15 Smart and Stupid Details On My Van | RAM Promaster camper conversion

my friends i put 40 000 miles on this van this year traveling throughout the entire lower 48 united states riding my mountain bike all along the way so i've got this video to tell you all the smart things and the stupid things that i've got going on with this van this is a 2019 ram promaster 2500 high top 136 wheelbase i have a link in the description with all the nitty gritty details about the build out i've got a spreadsheet i've got maybe four or five other videos about this van so go over there if that's the first time you're hearing about this thing and you want more information this is just about the fun stuff i've learned over the past year so first and foremost the smartest thing i did on this van was drive it to colorado springs when it was completely empty and have it outfitted by wayfarer vans they do plug and play camper vans you show up it takes four hours they build it out and you are good to go they say you build your first van for your enemy your second for your friend and your third for yourself i ain't got time to build three different vans come on now but wayfarer vans does they've built hundreds of these camper van kits they're moving on to four transits now they have so much experience and they've done it right of course there's a million things i could nitpick and be like oh well this would be cool or this would be better but to get yourself up and running right out of the gate exchanging your time for your money and expertise it is totally worth it most of the stuff you see here came with the wayfarer kit this box here i made this with my buddies did not come with the kit the bed came with the kit the sink galley thing this came with the kit the floor came with the kit the ceiling came with the kit these really cool magnetic blackout shades came with the kit and i also added on a vent fan in my kit it came with wool insulation some metal side panels some cloth top panels i'm sure i'm forgetting something link in the description if you're actually curious about it it would have taken so much longer to do this myself or have some other custom van person do this for me as it stood it was only about 90 days from me saying hey let's do it let's pull the trigger to when wayfair was able to get me on the calendar and get it going it was really really a great process to get up and running so quick but of course i've got to have a couple nitpicks about this whole thing i think the first stupid thing on my van is the whole sink situation the wayfarer kit comes with kind of a rinky dink pump sink thing that you try to put the soap in your hands and you try to pump the water out and it just it's just like no we can't have this so i bought a new sink faucet that was compatible with an electric pump and i got that running and i was still making a mess with the water turn on the faucet wash my hands water was still just splashing everywhere so to solve that problem i bought a little foot paddle you just click it once with your foot the water starts turning on you don't make a big old mess everywhere but it's such a big unwieldy thing it's you have to get out the paddle every time you wash your hands i really learned a lot from this whole process what i really need to do is get a knee paddle or a knee button so my knee can go up against it in some little unobtrusive place with a small little button it doesn't need to be this big old thing so i'm still iterating on this another smart move was to go with the swivel seats and the foot rest to turn this into a workstation i spent a ton of time here working on my laptop eating meals or just sitting and looking out the window at a national park something that was very stupid of me i didn't think i wanted a fridge for some reason i was like i'm not gonna have a lot of fresh vegetables in the van you need a fridge all kinds of cold drinks stuff you save for leftovers that you will get to eventually just having some cold stuff after hot hot days i don't know what i was thinking but the fridge is a mandatory item one of the absolutely critical smart things i did in the van was to have this nice little divider blackout shade so nice to have privacy in an instant i've got magnets in this thing so the shade can get right up against the interior plastic of the van and almost no light leaks through it's not perfect but it's really really good this is not intended to be a super stealth van setup and i'm sorry if you have a vent fan on top of your van you're not stealth anyone who knows knows that oh vent fan means people means valuables inside but if the bad guys come by my van and they put a flashlight against the windows there's nothing to see unless they've already spotted me from afar they are taking a big big chance by breaking in and finding nothing and while we're on the subject of the old vent fan here i think it's actually stupid to just have one this thing cannot push any air in or suck any air out unless you have another gaping hole like your windows rolled down or your doors cracked a little bit it's almost pointless to have only one fan if i had to do it all over again i would absolutely do two vent fans because you would actually get to be able to move the air through it seems silly to say because everybody gets the vent fan it's the thing everybody does but i feel like this van is already uninsulated enough there's already enough air passing through it through the various weather seals and the bad ceiling or whatever that i don't know a normal fan a desk fan would have been just fine instead of this like 300 fan another super smart thing we did on the van was build out the solar power system you just got to watch a lot of youtube videos make a lot of mistakes fix those mistakes and eventually you will have something that is so cool so self-sufficient if the power went out in my personal home i could just have this because i have solar panels and i can have power and i can get connected it's so awesome it's not connected to the van battery either so those are completely separate systems my van will run whether or not this is all working or not i've got two big solar panels on top of the van i've got a big old inverter and two big old batteries this is a big old system i edit on my laptop i charge stuff up it's fantastic i always when i pull into people's driveways if i'm going to ride with them the next day they're like hey you need power you need an outlet nope i'm good how about another stupid one it's the road shower up top i honestly thought i would use this thing it's basically a pressurized canister of water that you can use to spray down your body after a ride take a shower while you're on the road i don't know why i thought i would have the balls to get out into a parking lot and hose myself down and take a shower in my swim shorts when i can't even record this video if anybody is around in the parking lot right now for sale road shower 4 used once but has spent 40 000 miles on the road one smart thing that i did was stick to my little propane heating solution after i spent a