$0 Truck Camper Build | Start-to-Finish (ft. DJI Portable Power Station)

well good morning guys I've spent the last 3 weeks tricking out my truck camper to the nines I've been using this really cool new power pack it's the DJI power 1000 and it's basically provided all of the power requirements to build this this truck camper this [Music] Overlander we're doing a special project today and today involves doing uh well you know putting this old girl to pasture well sort of anyways seen a lot of miles and uh it's kind of it's ready to do another adventure got such high miles on it uh I figured I should just keep it and uh turn it into sort of a a camper like a permanent camper Overlander sort of things wherever the heck I want and stay I don't have to stay in a hotel just stay in the back of my truck rocker panels are a little questionable mechanically wise it's uh it's in great shape but I do want to make it cool so uh let's get started right now it's not like super bad it's just like half bad I was talking to myself there for a little while uh it's funny because I'm always talking to myself all right so they put these little aluminum things in with these metal uh bolts that uh that just kind of shied off they just kind of or they just Twisted off uh yeah aluminum to metal not so well they should have used stainless well that worked out better in my mind that it actually did in person there's pretty uh preliminary Leaf blow ah I think I got uh how do I look how do I look uh I I eat some don't eat lunch now all right so now we got a pretty much Clean Slate uh to work on the uh on the back of it so the idea here is to pretty much make it like a cooler I want to make it fully insulated you know for season sort of camper so I can heat it cool it material wise I think I'm going to use my garage door panels because I have a lot of them they're they're like already you know metal on both sides so I don't really have to do anything beyond uh Beyond fit and and attach it but that doesn't mean I'm not going to you know I mean it's a good it's a good starting point so let's see what I can scr up I also want to make it removable um probably with a couple of slings on the top just lift it out if I ever needed to like say if I was going to put it in a different truck so let's uh just going to start throwing pieces together and see where they land well it didn't take too long and if you guys are looking to actually do this yourself and you got garage door panels and you're thinking these things are difficult to cut they're not actually difficult to cut I actually was using this uh thin metal Diablo uh skill saw blade I call it skill saw blade it's a circular saw blade 6 and2 in on this the battery Opera Makita and it cuts it pretty much like butter in a pinch you can also use a angle grinder um I don't like it cuz it smells like burning well it sh it's a little bit of metal but not that much metal just wearing your safety glasses got the old safety specs on but uh yeah that didn't take very long this Sky's a limit I got so much stuff so much stuff I could just install in here it'll be really cool this is going easier than I thought it was going to go these these are the side panels that you would traditionally see on a garage door I don't need them uh for the sides to actually make garage door so I'm going to use them for is splice brackets so what it's going to do is going to hold this panel and this panel together it's also going to allow me to screw the upright panel to the base panel essentially locking it all all in place so I've actually pre-drilled some screws here I've got a couple of uh you could use self tappers if you want to I'm going to position pretty much in the middle it's like a mending plate so that's going to screw that there this gap between here is going to get sealed at some point so we're going to slide it into the into the channel right like that and then we put a couple of screws in here which allows the panel to stay stuck sink it right in there you could also put some glue in there I was doing some pondering and seeing what kind of material I have uh kicking around so the garage doors come in two different sizes one's a 21in panel the other one's a 24in panel so what I'm thinking of doing is probably putting a lower panel like a 21in panel and then putting a 24in panel on top of that and that'll give me probably enough head room um and it won't be too high I don't really want to stick it up much past the cab because of well a aerodynamics and that kind of thing and uh yeah you just don't want this thing to be like crazy obnoxious or like you know decrease your fuel efficiency because it's a big box so uh that's the uh that's the plan but the roof's going to stick up a little bit past maybe I'll put like a little front scoop or like a granny Nick on the front of it there's lots of different ways to get a cat they say so uh let's just keep cutting I'm going to keep adding well that wasn't so bad it didn't uh take very long to actually get all that uh put together basically you're using it like you would Lego bricks you just basically start at the bottom and uh work your way up now a lot of these uh panels problem with them is that they're scratched or dented which you know you kind of have to use what you got uh so what the plan is to do once they're all in is to fill any Hool that uh that are out there in order to prevent leakage there's also a waterproof thing I'm going to put on top of the entire thing once it's all uh once it's all put together all right you can see inside we've got our basic structure um you guys are wondering why I have a window here well this is uh this is so I can actually see from the cab of the truck into the back of the camper and that would be kind of cool now I'm thinking of putting a window on uh on either both walls actually