Engineer shows how to convert a van in 7 days and a $1000 budget

i'm on like a long climbing trip so i thought i'd get a van build it out a little bit more in comfort this time i bought his next passenger van it had seats and originally it's already carpeted the roof's all ready nice the lights are in it saved me lots of time basically probably saved me a week's work on the installation because it's already done for me and then yeah i just went to a friend's house went to home depot and just yeah so i converted this van because i'm on this like nine month trip in uh north america so i wanted like a nice place to stay i've been in like i've stayed in tents before but i wanted my own wheels so i think i might as well buy a van sleep in it save me some money on camping compart wherever i want i came up with this design of the bed because i wanted something that was really simple to turn into seats because i got some friends coming out and basically i wanted more than two seats so i went for this idea where it kind of folds up this is just um stapled on on the underside and then sandwiched between two bits of wood to hold it hold it tight and that just lifts up and i got these two little just these simple locks just line them up with a hole that just locks it for transport so as well if you're feeling lazy you want a bit of a client you just pull that forward lean back it's pretty chill so it's a bit tricky with the geometry because you've got to kind of you've got to get all your pivot points like the right the right distance apart to get the angles of the back of the seat right and all this kind of stuff so i kind of had to do that just a little sketch on a bit of paper and kind of work it out also you've got to account for because the thickness of the mattress you need to think about where the position the height of the hinges as well so if you had your hinge right at the bottom then the two bits of foam will like squash together and it's kind of so you have to think about that a bit but then on this one because it falls the other way you kind of need the hinge at the bottom so on these on this front and back hinge i've gone for these bolts here you can buy these like home depot it's kind of like a male and a female bolt i just got on the right length so when those tight together they're just a little bit thicker than the two things there's a wood that gives like your clearance so it doesn't lock up for the hinge if you pull these all forwards before you pull the bed forward and then just unlock these slide that boom job done easy peasy because i wanted something i didn't i wanted something that was like really simple it's like a lot of these design fancy designs you see there's like you gotta like take this bit out and put this in i thought i'd only do that every day you know it just it's just a pain in the ass it's like you might as well put up a tent or something so the whole point is like nice and easy so next yeah i did kind of the cabinet area so i've just this was like the standard width this is like four feet so your width of your plywood basically and then i made this was just the rest and it all kind of worked out quite nicely okay so i bought the stove again from walmart i think it was 30 and i had to modify this pipe a little bit because it came out this really weird angle so i just unscrew that just put it in a vise hit it with some like block of wood and a hammer just bend that round and the pipe goes under here and i've got my propane tank here and then to access that you can take this out and then this comes out as well so you can get access to your gas bottle yeah you can unscrew that and that rolls out through this hole here if you need to change it yeah so my gas bottle i think it's lasted about six months and i've like used it every day like morning and night so i think it's twenty dollars to refill it's pretty pretty cheap this kind of area i think i've started i built out this this is like cherry i thought i wanted i thought it looked quite nice i have like a border to my my kind of cabinets and then there's like just standard plywood either side so to get these to the right shape i got some cardboard and i like just made some templates so i got the curve at the back right same with these pieces here because the band like there's no straight edges basically so it's a bit it's a bit of a pain to to do it so get a bit of cardboard cut it out see if it fits cut a bit more off stick it put back bit back on let's chill tap i just got my friend's house you just had one left over so that's pretty handy and she's got a pipe kind of runs down so you can see goes down here my tank is actually in the back and under the cupboard i'll show you that later i think it's just a bowl from walmart three dollars there's no drain you want rid of it the water just chuck it out easy peasy three dollars boom bargain uh yeah under my sink so just got a washing up bowl as well just all my washing up shite pans cutlery drawer so what i've done with these you can see on the back here this is just a little clip it's like a sprung loaded splint sprung loaded rollers at the back there that like stops them coming out around corners so it's quite hard to pull it out just that last little bit same on the bottom paper towel holder i've run out of paper towel so i can't show you that in action uh covers here just random stuff electronics in here these are like spring load as well so no nothing falls out when you're driving along these are just um little battery powered lights i don't have any lux leisure battery or anything like that in here it's just just a car battery these are the only things that run off the battery so and the water pump so there's not really any need for it i don't have any solar any of that i kind of feel like to get a solar kit it was probably going to be another thousand dollars or something and i couldn't really see the point of it and it's like a lot more stealthy i park in the middle of in the middle of cities and nobody even knows there's anyone in it so that's pretty handy so i was a little bit worried about the uh having the gas in here and having a burner and all that so i kind of wanted a gas detector and carbon monoxide detector i got this guy and it says like do not install within 15 feet of your cookie but obviously i'm not gonna put it outside the van so anyway it's here and it it doesn't go off so i think i'm safe haven't died yet it's good spice rack so yeah just place for all my spices cooking stuff so something i forgot to mention this switch here this is just for the pump on the tap it's just i was worried about if there's like a leak or something i don't want it just pumping all day long because the way that the pump works is if there's a pressure loss then it turns on basically it's got a pressure switch in the pump okay so you tap goes on off and then i've just got this is just like your master switch this is just a 12 volt outlet just a standard cigarette lighter thing okay so yeah i wanted book case but a little bit of storage for like underwear and that under here i've got so i designed this around these boxes i bought these again from walmart i think really cheap boxes but they look kind of nice just fall out so design that so they fit perf well there's a little bit of clearance but then i've got a lip at the front so you gotta lift it up let's pull it out actually and also i kind of wanted like a safe place for stuff like in case i get broken into i don't have like anywhere to put like my valuables and stuff like that so i've made like this secret compartment so i'll just tell the world where the secret compartment is to take all these books out then this bit of a jigsaw puzzle [Music] take that out take that out and then just a little storage area you also get access to like the wiring for the plugs and that kind of stuff okay so there's lots of kind of dead areas of like space in the van that kind of awkward to fill so this one here