Camper car conversion under $100

hey guys how's it going i'm going to be showing you how to convert any old car into a camper car first things first we need to check to see if your car can actually be converted this is a 2011 toyota corolla so we'll be using this one as a demo model but please follow these steps to make sure it works for you all right so this is just a regular old car most cars have full down seats if your car doesn't have full down seats or the seats full completely flat that's gonna be a lot easier for you so first thing we're gonna do is we're gonna fold these bad boys on down car seat foot down i'm basically going to measure from the tail end of the trunk up to here uh and see if this is something that can actually fit me uh alternatively you can actually just lay in here yourself and see if that works after measuring from the back of the front seat all the way back to the car it says i'm about six feet which is plenty of space for me to lay down here comfortably we're gonna make it even more comfortable and do a more precise measurement in just a second and just again to check real quick i can basically see that i'm fitting in here although not comfortably my body does fit we're gonna make it really more comfortable in just a second all right so we're gonna be getting in the nuts and bolts of the car and actually removing some things so really quickly most of the seats have a cover that extend into the trunk of the car if we lift up this plate right here and then this little fiber board right here you can actually see where the upholstery hooks on it's really easy to remove it and that comes off just like that another thing we're going to be doing is we're actually going to be removing the car the car seat from the actual car so we look this up right here we can actually see that the bolt of the car hooks into this swivel right here all right now we're going to be removing this bolt right here if you have an adjustable wrench it's really easy down here to remove it like that what's even easier than that is if you have a socket wrench uh so i'm actually going to use this on here and i'm going to push on here just to remove the seat like that and we have this side of the seat removed we're going to be doing the same thing to the seat right here as well as well as to the larger seat over here all right with both sides on screw we can actually lift the whole seat up [Music] unhook the seat belt and remove it from the car if you look at the surface right now uh we have room pretty much for the plywood to lay flat as it transitions into the main compartment of the car all right so we removed both seats of the car and as you can see we have a lot more space now in between uh we're now gonna remove is pretty much anything that's gonna be blocking our way in this transition from the cargo space of the car up to the front the only piece that remains right here is this swivel joint that held both seats in place uh so again using my ratchet i'm just gonna remove this whole chunk of material out sometimes that takes a little persuasion to get some of these parts moving uh keep in mind this has not been moved since your car's made actually so a lot of times it's gonna take a little bit of uh convincing to get going [Music] all right uh so what we have right now is our seat left in place the bottom part of our seat we actually keep this in place although it is pretty easy to remove from this point uh we are going to tuck the seat belts in the best that we can so that they're not going to be bothering us once we get our plywood in we're going to have a nice smooth surface to work with the other thing we're going to do is we're gonna take our seat belts that are still remaining and we're gonna tuck them into the side interior car most of the plastic uh face plates are really easy to snap out of place tuck the seat belt in there and then snap back into place and the bottom part of the seat belt is just going to go right there all right so last thing we're going to do is we're going to remeasure uh pretty much going from the back of the cargo space in the trunk all the way to the front this is the actual measurement that we're going to be using to cut the plywood so it's important that we get this correct so i'm going to the very end of the trunk to right about right here trying to replicate what that plywood's looking look like and we're actually at about 73 and a half inches so we gained about an inch and a half from our original measurement just by taking out the seeds all right so the next measure we're going to be doing is going to be the horizontal measurement for the plywood we're cutting we're going to be basically going from this lower corner right here to this lower corner right here please keep in mind that a lot of cars have these uh internal frame designs that are really going to hamper us having a flat surface so to keep it as flat as possible we're going to be measuring from the two lowest points with this car we get about 28 inches all right and so moving on to the bed of the car we're actually making this out of plywood uh so there are a few different types of plywood like sanded unsanded as well as variance in the thickness you can figure out the thickness by looking right here so this is 15 30 seconds which is just a representation of the thickness of the plywood and real quick follow me over here we also have 1930 seconds this is a slightly thicker board if you want your board or bed to be more stiffer then you want to go with a thicker board so we're actually going with this one because it's only 27 dollars but feel free to go with