I've got a couple I garage doors that have Windows on So the plan to put a window there and a window on the other side I think in the U-Haul world this little section here is called the uh Grandma's Attic or something like that you put all your breakables there I was thinking of this panel for the uh the door and the reason being is cuz it's already Brown it's already pre-colored and it's got like you can cut it at a a certain section well check that out I didn't even measure it and it fits like perfect I I I yeah I don't know how that works but uh it does you have a small space usually you Center your door but I think what I'm going to do in this case is I'm actually going to favor uh left side so it's going to be like asymmetrical so it's gives me a lot of room here to do other stuff and then this will open up and uh have space here so I'm just going to put like a 3-in chunk here another thing I was going to ask you guys is uh recommendations on sleeping bags now I was looking at uh on the website on Cabella's Bass Pro Shops uh website I was I was trying to pick which sleeping bag is the proper sleeping bag and I'm not sure if you want to go for like crazy cold and then it's it's just you just kind of leave it open if it's not crazy cold or if you go for something like you know they got it down to minus like 50 or something like that do you want to go that rout or do you want to go something that like you try to match your climate cuz uh it's been on the list for a while now and I haven't really like the one I have is from when I was a kid we're just charging up the p back I was at 50% after I charged up those batteries so just going to throw the charger solar panel on we'll see how well she does it's got pretty much full sun well we've got the one side of the door pretty much attached and got secure now usually we use a level on this sort of thing but since the truck's not level I am going to use the old uh make sure it's squares I think what'll happen is if you don't open it in somebody in theory could just close the tailgate and you'd be stuck in there and that would be Bad News Bears probably put a screen door on this thing cuz I don't really want to punch a hole in this door normally I put lights but I'm going to put lights or Windows on the sides Sky's a limit when you're doing it yourself very custom oh there's lots of stuff to do let's just get her done all right it's exterior clouding time and I've always kind of wanted to do this I want to take Old Wire spools like this I've got like a bolt load of them and I want to clad the exterior of thinking Q time lapse Q cue the time lapse cue it just just do it do it just poof poof poof does that does that even work I think it only works on Tik Tok poof I think it's really cool to kind of do like a mixed media thing so like steel wood glass metal like we're just doing all of the the CL add some rock in there maybe for the holes that would be kind of neat um but anyways yeah I've always wanted to do kind of like wire spool cladding um so that's what I'm going to do these are actually really thin if you look at how thin those things are and they're going to go on the outside on this I'm going to call it the accent wall cuz uh yeah I think it needs something otherwise it just looks like a really big cooler on wheels it is cool though so uh yeah we're just going to end up putting these guys on hopefully shouldn't take too long I just got to make a square cuz it's round make it a square around and then just plop her back on and and uh hope for the best maybe I can put my rock collection in those little holes that's kind of neat anyways we're going to see how it how it goes I don't think it's going to take very long cuz it's not very much square footage but uh it is uh again it is hard cuz it's got you got round and you got square and the round make it work anyways we're going to start off with that guy we're going to start making it square and uh you guys can see it probably will take like that to do it but uh hey it's going to look cool it looks okay on camera doesn't it all right now we just got to do some trim work I check and see if the tailgate closes oh yeah she closes nice So the plan is to not get the trim past the actually I can put the trim past there because the tailgate all bent just put it on hope for the best maybe there's enough plate that there's a lot of squeaking going on oh well start nailing start nailing and see what happens got an idea got an idea I think it's good I think it's a good idea close now closes better why didn't I do that a long time [Music] ago I think that's a feat now it's way better does close better all right let's see if I can get it to get it to look trimmy trimmy all right so we got the trim on and uh it's so close so close so close why won't that close ah why what are you hitting ah [Music] come on well I think that's going to be future Kevin's problem it doesn't quite get far enough into the thing to actually latch so I don't know what I'm going to do I'm just going to leave it for now cuz uh well it's a little frustrating to get it uh to latch all right we got a first look inside the uh the camper and I just got to put like a seating and a table and a bed and stuff like that so I'm thinking this is the kind of the wall I want my bed on little more home homey in here I got to cut some windows in definitely definitely windows it's promising promising will it fit will it fit oh she's uh not going to fit measure once cut twice round two oh which side did I cut uhoh oh yeah like a glove well that's beautiful beautiful I like it a lot So the plan is to actually put a couple of um screws in the wall to kind of like get a sit on and then I'm going to Anchor it further uh further that [Music] way perfect how's that that's pretty cool actually gives me enough room for bedding