i've chosen i've just got a lift up draw thing here lift up trap door and then i just keep like my dirty laundry in there just throw it in keeps the smell out of the van a little bit keeps it all locked up in there cupboards so pretty simple just three shelves it's a load of yeah pretty standard like all these like weird burning man costumes in it i don't think we're going to see this [Music] paddling paddling boat essential it comes with a van all inclusive under here is like where a store my water tank is such lifts okay so that's just a water tank i bought on ebay just happened to fit exactly the right width which is pretty lucky i just because i like basically i designed the bed first and then this was i wanted a tank to fit in but i didn't really make it to measure it just happened to fit there's a the pumps down at the bottom there as well yeah okay so back here just a few hooks my coat it's got water container and this is this here is where you fill up the water tank just unscrew this cap boom filler up easy peasy and this goes it's got a spout on as well that makes it easier to do that got a nice draw for my climbing equipment so these are slightly more expensive slides on the side it's got a nice soft close action [Music] and then a little cubby hole for just random stuff like tents and stuff okay so the curtains again these are from walmart cheaps chips um so i got them just a little bit longer than they needed to be just see i've chopped the bottom off because i've got this i've had this gap here so this is just uh just one of them i think it's a shower rail it's just like a telescopic thing just drill the hole in the in the in the foam like insulation that just sits in there and then you crank it out pushes out then you got this big gap so i've chopped the bottom off the curtain i've just stuffed it between like two sheets of the carpet so just stuff that in and then it blocks out all the light it works really well just gotta i was thinking about putting some velcro on here but i didn't really get around to it basically i just tucked that in there they just come out nice and easy and then for the windows i've just used this i don't know what it's called it's like bubble wrappy foil stuff like wrench laying is locked or something so cut that up to shape and it just slots in there you go nice and dark and keeps as i say i parked in the city like no one knows you're there pretty pretty nice so my job's like a mechanical engineer so design like machinery and that kind of thing um like the actual so i mainly spend my time on a computer like designing it so i kind of got some idea of how to do things and then i've just kind of done i like grew up on a farm so i've like made i've been building stuff and like i'm not really carpenter but i've done like do diy at home that kind of thing it's kind of pretty simple i think anyone could could kind of make it pretty everything's pretty simple um i just had a friend in salt lake whose tools i borrowed you probably mostly with like a drill on a jigsaw but to do like everything nice like the drawers they're kind of got to be pretty accurate so i'd had like a little table saw he had that was like really helpful because it gets everything nice and parallel it's a lot easier if you just you can use a handheld circuit saw but it's just like a lot more time consuming because you've got to like put your rail down measure the distance you've got to add your offset of your blade pump it all down both ends check it put lift it up a bit off the ground chop it's just circular like a table saw just makes everything a lot easier i also on the drawers so i did go with fancy on the drawers so i don't see the bottom so i've actually cut a channel in this in the side walls with the circular saw so i just set the depth like maybe half the thickness of the of the plywood here and i just did a few runs along it until there's the thickness of this this piece of ply this is just thin ply and then just slide that in before i i glue my end piece on but most of the stuff i mean the drawers have screwed i've screwed where i can basically but i've glued everything because i feel like it says the glue is stronger than the wood and it just i feel like if the vans rattling around the screws are going to come loose everything's going to get a bit loose whereas glue is like bonded tight it's a bit of flexibility keeps it nice and strong so all this is just glue there's like a few little brackets here and there but that was mainly to hold it while i was gluing it's like these screws here as i said i put these in like just to hold it because i only had like two cramps or something so i was like clamp in place put these in do the same this end that's nice and nice and easy okay so this top piece yeah basically i think it came in like whatever length that is that's like the length you get so i've kind of done like a brick pattern so i've chopped some in half or chopped the end of some and then i've stuck all this to like a thin piece of plywood so just glued it all down and then again i put some short really short screws in just to hold it while it glues basically and that kind of i don't if you see under there it seems like a thin piece of plywood and i've just put some varnish on that because i figured it's going to get wet and again i just vanished this and this just because i figured there's a lot of steam coming up overall it took me seven days but i mean they're pretty pretty long days maybe 10 hours a day yeah so like in the day time i'd like i said start building the bed and then something wouldn't be quite right so be like oh so i'd have to think about that at night think oh yeah how can i how can i like say the drawers like i planned to have drawers in here and then i built a bed i was like oh my draw idea is not going to work what we're going to do there so as you go along you kind of just adapt your ideas a bit okay so i was on pretty tight budget i wanted to because i'm i'm leaving like in say nine months time i've got i've got a small probably small window time to sell it so i wanted something that could sell easily so i made sure i got like pretty low mileage van which i paid a bit more for than i than i've really wanted to um but then the build out i mean i've gone for like nice things like this like cherry border kind of looks all nice i mean it wasn't really essential but i thought i'd just put a little bit more money into to like do a good job you know so i think overall i probably spent just under a thousand dollars for everything yeah mostly i bought at home depot which i don't think is the cheapest place but it's kind of got everything you need there's like the really good quality plywood so the bed the beds like you don't really see this plywood it's like good for structural plywood but i mean you can't really you don't make drawers out of it so for the drawers and the cupboards i got this like marine grade ply this was like 70 dollars a sheet for an 8 by 4 foot sheet which is kind of expensive but i figured that it's like really good high quality if you cut into this you see there's like little little imperfections and in it that's just a little one sometimes get like a whole layer missing for a big section whereas this marine plywood's like really good quality really good for cabinet making that kind of stuff okay so another important thing when i was buying it was i wanted like a stealthy van as i was saying before so as you can see it's like just looks like a normal van when the all the covers are on the windows you can't tell anybody's in there it just looks like it's a van that's parked up yeah so windows just as standard they open a little bit they're good for like cooking like there's no air vent in the in the van so that one at the back opens as well just lets a little bit of air through stops it again too hot i thought like 10 grand was a bit much asking for this but they were like that's a bargain you said that's way more [Music]