the 15 30 seconds so with most home improvement stores like lowe's or home tepo there's actually a wood cutting area where associate will cut the plywood or wood of your choice with one or two cuts for free with every purchase so we're going to use this area to actually take advantage of the cuts and get everything done our boards are actually already pre-cut so we're not going to be using this area but if you're purchasing new wood and plan on getting a cut this is the area that you can go in store to get cut to dimensions that we measured earlier so this is a wood pull we found while shopping around lowe's we're actually going to be transforming this pole into some curtains or blinds in the back of the car alternatively you could use a blanket but we're just going to be using this piece of wood i kind of in half to the right side of the car and using it as curtains and i'll be demonstrating that later on but the extra piece is cut from our plywood i'm actually going to be using that to try and flatten out this surface uh even more so basically i'm going to be putting this down here stop the seat belts from patreon up i'm gonna be playing this old talon right here i've used this plywood in the past as a camper bit and over time it's ended up in a few pieces uh it's fair to have one continuous piece but anyway i'm gonna demonstrate how to put this in basically we're just going to layer it in all the way back back to the car and that's one sigma on the bed next piece in and finally last piece all right so i'm just doing one more lay test before i put the foam in just to make sure that i perfectly comfortable with the setup going in from the trunk to the front and i guess this is actually pretty comfortable so i'm excited to put the foam on and get this going all right so next up is to put the foam over our nice new plywood that's in the car uh i got this uh topper foam it's memory foam off of bestpricemattress.com this is only thirty dollars since which one size so it's gonna fit in the car pretty well so i went ahead and added a quote on in here and you can see the foam uh underneath this this is just actually like a base layer between the bidding i'm putting on top of the foam the actual foam the twin size foam does actually perfectly fit my car so if you look it does come up to this side i kind of use this as a boundary to keep some of the stuff over here away from my sleeping area all right with the bid put together this is all starting to come together you can kind of sit in here and see how comfy it is feel it out make sure it feels good i can tell right now already that this is a really comfortable bed i'm really glad that i want the two inches of foam uh i could go with something thicker but too much just seems to be the minimum for me that really works out well so i got these uh coffee bags from all the local coffee shops in my area i just asked if they had any and they were like oh yeah here you go so i'm going to be using these and some binder clips to work as shades for the car so let me show you how that's done so i'm using some of the architecture of the car to my advantage uh along the windows it's very much just rubber matting that holds these binder clips in really well so basically what i'm going to do is i'm going to take our coffee bag hook it into the binder clip and that's actually going to become our shade as we go around so i'm going to continue the rest of this [Music] and like that we have a blind so i started making blinds with that uh pull we got lowe's uh i cut the pole in half to fit the size of my car and then cut holes and the coffee bags at the top basically it actually blinds and we're gonna go ahead and install these in the car uh so using this lanyard i'm basically gonna be pulling through both the hand arms up here to hold the blinds of the car with both lines and peace uh we have a smooth way of pretty much getting privacy really easily at night time i want some go to sleep i simply close these uh and go to sleep uh once daytime open these on up and i can easily see with my rear view mirror all the way to the front uh with this being on like a rope system i can also move this to the front of the car to the back of the car as needed just as i'm moving things around so the last piece we're going to use pretty much make this uh a privacy area in the back is we're going to take a sun blocker that's usually used in front windows and car and we're just going to place it up in the back like this and then blocks out all the light and gives us a good sense of privacy especially on the road trips all right and that's how we have it we finally have the car set up and ready to go car camping uh this comfortably sits two people uh if you're gonna be doing a solo road trip you can also leave one seat in here and use as a good storage place uh what i also use is underneath here i usually store all my water uh clothing and food all underneath here as well as anything i might need like a toothpaste or a toothbrush for the longer drive all right and this is the setup i've used to go across the country uh the furthest i've went is about just under 10 000 miles and down three weeks of traveling inside the car just like this i've also done a few road trips up north to like michigan or north carolina and tennessee uh with the summer setup but it works it's really comfortable and i feel nice and cozy even in the winter is once below freezing outside

Channel: Smiley Outdoors

Views: 82,601

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Id: Y9kiRfVHRAQ

Length: 11min 8sec (668 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 06 2021