DIY Honda CR-V camper build - How I can live out of a CR-V

hey everyone so as my instagram has grown over the last couple months i've gotten more and more questions on my 99 camper crv on how i built it how it works and overall just interest into the build so i thought i'd do a walk around for you guys and show you the specifics of how it works how i put it together and how i fit a full six by four foot bed inside of a relatively small compact suv so first off the platform for this build is my 1999 honda crv five-speed manual with real-time all-wheel drive manual and all-wheel drive was a combination i was looking for for a while and it narrows it down to subarus crvs and the early generation rav4s i chose the crv because it's bigger it seemed a little more reliable and the parts seem more readily available over the rest of those especially with the subarus i've already had a subaru i've already blown one up i just don't want to go down that route again right now these are super reliable super dependable easy to work on and most importantly because we're on a budget very cheap to work on new engines for these things certified under 60 000 miles or like 900 to 1200 dollars it's crazy yeah so far i've replaced the entire suspension system new tires of course we got the light bar and the ditch lights on it now and then just a couple of small things like replacing the inside door handles some window trim that kind of stuff and then a huge thing as i recently ceramic coated the paint and it made it look so much better but more importantly it's so easy to clean now i don't have to be waxy every six months it's just much easier to take care of and much more practical for the long term especially taking it on thousand mile road trips all the time coming back i don't want to be washing this thing once a week it's not an amazingly capable car the all-wheel drive system only kicks in whenever the front wheels are spinning so you have to be losing traction for the all-wheel drive system to actually get the rear wheels spinning but in snow and slippery conditions when those front wheels are spinning it works great and then of course it just being a crv it doesn't have a low range which really makes it so you can't do anything extreme off-road but it can definitely hit some moderate trails so we'll start with how i store everything and as you can see it fits in a very small area so the bed frame is in two halves one half right here one half right here and everything else is in between here's the mattress here's my water and then i have the crates traction pads everything in between so my entire setup fits in like this three by three foot square little storage space in my garage takes up very little space which is super nice especially over a rooftop tent which i'll get into later so we'll start with putting the bed frame into the car first you just have to open up the rear and then we just have to take out the headrests one right there and then one right here put that on the floor and pull up the bottom of the seat put down the back of the seat they don't sound very good i think they need to be oiled but just do that for both ends and this is all the space that the setup uses while i'm driving so we have the entire front still available we can lean the seats back you know it's very comfortable so now i'll just start moving everything around so i can get the bed put in traction boards out this is one of the crates that i use for like storage first you got the comforter especially during freezing temps you need like two or three blankets bagel foam mattress another crate and then here are the two main platforms here is the rear one and then here is the one that goes in the front and we're going to start with the rear one so on this there's two latches right here and these go in that way i like to do this it is a little tight but once i've done it a couple times i've gotten used to it put it in just slides perfectly into the space and boom this is now in and as you can see here and over there it perfectly fits into that gap right there maximizing the amount of room that we can take advantage of in the small car now i've found that it's easiest to put the top half in through the side door just goes in like this slide it on in try not to get it caught on anything bringing this down it sits perfectly right there and then i just have to line up the latches so there's two latches on each side you can see one over there and one right here we're going to latch it up there's one on top and then the other one is down below do the other side real quick one on top one down below and now these two pieces of wood are one they move around together and i can press down anywhere i want with all of my weight and it's entirely sturdy then of course the reason that the bed just isn't on the ground of the crv is so that we have storage under it as you can see it goes super far back and we have plenty of storage usually we have all the food and like utensils and cooking stuff right here and then behind that there's like pots and pans and then right behind there and this area is where we keep all of our clothes and stuff like that and so the big trick to making all of this work is this piece right here so as you can see right now the seats have been folded forward and that's basically all you need to do to turn this into the sleeping mode so you take this piece right here as you can see it's moving around there's a little hook right here that keeps it in place undo that real quick and then just fold it forward and just like that that adds an extra foot onto the end of the bed which makes this a full six by four foot bed or otherwise known as a full-sized bed whenever you're done sleeping you wake up in the morning just fold this back put on the little latch fold the seats back and you're ready to go so that's kind of the secret to making this whole thing work and now that the platform is in place we can throw in the little foam mattress real quick this mattress is directional i have cutouts right here and right here so that the foam fits perfectly into place in the corners and then you have your mattress inside and what this is is just it's a simple memory foam two inches like 40 at walmart mattress topper and then another like blanket style mattress topper this they qualify this is like 1.5 inch pillow lift or whatnot on top of that and these combined make it a really comfortable sleeping experience it's basically the same thing as a bed and this is great because the more space in between the bed and the roof the better for me as i am a little bit of a bigger guy so having this mattress this size has been fantastic and of course at this point it is a full-size bed it is in full comfy mode so i'll put my feet at the end and as you can see i still have a little bit of room like an inch or two at the top i haven't had any problem i can fully extend them this and it's been great so i am sleeping with my girlfriend in here the majority of the time and that's also been no problem i sleep like this and she's