DIY Pacifica Minivan Camper - Sleeps 4, kitchen, roof top tent, solar + toilet for family roadtrips

[Music] hey everyone i've never been so excited for a video this is my chrysler pacifica 2020 all-wheel drive camper that's right it is a full camper van with kitchen fridge microwave utensil storage running water and 10 gallon storage tank huge pullout drawer pantries really nice countertop that i can use for cooking on the road and best of all the shelf pulls out and converts into a full-size bed at night so we can sleep two inside and two on the roof with this really great rooftop tent from gfc on the top of the tent there's 160 watts of solar there's a thousand watts of lithium battery a hidden toilet a screen room and all the comforts of home and once it was built well there's nothing to do but hit the road so we did a 7 000 mile road trip from new england all the way out to the pacific coast highway and along the way we saw some amazing sights from yosemite kings canyon sequoia and the whole time we stayed in state and national parks and we cooked out of the car we slept in it and everything worked amazingly well what i wanted to do on this build is make something that was roughly equivalent to what you get in a westie but in a more reliable package and without the cost of an additional vehicle so we wanted to build a sleep in the car or on the roof and we wanted to have a kitchen and some good organization but in a minivan without a pop top you really can't have the kitchen inside and i actually prefer the style of kitchen in a teardrop camper where you stand outside and you have a lot more room for all of your gear so i like to think of this as my little modern day west e that i can take out whenever i want and have a standard minivan all right well let's start with the kitchen so this kitchen is so functional we can pull over on the side of the road make a quick meal and be on our way in just a few minutes now compared to last year's video on my suv camper this is way more spacious and functional it has a bunch of drawers to keep everything organized on the left hand side a microwave and a really nice fridge underneath we have lots of storage and i'll get into that a little bit later and there's this really great pull-out countertop that is really massive and super stable now this counter is made of a funky material it is corrugated plastic with fiberglass on the top and bottom and it's incredibly lightweight and you can't have a kitchen without running water and so just like i did in my previous camper i'm using one of these battery powered pumps these are an all-in-one unit which are fantastic you just charge them up with usb and they have a built-in battery and pump and so you can just snap it open hit a button and fill up your water bottles or your pots and get cooking water is supplied to the faucet through a 10 gallon fresh water tank located on the floor there's just a simple silicon tubing from the water tank that goes up into the back of the faucet now to keep the silicon tubing from getting all dirty i've covered it with this woven sheath which works really well and it just looks super sharp and i chose this faucet because of the modern design and because the faucet itself will fold down and i really like the usbc charging and simple controls just one nice button on the top that's pretty clicky now these are designed to sit on a five gallon water bottle and i had lots of people asking how do you attach them and the simplest way i figured out is to use a pvc pipe and you take a piece of wood and basically wedge it into the bottom and put a little set screw through the pvc and that will allow you to screw a large ceramic magnet to the bottom of the pvc and from there you can basically just slide the pvc pipe into the faucet they friction fit really well and then after that i just took a little bit of felt tape and you'll see a lot of that in this project i put it over the magnet just to make sure i don't scratch anything up and to magnetize it to the countertop i got this big round piece of steel from amazon i drilled a hole in the middle for a screw and basically just screw that right into the countertop like so and then you can just attach the faucet magnetically and this is extremely strong this is much stronger than the previous approach where i hot glued a bunch of small magnets and the cool thing is now you can rotate the faucet in any direction that you want you can flip it open closed and it's tall enough that you can use a full-sized water bottle and fill it right up [Music] moving on let's talk about the fridge this is the iceco jp 40 that i reviewed earlier in the year and i actually bought it for this project i have it installed on a slider isco makes a slider that works really well for this unit and 40 liters may not seem like a very large fridge but for a family of four we're very comfortably living out of this for three weeks we were able to have fresh produce and milk and all that good stuff and of course drinks so this worked out really well for us i never had a single problem with this ice co it worked beautifully in the heat and to stay cool we really wanted to have ice and we figured out that we could use a container like this fill it up with ice put it at the bottom of the fridge and it would actually keep the ice solid for a full 24 hours now this thing is super optimized in terms of fitting in the car you can see if you