a reddit.com discussion about front vs rear wheel drive vans

This is a contribution I made to a reddit.com discussion about insulating a camper van

This is a contribution I made to a reddit.com discussion about foam bedding options for camper vans

This is a contribution I made to a reddit.com discussion about the Mercedes Sprinter vs the Ford Transit

The electrical side of a van build is something that should be tailored your power requirements. Some people require little more than a few LED lights and obviously don’t spend much time worrying about batteries, solar panels and the like. Others want a mega-system that allows them to plug in laptops, kettles, induction stoves, etc.

As my van build progressed, I kept putting off the ceiling cabinets as I knew they were going to be a daunting task. I had no idea how I was going to accommodate the two different roof rib structures all the while keeping things in perfect alignment.

Prepare yourself, because my bed-building process winds a path through experimentation. I clock in at around 5‘9” tall. If I owned a NCV3 Sprinter van, I would orient my bed cross-ways, no question. However, since I owned an older T1N van, my height is almost exactly the width I have to work with inside the van.

When planning out the walls, I had a couple big decisions stump me for awhile: color & material. I settled on color first, white. I wanted to keep the inside of the van very clean and bright. As for material, I initially thought I would install some sort of plastic-based layer – I had even purchased some thin plastic sheeting from Home Depot with the intention of glueing it over a wood surface.

The floor was one of the most gratifying parts of the install, going from bare cargo van floor to something I’d expect to see in my home. I had one minor hiccup in the flooring install, but once I realized my mistake, I completed my floor install and am still happy with it 10 months later.

The most difficult part of insulating was deciding on the materials to use. Once that was done, it was a matter of measure, cut, glue, repeat.

Back home in Las Vegas with my new van, it was time to get down to business. It was March 22nd and by the 1st of June, I’d be heading to British Columbia. The first task on my list was probably one of the scariest: cut a hole in the roof.

The van was in great shape when I purchased it. However, it still needed a bit of work to strip it down and ready it for the construction process.

At the beginning of my search for a van, the average price tag on the Craigslist listing I saw left me pretty disenchanted with the idea. I expected the prices to be higher than your average Astro van, but seeing old, rusted out, 300k mileage vans still listed for $20,000 was a shock. Luckily, these price tags only reflects the sellers hopes and dreams, not necessarily reality.

In short, there was no plan other than a few requirements. The van went together all at once with a little bit of measuring, a little bit of drawing and a lot of luck.

Over the years, I’ve spent quite a bit of time traveling, camping and living off and on in the back of my 2001 Ford Escape. This has been my dream vehicle for over a decade now: it’s four wheel drive, seats four, sleeps two with room to spare and it’s beefy enough to tow a trailer. I’ve traveled in it for months at a time. With two people traveling long term, it’s tight and you can’t take much gear, but it’s doable without much fuss.