$8000 ALL IN Camper Van Conversion | Ford Econoline

today we're hanging out with John and Ina you guys might remember I had him on a channel back in 2020 and they gave us a tour of a shuttle bus camper conversion today they're going to give us a tour of a forward conversion van that they converted into a full camper van hi thanks for having us excuse me back on the channel yeah we sold the shuttle bus eventually um and now we wanted another adventure vehicle mainly for weekends we do part-time traveling so we recently picked up both not that recently a couple months ago we picked up this 2001 Ford conversion van and it was with the captain seats and the whole TV and everything in the bed that converted from a chair to the back but we stripped it all the way out we put brought it down to the bare metal got rid of the carpets put in wood and insulation plywood and then the hardwood flooring and then we built all the cabinets and we have up here uh sliding doors where we keep our plate wear and everything and then up front where the TV was we also have more sliding doors for all sorts of storage whatever you need and they go all the way around the whole entire van the we have the Ford max air fan which everyone knows and it's really great because it keeps the circulation in here we have lighting all around um and we also installed a 110 fridge again because we just love the Simplicity of it you can get it anywhere and we run it off an inverter with two 100 amp hour batteries and 400 watts of solar everything else in the van is a 12 volt except for the fridge and it's got this little baby lock because our first trip we were unsuccessful and the door threw everything out and we made sure to get this right away and then it doesn't open and then for each of the doors we have uh sailboat latches and in this one we have a little shelf here where we have our gas burner which you just flip over screw the tank on which everyone knows nice and easy and we always have our tea kettle just ready right there for whenever we want to cook but what we love about this burner which last time we had this oven which we we loved the oven but on this one we got the burner and we did it a portable one instead of installed into the countertop so we can cook outside we also went over here and we installed the Lagoon table which actually is Dual Purpose because this is the bottom of the portion of the bed where my legs are so it is a full-size bed that Ena our lean over here she cut a memory foam mattress that we bought and she made all the cushions and we sewed it and she sewed it up and yeah here we have we built um the sink with I know the typical purpose where you can put the sink out the door to maybe rinse the dog or your feet or whatever a very deep sink to the dishes um we have a water pump switch switch in the back here and Don we just installed too simple uh gray water and fresh water tanks this makes it easy so you can just dump the gray water when you're in the right location or uh you can just benefit from the host going directly at the bottom of the van when you're camping in the wild here's just a light switch from conveniently when you enter the van you get the controls of the lights another and Trends or like access to the water pumps um you can fit some more dishes in there and then we have our Cutlery drawers every Cutlery and any kind of food stores you want to do um Hardware yeah we got our mugs in here and then just other stuff the states oh yeah and then so under this each of these seats the uh cushion pops off and it's right by the wheel well then we insulated that with just reflectix and some fiberglass insulation underneath and then plenty of storage and then on the other side actually is our act that you can access the electrical side which here we have our inverter which is a 500 watt inverter we have a 12 volt cigarette lighter plug so you can have a heated blanket whatever you need and the batteries are a little bit further underneath under this cushion here we blocked out in the kitchen we uh realized we wanted to be more well insulated so since we didn't need all those windows we blocked it out insulated it and put up shiplap Walling our bed is like a really good uh quality memory foam mattress that I would cut into the size of our dinette seating uh odd shapes and then I just made uh cushion covers for each of the seats with uh zippers which conveniently comes off so you can clean the covers when they get dirty um and this excess cushion here in the middle fits in the middle of the dinette to complete the bed we take our coffee table off the Lagoon foot and put it in the middle of the support beams the cushion goes on top and voila we have a full size bed this van is actually a 2001 conversion van where it had the TV in the captain seats like I mentioned before and it has the 4.6 uh Triton motor and it's got 118 000 miles on it and we were getting between 18 and 20 miles per gallon on our trips so that's really great for having your everything you need to live in here we didn't tow anything with it but I know these things are rated for 7 900 pounds of Towing so if you want you can tow your car behind you and you can leave this parked out and wherever your uh boondocking because this is set up to be a boondocking camper which is the way we always like to Camp there are two other benefits to this vehicle other than the fuel economy is it has a full-size passenger seat which is much more comfortable for driving and traveling and it also fits in any standard size parking lot because it's just a regular sized vehicle it's 18 foot and that's pretty much every car you see on the road it's perfect now more storage and cooking opportunities we built um two pretty good sized drawers um John loves to still work on this finished build on the van so on the roads we have a lot of tools it's literally our toolbox but it also shows the purpose of an outdoor uh table for um the stovetop that we have with the propane we've cooked a couple of meal outs here and it's uh pretty cool we put the burner here and then we use the second drawer for prepping prepping the meal um this is just empty at the moment with some groceries in it but you can see it's pretty good size and then this is also where you can access the batteries here um on the four out of the six windows that have the magnetic frame I made um this reflectic window cover and cover them and some black fabric just to make it more elegant I guess and I sew it in magnets in each corner so it just pops up like most of their van curtains like that but the other two windows we put the regular reflectic at night in here we have our two house batteries we have two 100 amp deep uh cycle batteries that we use to power everything in the van and that will last us a couple of days it also has an isolator to charge off the alternator in case you're not getting enough sun or you want to run some extra stuff that might just be a little bit overpowering and then back here in the corner we also have the adventure solar charge controller and I like to keep it out because I like to monitor the voltage of the battery and that's something I'm always maybe a little bit neurotic about you would say um but I like to always make sure everything's fully charged and we're not over drawing so over here we have a USB uh port with three ports and I did mention the solar charging truck let's take a look at the panels so up here we got the 400 watts of solar and then our max air fan and it's all just works seamlessly for us really so uh that's everything we got up there but we have some more plans we're planning on selling this actually you have to check out our Instagram page if you want to see what we're going to be listing it at Norris van life Norris van life and we had changed our name where previously where we're seaward shuttle this is no longer a shuttle bus this is not a shuttle bus system man and we are planning on moving to Norway and maybe going to start a little uh van life business up there yeah follow along if you want some more van life uh in Norway or wherever we go traveling thank you very much for coming back on the channel to give us a tour of your latest creation back when we did that shuttle bus tour was like early pandemic and there was a lot of people researching building school buses RVs Vans and your video did help a lot of people it gave people a lot of ideas inspired them to get out in the road and this is going to inspire people too because not everybody has a budget for a sprinter ProMaster van the full-size van brand new to buy you could buy one of these Conversion Vans at a relatively affordable price point a couple thousand dollars and then put some money into solar and batteries a fan water pump and some furniture and cushions and you got yourself a really good budget build yeah so I think this is also going to help those people I'll make sure I link to your Instagram because I'm sure our viewers are going to want to follow along and see what your next projects are going to be also they might want to inquire about the one that you have here that's going to be for sale well this is Patrick from New Jersey's Outdoor Adventures YouTube channel thanks for joining us

Channel: New Jersey Outdoor Adventures

Views: 54,272

Keywords: vanlife, van life, camper build, camper van, van build, sprinter conversion, van buildout, campervan, rv, camper, camping, glamping

Id: TCWnFe5OuUI

Length: 10min 12sec (612 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 19 2023