fully open up the slider the door just barely fits in the little crevice in the window and i was pretty paranoid that the fridge would conk out one day and we'd lose all of our food so i added this thermometer and that actually has an alarm [Music] next up is the microwave now i was really interested in having a microwave in this build because it's so useful for things like leftovers and just heating up a cup of coffee without dragging out the stove but i only had 15 inches to work with and it's really hard finding a microwave that small luckily i was able to find this sharp carousel microwave from the 90s on ebay and this thing worked fantastically so i really like this i know you're going to make fun of me for having a microwave but it really did make our trip so much better and behind the fridge i have this pegboard and this acts as a headboard for the bed which we'll get to a little bit later and it's all part of this ikea system so i have these little metal shelves and on the shelf on the top i have these different spice jars and these are magnetic and i actually use these in my previous build and then there's a small shelf below where i can put canned goods or jams and things like that again just trying to pack as much as i can in this small space so the right hand side is a fire extinguisher which is extremely important to have in a camper and that just again slides into one of these small shelves as part of the system beneath all the shelves there's a little tiny space and i put an extra can of butane there and that's held in place with this wooden block and on top of that block is my butane stove so that just sits there nicely it's really easy to grab so there's enough space right behind the microwave to fit quite a bit of stuff [Music] speaking of stuff i have a lot of different camping things so to keep it organized i have these three stackable drawers i got from the container store and i just kind of macgyvered them closed with these two small bungees that came as part of the ikea system and to attach both the microwave and the drawers i just simply used compression straps so these are just really tightly compressed down no need for screws super super easy to put in and take out so let's walk through what's in each of these drawers the bottom one has these small containers that have things like hot sauce packets and uh sugar packets and things like that i also have a bottle of olive oil and a pepper grinder and these are just regular grocery bags that we use for trash i have a lighter and some larger utensils and then obviously my camp cook set the middle drawer is all utensils so i have measuring cups and spoons as well as important things like a can opener pizza cutter wine opener spoons things like that and then your typical utensils and you gotta have sporks and i also have a bunch of knives for food prep and some tongs are really helpful when you're cooking in fires all right so let's take a look at the top drawer so first of all you're always wiping things down so i had this large camp towel and i cut it into small pieces and that worked really well for cleaning up around the kitchen area we also have a pile of paper plates and bowls as well as real ones and some foil for cooking in the fire and then all of our detergent and all that kind of good stuff so everything is really well organized here you're never digging through bins and this is the same sink that i used in my suv build and that one i did a fancy thing where i cut a hole in the counter and you could stick it in there in this build i didn't want to mess with the structural integrity of things so i just basically put this on the counter and used it as is and it worked great for that so super low tech and really easy there's a few things that i kind of wedged in here on the side behind the faucet so i had a little collapsible silicon bowl and a strainer and then i also have two cutting boards so very nice easy way to sort of tuck those out of the way and have them be very accessible [Music] a big part of this project is figuring out where to put real world storage for all kinds of different things so that it's easy to live out of this and so one of the really important things here is having a good pantry system and i borrowed the same under bed storage bins that i had previously in my suv build i beefed them up a little bit and you can see they store a ton of food so this system you can fit food for a family of four no problem at all i have bread and chips and pasta and all sorts of stuff on the left hand side and on the right hand side well that's mostly for the adult thing so a lot of coffee gear here we were using the aeropress and this little electric kettle and we also have some booze and mixers and in the back here we have all sorts of things like camp meals and paper towels and cleaning supplies and all that stuff so you can see there's a tremendous amount of space under here and in fact there's an entire another level of storage underneath those bins that cover it later in the video [Music] but let's talk about the counters so this design is ultra simple it's really just a piece of material here that floats in this aluminum c channel and i've placed felt tape on the top bottom and side so this thing kind of glides really easily forward and backward and you'll see why it has to go backward in a bit when it converts into a bed and this is something i used all the time to cook