underneath the window all right we're good I ended up putting a couple of really long screws in through the actual entire wall to uh attach it and then over there I ended up using um actual couple of screws that screws into the panel and I just kind of folded the base in and that locked it in place so it's actually going to keep it really really structurally sound in here well I had a little bit of problems installing that window because the jam or the wall thickness is thicker than the window extension I probably should have just used the glass and made my own trim but uh as stubborn as I am I ended up using a little bit of uh trimwood and I did a jam extension on the inside but that means my screws won't get into my thing so what I did was actually glued it so I'm just going to put that there while the glue sets the garage door window into a uh well I guess it's a garage door panel but there's wood on it so anyways I think it looks pretty darn pretty darn slick it's a jam extension there you can see the uh hardwood that's uh it's extending it to there which uh gives it a nice little finish hor shoes hand grenades and doors almost almost close I think think that works that just the ceiling ever so slightly though [Music] [Music] oh yeah what all right well it comes a time in every construction where you we got to clean up a little bit in order to get some more stuff done so I'm at the stage now where I've got way too much crud everywhere and I'm going to vacuum cuz uh well it's just satisfying to see where you've got to at this point in the game so uh again I don't really I haven't really tried the DJI power 1000 with the uh the central vac I'm sure it'll handle it right should should handle it let's see turn that on 1,300 WTS not bad anyway I'm just going to give this this thing a big uh little bit of a clean cuz uh I'm just tired of eating the dust even when I was went doing construction back in the day residential I always bring a shop back and uh just blow everything outside sort of thing cuz uh no vacuum is the the filter's not the greatest I'm killing batteries go it says I can operate this thing for 24 minutes it's not bad [Music] [Applause] well plan today is to make this thing a little bit more waterproof y working on the water proofiness of it so the plan is to basically Bang all these uh these holes or these protrusions in a little bit and then fill them and then do my horizontal seams which are here but they're overlapping so I'm not too worried about water infiltration there I did seal a little bit of the uh of the cracks that are in here so this is more of a uh like a double extra precaution uh the product I'm using is liquid rubber and a geotextile which is going to bridge the gap it's also going to add some uh some structural rigidity to the whole build like but but what I'm doing is actually wherever there was a garage door panel protrusion I'm just banging those in cuz well one they're really sharp and two it'll make it easier to fill I'm probably just going to put some cheap uh cheap keep cocking in there and then waterproofing over top you can see my Fasteners where I've actually screwed through the panel itself into the existing panel across there's actually PL premium holding that together and uh yeah so I'm just going to trim some of that stuff off and uh get my horizontal pieces all waterproofed in place and uh we should be good to go I'm doing all my flats first and my Corners cuz that's kind of how I would dry wall tape but uh yeah it should be really solid when this thing's done and waterproof this is what I'm talking about with the geotextile it's a kind of looks like toilet paper but it's got the strength of a th000 men it uh doesn't pull apart and uh you can't rip it you can't uh thing but it's it's actually a product from liquid rubber and it's designed to bridge the gap if you got any kind of uh like parts that are two parts and you want to consolidate them this stuff is the stuff to go I'm actually quite impressed with it you kind of put it on like wallpaper you put some liquid rubber down below then you put the stuff on top of it and it creates a waterproof seal and then you put a couple coats on top of it just to uh just to kind of even it up so what I'm going to do actually I'm going to cut all my pieces cuz it's not the funnest to work with once it's all kind of coated and goo so you just basically you're going to run it the length of your uh your thing where you're covering and you just kind of cut it just going to let that sit there so I'm ready for it once it's uh once it's all covered cuz I want to be able to just kind of put it on like I said I'm doing the FL Flats first and then I'll do all my Corners I'm going to rough up the surface a little bit in order for my stuff to stick a little [Music] better I give myself a little bit of a stir and this is the stuff now you're thinking this good is going to be awfully christmy being green and all well the plan is to actually make it black but I don't have enough black so I'm going to use I have a lot of green not a lot of black so I'm going to put a base coat of green on it and then put black on top of it so it's great about this stuff is it doesn't smell like anything actually smells good um I'm not sure what's in there but uh it's like it doesn't smell harmful at all it's like zero vocc stuff liberally apply it to my joints wish I could apply it to all my joints make them feel better all right well we've got the preliminary waterproofing pretty much uh done the color-wise anyways I want it to be black once it's uh everything's painted but I did promise my daughter that we would take this thing out to the fireworks this evening so that's what we're going to do I've got to kind of extract the uh the camper trailer out of the Bush and uh head on over to the fireworks so you know