Channel: Nate Murphy

Views: 3,110,160

Keywords: van conversion, ford van conversion, f150 van conversion, tiny home, #vanlife, van conversion electronics, van conversion water, van conversion gas, van conversion solar, offgrid, off grid camper, self build camper van, self build camper, how to do a van conversion, van insulation, van conversion ideas, van conversion budget, van conversion $1000, cheap van conversions, low cost van conversions, quick van conversion, van conversion how to, how to van conversion

Id: EMiYqvGzvkI

Length: 17min 27sec (1047 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 12 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/rcrracer]

Shouldn't that gas sensor be near the floor? Specific gravity of gases from Engineering Toolbox. Air 1.000. Propane 1.5219.

[u/nate_murphy1]

I liked this guys van conversion. It does not have any fancy solar/electric systems as he took advantage of the ready-made fit out of a passenger van.

Mark does a good job at explaining the basic construction techniques, the tools he used and the reasonings behind his build. The sink is a pretty no-nonsense system too.

Boom. Easy peasy!

[u/Priff]

cheap van, cheap build, super complicated cubbyhole for valuables, and a drawer with climbing gear that probably cost more than the van in the back. :P

looks very nice though!

[u/bannik1]

His storage and drawers are great

[u/[deleted]]

Im trying to travel in a van with 2 other people and we like having the seats in the back... but how do we keep seatbelts in? This guys belts are there but no plugs.

[u/DNF_zx]

That's really well thought out and built.

[u/musiu]

damn, so cool. how is he cooking though? on his knees?

[u/GreenieSD]

Wow, amazing. He did such a great job, simple but functional.

[u/diamondheaded]

sweet rig