on so i could just grab my butane stove throw it on the countertop and because the counter can be pulled in and out you can adjust how much space you have and i found i could open drawers open up the fridge have something cooking and have plenty of room to work which is pretty unusual for such a small setup and when i was designing the kitchen i pretty much modeled it after the teardrop campers i really think those are a great use of space and we cooked a lot of good meals in this kitchen uh and one thing that was always true is we'd end up rolling in and it would be getting dark and we needed to cook so i definitely am happy that i put these led strip lights they're just usb and they're on the inside of the hatch and they give me really great light at night so cooking was very comfortable back here so let's talk about sleeping arrangements so in order to fit four people in the vehicle we had to have two on the roof in a tent and two inside the car for the roof top 10 i did a lot of research and i ended up going with this go fast camper or gfc super light tent this thing is great it's super lightweight and relatively inexpensive and to set it up all you have to do is unzip both sides and you're pretty much halfway there the next stage is just to grab the ladder that we usually stow behind one of the seats it's a telescoping ladder you just pull it up to the right height that you need lean it against the tent and they have this really simple clip system where you just basically clip the ladder on and tighten it down and at that point all you have to do is raise it up crawl inside and there are two telescoping poles uh you essentially insert them at the bottom stretch them to the top and put a piece of velcro on it and do on both sides and you're done so setup only takes a couple minutes and one of the real killer features with the super light is we could fit four sleeping bags and two or three pillows in it so that wasn't taking up space in the car there are screens and nice burly waterproof layers on the outside that you can zip and i got the optional air mattress which was surprisingly comfortable i really like this thing and i am five nine and you can see i pretty much use the whole length so this is not great if you're super tall overhead there's some really nice little storage compartments so i had some of these automatic stick up lights and this little solar light and a fan and i could leave all of those in the pockets even when i closed it up so i really appreciated the storage in this thing now i slept in the rooftop tent most nights during the trip and i really enjoyed it depending on how you have the flaps arranged you can get some really nice airflow and it was really nice being in nature it felt like you were in a tree house so let's convert the back seat into a bed that sleeps too so basically we have this set up with a tri-fold mattress in the back and these two duffel bags that contain a lot of gear so we can just grab those two duffel bags take the ladder out and grab the window coverings and get ready to make the bed and this bed design is honestly the thing i'm most excited about in this build it's super elegant so basically you just fold the seats forward and then you grab the counter piece and you slide it forward on top of the seats until it drops out of its track and then slide it up into this top track and there is this one small filler piece that just makes the base that much wider and then you essentially just slide the seats back and at this point you have a super sturdy base this thing can support three adults no problem and then you just grab the mattress and pull it forward and with those few quick moves you now have a full-size mattress with four inches of memory foam and this thing is crazy comfortable and i'm really proud about how strong this thing is so the way that these slot in is into a six inch deep pocket with aluminum slabs on the top and bottom that sandwich it so there is absolutely no movement it's super burly you can have four people on this bed and it doesn't even creak and the final touches are just to grab the sleeping bags out of the rooftop tent throw them in here and grab some pillows and you're fully set up so we could put this together in just a couple minutes each evening and break it down just as quickly in the morning and the bed in here is a full six foot bed so it's definitely a little roomier than the tent now if you have your doubts about sleeping in a car i would say this is extremely comfortable we've got a memory foam mattress really great pillows comfy sleeping bags everyone in my family slept through the night no problems at all as far as headroom goes well it's a little bit cozy but it does the job so we have a comfortable bed but we actually need some privacy and darkness so i invested in a full set of weathertech window covers so these are pre-cut for your vehicle and there's a black side and a shiny side and i found that these worked out really well you just drop them in and you're good to go but with all that darkness you need some light so i use the same usb strip lights as i did on the back hatch for the kitchen and just basically gaffers tape them to the interior and that gives me a really nice warm glow in the evenings so you can read in here and it just feels cozy and one other feature i really like is this headboard again this is just made from some ikea pegboard stuck into a slot but i