what you guys can join us too we can have a look and uh we can kind of give a little test run might be a little more difficult than I thought I can't actually back out the way I came in I have to cut a trail so uh yeah we're going to see if we can just squeak by [Music] here wait what my hood on wait yeah you're going to be your little what are you what are you um I I don't I'm a Jaguar your little Jaguar yeah cool we're waiting for we're waiting for it to get dark right yeah cuz what what's going on fireworks that's going to be exciting right yeah and we got like a front row seat you've claimed the upper Loft as your bed I don't I know I don't want to be up there you don't want to be up there well you don't have to be up there you can be underneath you got lots of room up there it looks cozy it's not cozy I the at the grossest bed ever there's glue everywhere well it's not quite done yet can you lay on your side that's perfect all right well we're got to work those things out in the meantime we're going to wait until it gets dark out so we can actually watch some fireworks finish the cabin up a little later what do you think I think they're amazing wo that one was neat yeah that's a big I feel like I can eat them that's a big [Music] one alley who you guys aren't going to believe what I found last night driving back so there was a scrap trailer that uh was chucking about a bunch of stuff so I actually ended up getting everything including the kitchen sink and the bathroom sink cuz I figured that's what I needed also which is uh which is a rare commodity around my parts is a handle for a uh screen door so that's actually why I need a little screen door is because of the profile look how skinny that is in order to get the door knob in I basically had to cut a channel into the existing garage door panel and then I carefully fit the actual knob inside and I kind of to do a little bit of arts and crafts in order to get the uh the latching mechanism to uh go in and out and as it turns out this thing is for a door that swings the other way so I'm going to have to do a little bit uh more modification to the actual catch in order for it to stay but I'm pretty pleased with the way it turned out all right well it's time to get rid of these unsightly metal things that are in this cabin and uh I got a special tool for that it's cool Tool Time this is the incera uh thing I I I it's it's like a tape measure it's a tape measure but it's digital and it basically it helps you yeah usually you know you're ready you're used to doing this you take your tape measure and you go like that and you kind of just trying to fudge it you're like 57 and a half and you're like like oh and a couple ones this one here you basically take it on the hard place you put it and you hit the okay button and it it measures it 13.46% [Music] quite big enough like you could just put it there and then you just have a sink and no prep area so I was thinking just make it a little bit wider and uh a little bit deeper same sort of roundness on it so if you can't bump in it you still get the door open so I'm going to see if I can fashion something up out of light gauge stuff I don't know what kind of material this is it's like you know styrofoam plywood don't I feel a little silly after all this time I've been uh I was wondering why do a DJI pack not have a 12volt adapter and I was like this is strange why why doesn't it have a why doesn't have a cigarette lighter adapter and the thing is is what they've done is they've actually made it a dongle which is actually quite clever because you don't need it very often right so what they've done is they've included this little this little adapter here I'm not sure exactly what kind of Port that is um but what it does is you just plug it into your uh to the pack as an accessory and it gives you your legacy Port which again is not used very often but in this case what I've done is I've actually wired everything up 12vt I was using a big old car battery as it turns out I don't I don't even need to use a carboard battery cuz like look it I just plug that in plug that in there and I've got light that's cool all right back to uh back to building we're going to be back to building cuz we're building uh our sink CU I want to have that uh pretty much set up in my prep area and then I want to incorporate some sort of uh receptacle on this side cuz I want to be able to Plug In Like A induction range cuz I want I was thinking of using gas like natural G or propane gas and uh I'm probably going to avoid that because it is such a it canined space and uh in the event of rain whatever you don't really want to have the door open window open this thing's kind of evolving as I'm I'm building I'm just kind of adding features as I think of them uh but uh yeah our budget is currently um nothing this is a chunk from a garage door panel it F the aluminum aluminium give it a little bit more meat meat hold on to ow my ears okay that's pretty good [Music] [Music] in the event of a tornado hide under this kitchen sink [Music] all right we got our water system set up now you can go as fancy as like putting a water pump in here but I figure I'm just going to have a gravity fed cuz in reality I'm going to use this to wash my hands you know I'm sure there's more elegant Solutions than this you go to Cabella's Bass Pro and uh you know you get like a like a RV water pump I can turn it on Trickle and I can have my water here see got my water all right one more Finishing Touch I think I'm going do with this guy is uh this is a kind of a sharp edge and I was looking for some black pipe I don't have any black pipe I got some clear pipe and you're going to notice a lot of these pipes have like a natural curve to them and you want to kind of work with that curve cuz otherwise you're just going to be fighting an