small and she has more than enough room over there as you can see even with me like this kind of spread out there's still more than enough room on this side for two people we actually haven't had any problems in here whatsoever with space and then for storage it's super simple just two crates go right here and then i put my stove right there and that's literally it people like to get really complex with the storage on their vans and trucks and that kind of deal with huge drawers pulled out everything and that's awesome it's great it's really cool especially for like instagram pictures and that kind of stuff but one super expensive two super heavy and three once you put it into place you can't change it at all uh you know a lot of times i need to get rid of one of these and put stuff behind there i need more backpacks behind their blanket store you know what not and if i put drawers in place or anything like that one would be so much more cumbersome to take in and out and then two i couldn't change it as i go so these have been great i haven't had any problem with these they slide out go back in oh super easy that usually doesn't happen i promise and for now i'm sticking with these and not going to make it any more complicated i do have a big fold out table though this thing has also been great i just made it so it's two hinges and then a big paracord line actually goes through the entire thing so it's super strong you know relatively for being bolted into plastic then the actual table itself is literally just extra plywood i had over for making the bed and my girlfriend lily she painted a whole bunch of cool stuff on it as you can see there's actually a little crv going down the road into the mountains right there and then i got a epoxy top kit from home depot it's just basically so you can have this like little thin layer of epoxy on top that protects everything and it's super durable it's been super nice really easy to clean and this table has been great so far and it just takes two seconds to put up and down which is awesome this is where we do the majority of our cooking and then whenever i get the drone out i can just throw everything across this and then the crv comes with a little bit of extra storage in here i haven't really found out what i want to use this for yet but i'm sure i'll use it for something at some point there's a decent amount of storage in there and of course one of the quirky things with the crv is that it has this like hook right here i almost always use this for a trash bag to be hanging right there and then it hangs right here so i can be cooking over here and then just throw stuff in the trash over here and that's kind of the basic setup for this thing tuck that in you know the beds in there of course i'll usually throw blankets in there but i'm not actually gonna be using this right now and one super nice thing is that i got all this tinted at five percent so you cannot see in here whatsoever if it's nighttime and we have like a light on in there then you can see in but other than that scenario no one can tell you're camping in here which is great which is another benefit over a rooftop tent then we have my water storage a lot of people don't know what this is it's about four and a half gallons of water and i wasn't really sure if i was going to need this at first it kind of looks ridiculous on top of the crv but while we've been camping this has been amazing especially for like stealth camping in the middle of nowhere you know just having water that you can wash your hands with brush your teeth with or like wash dishes has been absolutely incredible and i haven't even gotten close to using all of four and a half gallons so this has been great but this is also something that a lot of people like to go way overboard on i see people try to pressurize these you know they have constant air monitoring systems making sure air is in there and that's just not a good system to me because if you fill this entire thing up with water to get the maximum capacity for water right then there's not really anywhere for the air to go so that means you pump it up once it gets to 100 psi then you have pressurized water for like a couple of seconds then once you use more water and you have more space for more air then you can pump it up more but it's just this constant process and it didn't really seem appealing to me and then having the pressurized water you just waste so much water so this is just purely off gravity on top of the car the difference between the car and the ground is more than enough space for you to have a decent amount of pressure at the hose it also just makes it super easy to operate i have this little bung right here with this little cap that screws on there so that just screws on and off it has a little tether so it never comes undone a little bottle cap right in the middle there that i epoxied in and this is how you fill it and how you drain it once you're done with the trip i just fill it all the way so it's completely full so i get all the storage i can't possibly get out of this thing tighten that up and then turn that you get water close it no water really simple no kind of bs going on here it's just four and a half gallons of water or so you know around that you get water you don't get water it's just really simple and i've actually come to love this thing and then this whole thing just straps to my roof rack with a couple of like pull straps and it stays on there super sturdy i can move the entire car with this whenever it's on there so it's not going anywhere and one more thing i did very much on purpose was you know i have my two light pods right here and my big light bar in the front and that's really nice to have when you're driving the middle of nowhere and it's just pitch black outside also really nice for deer i already hit one deer not in this thing but another car and do not want to hit another one but what a lot of people do is they put the lights on switches like right here or something you know i like i want the option to be able to use these on the highway at night and i'm not gonna do that with a switch because in case someone comes around you know we're driving like nine there's nothing too many people but if someone comes around i want people to turn off really fast so i don't blind them because that's really dangerous so what i did instead is i just hooked up my light pods and my light bar to my brights on this car the brights actually aren't that much brighter than just the normal lights so i thought i'd just hook up the brights to the light pods and the light bar and that way i can turn them on super easy and if i see anyone coming on the corner or coming towards me i can flip them off just super super fast just as you would with normal brights so that's just the primary sleeping setup super easy super simple i did not want to over complicate this kind of thing like a lot of people do in this segment but now a couple of really key accessories besides the water that make living on the road much more doable