think it really makes it feel much more finished and modern on this side there's some additional power that's accessible from the bed so you have ac plugs as well as usb and i thought i'd give you a view of what the kitchen looks like at night and you really get a sense of how well these strips illuminate this whole kitchen setup so again just one 10 led strip light from amazon plugged into usb and you have really nice even lighting so you can cook at night you can do contact lenses or whatever else you need to do you can see it's super easy to see what's going on and we had such a great time sleeping in the camper you know no matter if the weather was good or bad we always felt dry cozy and at home in the mornings we'd wake up refreshed and would be able to enjoy all the creature comforts hot oatmeal out of the microwave nice espresso and all we have to do is grab the gear off the bed fold up the mattress grab the window coverings stuff them into the mattress drop the seats grab the filler piece take the counter and stuff it back into its home and then just put the seats back up it's that easy [Music] the sleeping bags and pillows get stowed in the rooftop tent and the tent is pretty easy to take down you just take the poles out tuck all the material back in zip it up all the way around close some straps take the ladder away and you're ready to hit the road if you're going to be living out of your car for a few weeks it's important to have a really good organization system so behind the seats we had spots for things like extra pillows and we knew we were going to be going through hot areas so we bought four of these ryobi fans these use the standard 18 volt batteries and these things work amazing they really helped us sleep at night and you're probably wondering with four people traveling where do you put all your clothes and we knew we weren't gonna have room for luggage so we have these organizer cubes so each person in the family had their own organizer cube so you can put your toiletry kit you can put your packing cubes i had some little bags that had first aid and all these other things and so everyone basically used these organizer cubes as our luggage and this surprisingly worked out really well everyone was able to fit all the gear they needed as long as you were being really careful about what you chose to bring now there is some other bulky things and what we didn't want to do is load this up so we couldn't see out the rear window because a lot of people talked about that in my previous build and so what i came up with is just these two duffel bags and the duffel bags contain a lot of stuff so this bag here has towels and all of our insulated jackets and rain jackets [Music] this blue bag contains all sorts of things there's a tablecloth in here which is helpful for dirty picnic tables i also had a pair of these get out gear insulated blankets so one is synthetic and one is down the blue is the synthetic one i kind of like that one more but i wanted to get one of each to see which one i preferred it doesn't quite cover the entire bed but this was really helpful to get a little more warmth at night when you're sleeping or if you're just hanging out around the fire so these were a really great compact way of adding extra warmth we also did lots of hiking so we had these day packs i have an osprey and a gregory both of those have hydration bladders so all of those fit into this bag i brought a pair of hiking poles these black diamond ones are great and i also brought a dry bag and there were a bunch of hats in here so we could fit a lot of gear into those two bags and the main thing is it kept everything tidy and allowed me to see out the rear window so i also packed this little folding step stool this thing folds completely flat and could be wedged in the side and i use this because i needed to be able to access the rooftop tent sometimes from a weird angle so that came in handy and on the back of the seats both of my kids got these big organizers which allowed them to put their ipads and all their random stuff so they could stay organized but still have all the important things that you need on the road and there was so much space in here i was able to use that for storing these window screens so these are by a company called skeeterbeater you can type in your car and they will recommend which ones to get they're just really nicely made screens with magnets all their way around the perimeter and so at night if you need some fresh air you can leave the windows open and you can magnetize these to your windows and get some nice fresh air now it's kind of interesting because on a car like this there's a surprising amount of plastic but you can usually still find a spot where it's magnetic and you can make it all work it's not a perfect fit but i would say these are a really great thing to have it's so important to have airflow in a hot climate another thing i added were these wind deflectors from weathertech these allow you to keep your windows cracked and still keep rain or thieves from getting into your car speaking of rain and bugs we wanted to give ourselves the option to have a screen room and i was looking around at options and this one is pretty cool this is the tail veil and i bought it because it's super compact but actually gives you some very usable space at the back of your car and this stow is underneath the seat and the nice thing is it