couple really really cold nights in the van and complained about it in the video all kinds of people came out of the woodwork telling me to get a diesel under body heater and spend thousands of dollars because it'll keep the van super warm i'm good yes it is cold in the van on certain nights yes the propane heater isn't as good as it could be but these are very edge cases i'm never gonna be in negative wind chill stuck in the snow in the van for that one night a year that was like oh man i'm so glad i went all out and spent thousands of dollars and have to keep diesel fuel inside my van to keep it warm so here's one that you might think is crazy but i think it's smart having an under van air compressor as a mountain biker you often find yourself needing to pump up your tubeless tires and doing it by hand takes a ton of effort but if you hook up the air compressor pop they go on perfectly you also find yourself in the van where the air gets low in the van sometimes boom pump them up or let them out if you're doing a little four by fouring it's definitely one of those silly luxury items just like the heater would be to me but this one no this is totally worth it totally worth it another stupid one that might end up being smart in the long run but i feel like a complete fool for doing it was when i bought the van i went for the mopar essential platinum synthetic oil change plan which was 1400 bucks tacked onto the price of the car but it gave me 20 oil changes or 30 oil changes or some number of oil changes where it was like oh man that's awesome that that's perfect i'm going to be putting so many miles on this van oh that's totally worth it a couple things the first place i took the van to to get an oil change after 10 000 miles sunland park dodge chrysler jeep mercury trans am in el paso texas did not honor the premium mopar protection plan then every oil change is 10 000 miles so i've done four oil changes this year but it's going to take a lot of oil changes to be able to recoup the cost of that plan and every time i take this bad boy to the dealer it's not just an oil change it's 500 or 600 bucks worth of recommended service and of course they're just trying to get one over on you but you feel so bad because you're like ugh i want the van to be good i want the fuel injectors to be nice and clean i want the crank case to be clean okay let's do the crank case cleaning let's do the fuel injector cleaning they just live to take advantage of you another smart item that i could not live without after driving thousands and thousands of miles in the van is an aftermarket stereo head unit i got a pretty nice kenwood stereo which has apple carplay i have an iphone it makes it very compatible you can say hey siri let's drive to dodger stadium and she'll get it well usually she gets it this one also works with android auto so if you have an android phone it just works very very good on the big long drives the navigation having a big window for navigation you can see what your podcasts are playing your music is playing it is such a game changer versus having to dink around on your phone and scroll through and reach over it's hands-free it's a big display it is invaluable for all the hours i've spent on the road also just get it installed by a professional i tried to install it myself didn't work i ordered all the pieces from crutchfield then we took it to a guy he couldn't get it going i think we ended up going to a third person and they finally got it going oh man not a diy project one thing that's kind of stupid is i upgraded the speakers in the van they're still not that good but mostly because the road noise in the van is very very loud i'm usually driving around 75 miles an hour in this thing and it's just loud you have to crank the speakers up all the way and the quality isn't that good when you listen to podcasts sometimes you can't really understand you got to crank it up even louder that kind of sucks another smart thing that i cannot live without is my rear view mirror camera i have a camera attached to the back of the van a wire running up into this display it turns on it's electronic i can see what's happening behind me it's not a backup camera i still have my backup camera and that feeds through my stereo it's just to see what's going on behind me because i have this blackout curtain down all the time i've got the windows blocked off in the back of the van so i've got no eyes behind me unless i had this thing going it's also always recording the video footage off of the rear camera and even comes with a front-facing camera but the way my windshield is tilted it's just so straight up and down that there's always a glare on the front-facing video it's kind of useless maybe one day it'll come in handy considering that it's my job to upload videos for you guys i find it very stupid that i never got my wi-fi situation dialed in i never got a mobile hotspot i never really figured out a way that was cost effective that worked well to get my van really set up to upload videos i'm an extreme outlier when it comes to data use each one of my normal writing videos is usually about 28 gigabytes because i have a 14 gigabyte extended cut that goes to patreon i have a 7 gigabyte early cut that goes to patreon and then a 7 gigabyte youtube cut that goes to youtube so 28 gigs on a monday 28 gigs on a wednesday rinse and repeat over and over and over again and i don't know if a data plan truly exists even though so many of them are like oh no no it's unlimited it's it no i promise it's unlimited it's probably out there i've seen them i've looked into them they're all hundreds and hundreds of dollars a month when it's worked perfectly fine i just go find a place to stay at for a couple days upload i even considered putting stuff on usb sticks and just sending it in the mail to my brother because then he could go over to my house which has a fiber internet connection and get everything uploaded within 20 minutes snail mail probably works better in those situations i have to admit that i thought getting a van would be kind of dumb but now after a year on the road 40 000 miles on the van it is so good i don't see a time when i won't have a van it might not be this van but man you are so right to romanticize it you are so right to obsess about it and to watch a million youtube videos about it it is that cool i'll tell you what that first time you pull into a national park you find a spot you open up the van you've got a couple sandwiches you got a couple cold drinks it's magical it really is magical you see why people just make such a big deal about vans it is the right tool for the job for a weekend adventure for a long adventure for any adventure so stop watching all these videos and just go out and make it happen it's time get out there enjoy it thanks for watching you guys i'll see you on the trail

Channel: BKXC

Views: 413,681

Keywords: bkxc mountain biking, mountain biking, mtb, gopro, gimbal, bk-xc, bk xc, montenbaik, enduro

Id: FEegiwAFrxo

Length: 14min 30sec (870 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 16 2020