and you know less kind of crappy there's one this thing right here a large portable battery bank has been absolutely amazing i believe it's around like 240 watt hours of battery and it's been more than i've ever needed i've never gotten this thing below like 95 and a big part of that is the fact that you can charge it in the back and then the crv it's super cool most cars from this area did not have this feature but it has a 12 volt power socket right in the back of the car so i can just leave this plugged in back there it charges while i'm driving and i can just plug anything i need into it you know we drive for on average two to four hours a day and it takes about two and a half hours to fully charge this up with the car set up today i wanted to use like a heated blanket overnight or something along those lines something that sucks up a lot of power and i drained this down got down to zero by the time we woke up it'd only take two and a half hours to charge back up over the course of the day which we've i think always done whenever we're on a trip we almost always drive at least two hours so something like this especially with camera gear drones gopros that kind of stuff is almost essential and it just makes going on the road for long bouts of time that much more practical this is kind of only if you're doing off-road stuff especially in a car that isn't super capable something like a traction board or a tow rope or something along those lines just recovery gear in general i carry these and a tow rope and some d-rings so if i get stuck i can try to get myself out or if someone else is there and i'm really screwed then someone else can try to pull me out as well uh i think that is the bare minimum for stuff if you're gonna do any sort of off-roading in the mud sand no matter what you're doing that is the bare minimum you should have being stuck can be a dangerous scenario and it can really suck if you don't have the right equipment so having the right equipment just being a little bit more prepared with this kind of stuff all my recovery gear was like just right around 100 bucks which is almost nothing especially to get you out of that kind of stressful scenario it's just really important and really a smart idea to have even you're just going to like a mountain to see the snow or to go snowboarding something like a tow strap goes a long way not only for you but if someone else's stuck you can try to help them get out of a really bad scenario as well and yeah i think that wraps up this overview like i said very simple not complicated but also very effective we can stay on the road basically indefinitely at this point it just comes down to bathrooms and showers during the summer i can shower with the water or during the winter we've just been going into campsites every other day and then bathrooms of course there's bathrooms everywhere that's a pretty easy one to solve my entire camper setup in the crv the setup that allows us to go weeks on end is around 350 400 depending on when you can get it you know wood was super expensive a couple months ago so so but overall incredibly cheap and that's really important especially nowadays i think where people are going kind of right to rooftop tents i had a rooftop tent it was super amazing it was super fun but there's definitely downsides one of them being they're absurdly expensive i almost bought another rooftop tent right whenever we were doing this and it was about the same price as my car so that's you know it's not great for a lot of people and especially if you're not using it all the time it's kind of a waste of money in my opinion that's especially due to the fact that for the most part they're kind of worse than the in-car camping setup like i said i've had a nice cvt rooftop tent that was i can compare directly to this and the setup and takedown of that is super fast compared to something like a normal tent but still much slower than this this literally takes like 15 seconds now most people don't think it's a big deal whenever you're in freezing conditions or you want to get on the road really quick that really makes a difference also whenever you're on the road for days on end and you're doing it one day after another putting up and putting on a rooftop tent can kind of get tedious then you have cold conditions a car is going to be more insulated than rooftop tent in almost every scenario even in my roof top 10 i had the extra super expensive insulated blankets to go around the rooftop tent and this is still miles better than that and one huge thing that i didn't even consider whenever i was buying a rooftop tent is any sort of wind even online mine was it had a hard shell and the fabric around it was pretty taut it wasn't like a loose rooftop tent with with the fabric just flapping around any sort of wind over like five miles an hour i would say really makes it like almost impossible to sleep most of the time what makes it worse is that most of the time the tents are mounted on top of a car you know well off the ground where it's even more windy and then god forbid it starts to rain if it starts to rain and especially if it starts to rain hard there's very little chance for sleeping unless you're just one of those people who can zonk out no matter what then finally gas mileage putting a giant brick on top of your car is going to reduce your gas mileage and going to reduce your handling it makes your car much more top-heavy you know i had my rooftop tent on my prius which was hilarious in and of itself but that dropped the gas mileage from about 34 or 35 miles to the gallon about 27 26 miles to the gallon which is a ginormous decrease in that gas mileage and on on the other hand with this in-car system of course you're not adding any extra drag besides the water tank on top i didn't even notice a difference in gas mileage when i put that on top and i measured this thing's gas mileage every single time we do a road trip and it's averaging 25.3 miles of the gallon right now which for a full-on camping setup that we can live weeks out of is super good and kind of unbeatable that's why i've personally chosen to go this route instead of rooftop tent you know my my scenario my personal opinion works a lot better for me and is you know a lot more financially viable yeah i hope i have answered every single question you guys can possibly have about this camper i hope you guys like it if you have any suggestions or any more questions you would like drop them down in the comments i'll definitely answer them and yeah i hope you guys like the setup i hope this can inspire you or give you some insight if you want to do this on your own and other than that i hope you guys enjoyed the video thank you for watching and i'll see you next time

Channel: Riley

Views: 179,622

Keywords: camper, conversion van, conversion, 1999 honda crv, first gen crv, honda crv, bed platform, car platform bed, platform bed build, car camping

Id: CtfNQ3v0dJo

Length: 16min 48sec (1008 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 10 2022