has no poles at all it just uses these rubberized hooks you attach them to the two rear wheels and then you essentially just pull it over the back of your car and it stays put because it has this rubberized coating so it's basically like a shelf liner and once you get it on there you can just open your rear tailgate and you have yourself an instant screen room there are zippered entrances on both sides and in my car there's plenty of headroom now the height is going to be determined by the height of your tailgate but in the case of the pacifica it's really generous the floor of this is like a standard tint so it has kind of that tarp kind of material now the biggest downside is the depth of this is also determined by the depth of your tailgate and i found it wasn't really as deep as i wanted it to be so i made these funny little things that basically are just a stick with a ping-pong ball at the end and they friction fit onto the sides of my tailgate and it gives me at least two or two and a half feet of additional depth and this makes the usable space much much better with the tail veil i also have some camp furniture stashed away in the car so on the left hand side i have this low table which really comes in handy for putting drinks and things on and then under the seats i have a pair of camp chairs so on this side i have these click chairs the click chairs are really kind of cool they almost set up like an umbrella you just undo it flip them around and then pull the different sections out and it's all ready to go and breaking it down is basically the reverse of that it's a little trickier to break down than set up but they're pretty solid underneath the other passenger seat i have a pair of these helinox chair ones these are really cool they're like a backpacking chair and they're very very lightweight they definitely require a little more work to set up but i find them to be a little more comfortable now these aren't cheap but they are really really comfortable and lightweight and compact which is a tricky combination of features you can definitely pick up less expensive ones on amazon or through rei so the main thing here is that you know you can have a nice set of outdoor furniture i have four chairs and a table here and they all fit in a really tiny area in the car they're just kind of wedged under the seats so you don't need a lot of space if you want to have some comfortable outdoor seating and this all fits in the screen room which is really really nice it's cozy but it all fits now believe it or not the tour is not over i haven't even shown you the basement that's right there's a whole nother level beneath the pantry that has our water tank our electrical system tools and all sorts of other fun things so like i said there's a 10 gallon freshwater tank and the way you fill it is through this rv filler hose system and so normally this would be mounted on the outside of an rv and the reason why i'm using this is because it allows me to run both lines in a convenient way so the first one is this large filler line and then this smaller one is a bleeder line that basically allows the air to escape that's displaced by the water when the tank is full it can weigh up to 80 pounds so to keep it from moving around i used a pair of ratchet straps through the frame and around the tank the tank can be filled in one of two ways the first and simplest way is just to use this collapsible water bag this holds two and a half gallons so you just basically fill it up bring it over to the car take the lid off this and very carefully pour it in simple enough right the other way is a little more involved but is definitely faster so i have a 10 foot food grade water hose here and so this is clean and i've never used it for anything but fresh water and in between the two bins i have this little track and that holds this whole crazy contraption that i put together so this has a couple components it has a water filter and then it has this regulator that reduces the pressure because we don't want to blow up the tank and then it has a little filler tip on the end so you can basically attach this whole situation to the hose and so if you're at a campground of some sort that has a hose you can just hook it up stick it in here and fill the tank without any extra effort so this whole system works really really well it's extremely efficient 10 feet is a little short though for my hose so i ended up using the bag a little more often than the hose but wait there's more so the right hand side has all of the electrical and the middle has tools and a bunch of other camping things that i need quick access to this area can be dark so i actually have these little motion activated stick up lights so as soon as you put your hand under there the whole area lights up so in the middle i have a bunch of lanterns here i have a goal zero lantern and a lucy lantern i have this other little ryobi ac inverter that i can use with my rayobi batteries and there's a bunch of tools and paracord and stuff so i can make repairs on the right hand side i have my goal zero yeti 1000 and in front of it there's a bin with a bunch of accessories and cords and things now this is really the brains of the operation from the electrical side of things there's 160 watts of solar panels on the back of the tent and that just runs down through the doors and then out into the back of the minivan and that just plugs directly