anaconda or you may not have to silicone on depending on how well it sits there lends itself pretty good it's got that lip nothing falls off it's childproof it's not going to cut you and it also helps keep stuff on the countertop from sliding off sliding around just dusting off the old Kenwood ever seen a Kenwood toaster before I don't know if it was a junk pile or something like that and I was like this is a really nice toaster I went to the old resistance heating because the induction one died after like a very short period of time and I think it has something to do with either the humidity or the fact of Technology that's in there I just didn't uh I just didn't want to have to deal with that any it's not a well balanced pan I guess cuz I'm on a little bit of a tilt but uh there so I got that you know what ideally I think we should just hang those guys up there got a little refrigerator set up down here this is actually doubles as a uh freezer as well so it's kind of cool it's cool that's funny and it is 12vt it's it's hooking up right to the DJI right now so it runs on 12vt you can hook it up to your car it's my favorite part of the build the bed it's been a long haul this bed is super comfy I end up finding a piece of foam which is crazy that you find a piece of foam that's like the one thing that is really hard to find is because foam is generally just used until it's disgusting oh those are the outside lights there we go and you got just your ambient gloww of the under so you can see where you get up I'm sleepy already well I should give you guys the official tour I'm going to start at the front of the truck camper and uh basically the material that I used was uh excessive garage door panels you actually reuse garage door panels they uh pretty much ended their life as garage doors and now they are basically an insulated structural panel that has been coated with a product called liquid rubber seams are all coated with a geotextile which allows them to be waterproof double waterproof actually cuz there's actual a garage door seam there and then the uh the waterproofing is on top of it and that I mentioned they're insulated so they have a layer of Styrofoam in between like traditional campers which are like made of sticks and uh just bad insulation and they tend to uh allow water in and then they fester and then they turn into a mold habitat our Windows which are again garage door windows they're reused from garage doors and they're uh they're a thermal pain so they're going to keep all our cold and our hot in or our cold and our hot out depending on which season it is again another garage door panel which I just cut in half and used as a uh as a door so the garage door is being used as a door uh pot lights in the thing I actually managed to uh fish them inside the panel you can actually you can actually see the top you the top doesn't it's very narrow uh top I left the top white uh to reflect a little bit of heat I only did my seams as you can see there so keep it nice and watertight this is my DJI power 1000 power pack it's currently powering the light fixtures which is a 12vt it's got a little bit of a dongle here which connects to my power block that gives me Lighting on the inside so on the inside I've got two 12vt pot lights that give off a lot of light I also have an under bed lighting strip which gives me kind of an ambient glow for nighttime activities and you don't want the glow to just kind of be uh you know shining in your face piece of foam which allows us well it's a nice sleeping area up top we have sort of like the granny the granny storage area which has our water tote which is about 5 gallons of water uh that feeds our sink and we've got a chair which is a Cabella Vass Pro uh portable chair the idea behind that thing is to uh you can actually sit on the tailgate and uh and relax and uh I got storage area up here for like blankets and pillows and sleeping bags and whatnot uh which brings us over to here which uh I got another little another little three like a tripod stool brings us over to our kitchen area cooking area which we have a a cooktop which is a resistance coil which can be hooked up to the DJI uh GGI 1000 gives us lots of uh lots of juice that way and then I got my toaster because toasters are useful and then I've got my water system which is essentially gravity fed from the top here so if you want to wash your hands or whatnot you can actually turn your water on and it drains out the bottom of the truck can you see that down here I have a 12vt refrigerator we've got some area for some future consideration we have our power pack uh under here which is uh is powering the whole thing and uh I got my gold pan supplies under here I may at a later date uh decide to build some sort of shelving down here to house maybe clothing yeah we got a center post that allows me to hold up my uh my countertop and then I've got some pots and pans hung up and if you've ever had a cabin the idea is to hang them up so the mice don't get in and uh decide to poop in them something that it's missing maybe something that I overlooked be sure to add it in the uh in the comments below but uh anyways I hope you guys enjoyed this one I really enjoyed making it and uh join me on the next one

Channel: Kevin Builds (Modern Self Reliance)

Views: 38,080

Keywords: building, tools, hand tools, power tools, sawmill, cabin construction, how to build a cabin, tiny house, forest house, small house, log cabin, construction, cabin design, sawing, cutting wood, off grid, homestead, cottage, tiny cabin, self reliance, solar powered house, small home, axe, saw, dji battery, battery review, dji power pack, truck camper, diy truck camper, car camping, camp, truck camping

Id: 0PVOBvspLBg

Length: 31min 59sec (1919 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 13 2024