into the mppt charger here and so when the sun's shining i'm getting power and charging up the battery now when i'm driving the car i have another input plugged into this 12 volt and so when the alternator is on this will supply 60 watts to the yeti as i'm driving so between the sun and the alternator this always kept the battery topped off so i could use the microwave i could use all the lighting and the 12 volt isco fridge was obviously plugged into the yeti as well i had a bunch of spare ryobi batteries here so those are used to cycle through with the fans and in order to charge them i have this dc ryobi battery charger here so while i was driving down the road this wing would kick on and i could recharge those batteries without really dipping into the yeti's power at all and i did all this just by having a few of these little splitter boxes so that would allow me to plug multiple dc appliances in as well as a bunch of usb on the right hand side i have a spot for extra cables that i might need quick access to and in the floor behind the driver's side is additional storage there was actually more in here during the trip but some things i had in here were the ecoflow river pro this was in case the yeti died for some reason i'd be able to keep the fridge going and i also had a number of things in here including lots of different shoes that we might only need access to every once in a while extra camp meals you name it this is kind of the junk drawer of the car in the middle of the car we have a trash can and we also have what we call the snack bin and this thing was chock full of goodies to keep us from getting hangry on the road uh there's just a few things in here now just to show how big this thing is and between the seats is a table which the kids used for putting all their junk on or eating off of however hidden inside here yep that's a toilet and so this was a just in case kind of toilet it is a porta potty and this thing was great it never smells at all and is really compact and actually surprisingly comfortable to use this is a cassette style toilet so you can just grab the bottom tank out and dump it in any old toilet so we didn't use it much but it was nice to know we had it if you're gonna go to the bathroom in the car though you're gonna need privacy so i ended up having this old blanket and i just attached a little bit of velcro to it and then i attached some velcro up in the ceiling on these little plastic microphone pieces and that allows me to essentially stretch this across and then i just kind of looped it through these little things and so this is a really quick way to put up a barrier that covers the front window and the front side windows so you could just throw in these window coverings on the sliders and have yourself a pretty nice little changing area or bathroom in the car [Music] so let's talk about cost now all the items in this video are listed in the description but generally if you want to build the frame in the organization in the bed it's going to run you about 900 and if you want the rooftop tent and the fridge and the slider and the yeti 1000 that'll bring it up to 4 700 and if you want every last thing in this video that's 6 800 that includes all the chairs the sleeping bags you name it what i would recommend doing is a lot of prototyping and i did a little bit of cad to figure things out but ultimately putting things in the car and seeing what fits is going to be key first things first i definitely recommend removing the third row seat from your car it gives you a ton of usable space in the pacifica it's really easy you just take two bolts out from the bottom flip the seat over take two bolts out from the top and at that point you can just lift the seats right out and i just stow those in the basement [Music] and you just get so much more usable space without the third row in there let's talk about the material that i used for the top of this unit and for the counter slash bed platform it's made by a company called carbon core and i first found it on youtube where they were comparing it against standard plywood and i found that i could get this really great version that was one inch and was more rigid than plywood but only weighed 32 pounds for an entire 4x8 sheet so that meant that the thing that pulls out and moves around a lot could be as little as 16 pounds and still support a ton of weight now i'm really happy i tried out this material but there are some big downsides it's 200 plus at least 100 in shipping and the edging is really hard to finish i glued this veneer on and it keeps popping off so i would say if you don't need something super lightweight you can get away with just using some standard three-quarter inch plywood on this project or two half inch sheets of plywood and just laminate them together and it'll be just as strong but it will be a lot heavier all right let's talk about the frame so this is constructed out of 2x2 i'd recommend using some sort of a hardwood stock and there's essentially just a top rail and that's what supports the top of this thing and then there is a set of legs that sit in the trunk essentially and then a set of legs in the front that supports the bed and so it's super simple even though it looks more structural that's because i've added some other cross members just to strengthen it up since i had pretty small stock i ended up using these really good fasteners from headlock and these work really great you just have to be careful because when you're going perpendicular you don't want them to hit each other but i found this made everything super rigid i also added some adjustable feet on the bedside just so that i had a little more wiggle room to make sure i could get everything perfectly level the frame is made super rigid because there is a pair of these u-shaped aluminum channels on both sides that provide a ton of rigidity the top one is used to hold the countertop and because of that all three sides of this channel have felt tape on them just to make sure everything glides really smoothly now in the back i cut back the channel so that there is no top on it and i did that so that the panel can angle so that allows us to pull it out a lot easier when you're making the bed and when you're sliding it back in in the morning and if you've ever watched my videos you know i like overkill and the place where the counter attaches to the top to create the bed platform needed to be super strong so i ended up getting two six inch pieces of aluminum that i created essentially a sandwich and what that did is form a four inch deep gap for the whole width of the bed and that is super strong and distributes the weight really well because i did add this bottom piece of aluminum i did have to notch the top of this frame by an eighth of an inch so that when i dropped it on there everything was nice and flush now there's a second set of rails that appear at the bottom and those are used to hold the drawers those are thinner because they only have to hold a half inch piece of plywood [Music] and because of the design and materials the frame is ultra lightweight i can move it around no problem by myself and it's a really tight fit in the car and speaking of which i'm using the four bolt holes from the third row seats to bolt this frame down to the car so it is rock solid this is what it looks like with the water tank and the yeti in there i quickly realized that to use the space better i needed a floor so i threw in a little half inch piece of plywood screwed it down and then i could use every little inch of the right hand side so with the floor in place i could put the yeti all the way back into the side and for security i used a ratchet strap through the yeti handles and around the frame in a couple places so it wouldn't move anywhere at all for organization i trimmed down this little bin so it fit right in front of the yeti for my cables and then i put some other storage bins and then slid the piece that holds the drawers into its track and you can see it catches in the back here for extra support now i didn't use traditional drawer slides here because i wanted to be able to move it forward and back this is that usb motion light that i had underneath here to light it up at the bottom and after that you just drop in the drawers they sit on top of the wood really easily and then the countertop slides into its rails and last but not least you just have to drop in the top and the top is secured to the base with these really high quality bolts and those all go into t-nuts that are located all the way throughout the bottom in the top and in the frame so it's a really good metal to metal connection and next goes the fridge slide and again this wants to be attached in a really strong way because there's a lot of weight cantilevered out and so i bolted this through the top and the frame using the same t-nut system so it's really really strong and then the next piece is this half-inch thick piece of plywood i've cut slits in it so that i can fit these ratchet straps through and then that whole thing is bolted down through the top into the t-nuts so it's very secure and at this point i can just drop in the drawers in the microwave and attach those with the ratchet straps and i can screw down the piece of metal that is used to attach the faucet magnetically so let's talk a little bit about these this is the ikea pegboard system i had to cut it down a bit and to attach it i just took two pieces of l bracket i drilled them out and they're nested together and when i tighten down the bolts it makes them snug up together and makes for a really strong connection so i really like the way the headboard came out i think it's a really cool mounting system and just to finish it off i had some extra little mini bungees and i just bungeed the tops together so that it looks a little bit nicer and the pieces won't tend to sort of slip past each other so that's it that's how it all goes together hopefully that's helpful to understand how to build your own and i recently took this all out of the car i'm starting in the garage and everything pretty much goes flat so it doesn't take up a lot of room and all the smaller stuff can fit in one closet so much smaller than having an rv this project has been so much fun it's been a real labor of love and i hope it inspires you to get out there and do your own build and get out and explore the world so thanks for watching please be sure to like and subscribe and let me know what you think in the comments see you in the next video [Music] you

Channel: Todd Parker

Views: 624,415

Keywords: RTT, GFC roof top tent, GFC Superlight, cigs solar panel, Iceco JP40 fridge, minivan camper, Minivan kitchen, DIY car camper ideas, Camper organization

Id: wMMYf7pREcg

Length: 42min 47sec (2567 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 15 2021